I wouldn't call it "black influence". Sonic's entire identity was never heavily inspired by anything "black", but certain songs in SA1/SA2 obviously took notes from black artists. Outside of that? Absolutely nothing, I don't understand why people want to claim Sonic was HEAVILY inspired by "Black culture", when it couldn't even scrape itself beyond music. They even toned down Knuckles' original vision after realizing how ridiculous it would've been. The original Genesis run, and every game up to Black Knight kept the same feeling of Sonic, and those have no "black influence" in them.
>t.Black Sonic fan

I'll just wait for 0.3 I guess