An accomplished band leader who recently worked on the Disney+ smash Soul, Jon Batiste reaches new artistic heights with his latest album WE ARE. Here, he brings together the sounds of the church, the jazz club, and the blues bar, blended together with a contemporary hip-hop, R&B, and pop flavour which is helmed by Batiste’s technical command. In many ways, the album is an extended homage to New Orleans, to which Batiste owes his musical education. He kicks off the album with the anthemic cri de coeur of ‘WE ARE’ – released last summer at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests – buoyed by thrilling contributions by the St Augustine High School Marching 100 and the Gospel Soul Children Choir. He remembers the advice of his hustling father in ‘TELL THE TRUTH,’ and delivers a bluesy lament with ‘CRY.’ Radio-friendly single ‘I NEED YOU’ is a blazing tour-de-force with Baptiste’s melange of influences on full display, particularly as he inserts a scintillating rap verse between the boogie-woogie rhythms. He extolls the liberatory powers of music and dance with ‘FREEDOM’, though the decision to preface the song with a spoken interlude by Mavis Staples, a musical figure known for her civil rights contributions, charges the piece with a sense of socio-political aspiration.

Standout Tracks: ‘WE ARE’, ‘I NEED YOU’, ‘TELL THE TRUTH’