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In anticipation of R&B, funk and soul icons Kool & The Gang<\/strong> celebrating their 60th anniversary next year, they\u2019ve announced a new album \u2013 People Just Wanna Have Fun<\/em> is out July 14, 2023<\/strong> on Astana Music Inc<\/em>. With six decades of hits, the internationally celebrated group continues to tour the world and recently performed on Good Morning America<\/em>. \u201cLet\u2019s Party\u201d<\/em> (feat. Sha Sha Jones<\/strong>) is the red carpet first single from the upcoming album. The band is led by founding members Robert “Kool” Bell<\/strong> and George “Funky” Brown<\/strong>, whose book Too Hot: Kool & the Gang & Me<\/em> will be released on July 11, 2023.<\/p>\n Continuing to release music that makes the good times better and the bad times more bearable, this collection will be the band\u2019s 34th studio album, featuring some of the last studio work by founding horn players, Kool\u2019s brother Ronald “Khalis” Bell<\/strong> and Dennis \u201cD.T.\u201d Thomas<\/strong>, who passed in 2020 and 2021. Lead vocals on the album also include Sha Sha Jones, Shawn McQuiller, Lavell Evans, Dominique Karan, Rick Marcel<\/strong> and Walt Anderson<\/strong>, plus rappers Ami Miller & Ole\u2019<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Both Bell and Brown view People Just Wanna Have Fun as a summation of their long career, during which they sold 70 million albums worldwide with hit singles like “Celebration”, “Ladies Night” “Get Down on It”, “Hollywood Swinging”<\/em> & beyond. Since their start in 1964, the group has amassed two Grammy Awards, seven American Music Awards, a BET Soul Train Lifetime Achievement Award and star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Kool\u2019s bass guitar is even featured in the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n From Newark to Nairobi, Kool & the Gang have performed continuously longer than any R&B group in history and are the most sampled R&B band of all time, including by Madonna, Jay-Z, Beastie Boys, Janet Jackson, Cypress Hill<\/strong> and P. Diddy<\/strong>. Not to mention their music on soundtracks from Rocky, Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction<\/em> to Wreck-It Ralph<\/em> and many more.<\/p>\n Yet throughout all the success, Kool & The Gang has remained true to their roots while pushing into the future. Bell says of the new album, “You\u2019ve got the funk, you\u2019ve got the jazzier tracks, we have a few ballads on there. Then there are songs that cross over to a pop sort of thing. We go from the \u201870s, the \u201880s, right into now. It\u2019s old school, it\u2019s new school \u2014 we kinda captured it all here. With all our music over the years, people have had fun. So I\u2019d say this album just about sums it all up.”<\/em><\/p>\n Work on the album started five years ago, recording at Brown\u2019s Alley Cat Studio in Woodland Hills, CA for sessions spread out over several months. Though the group recorded much of People Just Wanna Have Fun during the height of the pandemic, Brown says, “It\u2019s all done live. Nothing was flown in. We made sure we had the ultraviolet lights and the sprays and the masks. Nobody got sick. We kept the number of people in the studio way down.”<\/em><\/p>\n Up next, the band is looking forward to this summer\u2019s “Kool and the Gang Rock the World Tour,” which will be sponsored by Bell’s own Le Kool Champagne. He’s served as US ambassador of music and the arts to many countries like the Ivory Coast of Africa, and the band has shared stages before with Van Halen & Elton John<\/strong> to Dave Matthews Band & The Roots<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In anticipation of R&B, funk and soul icons Kool & The Gang celebrating their 60th…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pG6fW-LkE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}