After fiddling with the R&B of the 1980s and ’90s to great commercial success on 2016’s 24K Magic, Bruno Mars has assigned himself a more challenging project: Silk Sonic, a fidelity-obsessed act in which he and onetime tourmate Anderson .Paak, recreate the rhythm and blues of the ’70s.
For a certain listener, this is half the fun: An Evening With Silk Sonic is an opportunity to prove your adoration and knowledge.
The internet received the clip of Mars belting out “this bitch,” from the heartbroken lament “Smokin Out the Window,” and did the work of a crackjack marketing team by turning it into a meme.
As quoted in Kelefa Sanneh’s recent book Major Labels, Maxine Powell, the head instructor at the label’s charm school, told her pupils to “be natural, be poised, and be positive.” There’s no chance Ms. Powell would have condoned Silk Sonic dropping the b-word, but it’s still possible to draw a line from Motown’s artifice to the contrived jokes and slickness of An Evening With Silk Sonic.
This splashy interplay between male vocalists is perhaps the record’s strongest selling point: There are virtually no male R&B vocal groups of note these days, though the power of layered harmonies is the catalyst for much of the genre’s finest records, most notably the entire body of work of Marvin Gaye.
Co-written by the singularly talented Babyface, the album’s big ballad digs as deep emotionally as Mars and Paak are willing to go on a project that keeps the stakes low by choosing humor over sincerity at just about every turn.
The sense of familiarity baked into the invitation is exactly the mood of Silk Sonic; what is this supposed to be if not the album of lovable carousing uncles? Depth doesn’t have to mean sad—on “Wngs,” it means lived-in, novelistic detail.
Teased since March of this year, leading to a promotional cycle that’s lasted nearly nine months, it arrives burdened with more hype and attention than its songs should have been asked to bear.