What you doing? Not listening to Silk Sonic’s new album.
Where you at? At home, again, not listening to Silk Sonic’s new album.
Oh, you got plans? Plans to listen to Silk Sonic’s new album? Not anymore.
Don’t say that. TOO BAD!
Yup, you read that right. If you’re picking up what I’m putting down correctly, then you’ve probably gathered that the long-awaited album from Silk Sonic has been delayed once again. Appearing on the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the silky-smooth duo consisting of Anderson. Paak and Bruno Mars revealed they were pushing back the release of An Evening With Silk Sonic until January 2022. In conversation with Jonah Weiner, Mars explained that they want more time to put out singles, “letting each one breathe” before giving fans the full project.
“I don’t want to be binge-watched,” he said. “We’re really in touch-up mode now. We’ve got the bones of most of the album, so it’s really about touching up parts that need a little more...grease.”
“Which could mean redoing the song from scratch!” .Paak interjected.
Mars continued, “But no. We’re not there. We were there. We had some moments in the danger zone! I think we put the pressure on ourselves by putting out ‘Leave the Door Open’ — but a deadline is important, because at some point, you gotta say, ‘This is it.’ Otherwise you’re gonna work it till you hate it. But there’s a beauty in that — you do have to get sick of it, because that means you put the love and the time and the passion in it, and it’s taxing.”
.Paak added, “I’m not sure we would have done it if it wasn’t for the pandemic. It was tragic for so many people, but Bruno would have probably been on the road, me too—but we had to be here.”
Speaking to the overall vibe of the forthcoming album, .Paak shared how both he and Mars wanted to make “feel-good music” which comes as a response to the various familial and relational traumas they both had to overcome.
Rolling Stone has more:
“We both make feel-good music,” .Paak explains, “and I think it’s because we’ve been through pain and tragedy.” “It all stems from pain and survival,” Mars agrees. “Never wanting to go back. Move forward, knowing how bad it can get.” A project like Silk Sonic, .Paak says, “is our way to cope with it, that’s why we put so much in it. We know it’s life or death for us, and we know what life and death means — we know what it’s like to be broke and to lose parents and to have parents that supported us and that battled addiction. We know what we’re up against, and this is all we have.”
Well, all I had was the hope of potentially vibing out to the silky smooth sounds from them, but I guess we all can’t get what we want.
To read the full interview with Silk Sonic, head on over to rollingstone.com.