Paak were born a decade after this music was dominating FM radio, it’s clearly in their blood: Mars, who created a vin- tage-sounding classic with Mark Ronson in 2014 with “Uptown Funk,” probably played a lot of songs from the period as a kid in his family’s band, and. Similarly, the groove veers into the ’80s on occasion - there are a couple of funky or flute-y dashes of vintage Michael Jackson.Įven though both Mars and. Paak-powered “777” - naturally, the album’s seventh track - largely because he raps most of the way through it the music is a straight Gap Band funk. The only song that doesn’t sound like a blast from a Rhino Records compilation or some obsessive British crate-digger’s playlist is the. Inevitably, there’s a bedroom ballad with some heavy female breathing and pillow talk (the steamy “After Last Night”). The songs span jams like the rollerena anthem “Skate” (released last summer with a very summery roller-skating-themed video) and several slow-burners, including “Leave the Door Open” and the closing “Blast Off,” which includes lyrics as period-specific as the music: “Let’s tiptoe to a magical place / Blast off and kiss the moon tonight / And watch the world go crazy from outer space.” Other priceless one-liners include “In a room full of dimes, you’d be a hundred dollars” and “You smell better than a barbecue” (both from “Skate”).
There are even a few cameos from one of the era’s originators, P-Funk bassist and iconic solo artist Bootsy Collins. Paak - have taken the concept to a whole new realm with “An Evening With Silk Sonic,” a wink-laden blast of early ’70s soul that they’ve launched like a contemporary project, complete with a smash debut single, “Leave the Door Open” (performed at the Grammy Awards earlier this year, it went on to top the Billboard Hot 100 in April).Īnyone who knows or loves early 1970s R&B will have a goofy grin on their face throughout this entire album, which plays out like an awesome game of spot-the-reference: You’ll find nods to songs like “Jungle Boogie,” “Fire” and “Love Rollercoaster” groups like the O’Jays, the Chi-Lites, the Sty- listics, the Ohio Players, the Gap Band and Kool & the Gang angelic backing vocals, ludicrously lush strings and horns, baby-I’m-down-on-my-knees testifying wacka-wacka guitars and tinkling glockenspiels. The throwback album is a monumentally more difficult thing to pull off: The artist has to follow the above guidelines for a standard album’s length without the conceit - which is hard enough to get away with for the length of a song - growing, well, old.Īll of which is a long-winded way of leading up to the fact that Silk Sonic - aka multiplatinum pop-R&B singer Bruno Mars and rapper Anderson.
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