Bruno Mars is back with his fourth album Silk Sonic, but this time he teamed up with Anderson Paak to create this R&B/funk album along with Bootsy Collins. They met during Mars’ last tour and realized they shared a passion for soul/R&B music from Motown greats like Stevie Wonder & Aretha Franklin, and other musicians like Prince, James Brown and Miles Davis to name some. They did their best to make the album sound like 1960’s-1970’s old school sound by hiring seasoned session guys and using the right gear, plus if it didn’t sound right they would redo it until everyone in the room agreed on it.
The album had huge success as it won R&B album of the year for iHeart music awards, nominated for top R&B album at Billboard music awards, won a Hungarian award for best pop album, won album of the year at the BET awards, and the track “Leave the Door Open” was nominated for four Grammys where it won record of the year, song of the year, best R&B song and best R&B performance as well. Cleary this song is the best song on the whole album from the music to the vocals to arrangements as it sounds like a classic Marvin Gay/Barry White R&B song.
The intro song called “Silk Sonic Intro” has good music that is really funky to open the album but is ruined by talking/narrating by the Collins person. Tracks “After Last Night”, “Smokin out the Window” and “Put on a Smile” are good songs especially the latter with the emotional vocals in it, but you waste time and gets kind of ruined with the narration over it (like for 40 seconds). In “After Last Night” if you fast forward past the talking it’s great (7 seconds for other two). Songs “Fly as Me” & “777” also get ruined by having some rap in it as the former has great chorus with a good funky bass sound.
The final two songs “Skate” & “Blast off” are like the Grammy winning song with great vocals and music especially as the latter is a great song to end the album as it blends the R&B, soul, funk and rock all into one as to say goodbye.
It has been quite a journey for the songwriter turned singer-songwriter-musician-performer whose debut album was more pop/rock, slowly progressed over the last two to where he is now fully engulfed into the R&B scene with “Silk Sonic”. My only critique is if you’re going to continue down this creative path of R&B cut out the hip-hop/rap because that is what kept it from being as good as your other albums, especially your debut album. The same goes to your creative partner Paak who has a great voice. In the end chalk it up as another successful album for Peter Hernandez aka Bruno Mars to keep adding to his impressive catalog thus far.