Sounds like Naughty Professor have found their direction, and not the one you expected if you had them pegged as a post-Meters/Galactic funk/jam band. True to its title, Voices is a vocally-oriented album but the real surprise is the musical style. There’s no jamming, no shredding and very little hard funk; instead, this is a set of smooth, chillout-style R&B. They flirted with that direction on their last album Identity and jumped in wholeheartedly this time.
Wholehearted is the operative word: They clearly love and understand this style enough to make it a low-ego album—letting their instrumental chops take a backseat so that the songs and the guest vocalists can come forward. As a result, the album has a cohesive flow, even with a different singer on every track, and the songwriting is strong enough to honor its inspirations. The better-known singers are well matched to the material: Tarriona “Tank” Ball’s “Scrollin’” isn’t far from something the Bangas might do, with its half-rapped/half-sung lyric about reading your ex-lover’s texts while playing Coltrane. Maggie Koerner shows her warmer and jazzier side on “Wings to Fly” and Jordan Anderson, from J & the Causeways shines on “Old Faithful,” a dead-on invocation of classic-era Stax/Volt.
The bandmembers do sneak in a few good moments of their own: Guitarist Bill Daniel gets in a tasty solo on “Saturday Sinner” (while playing a surprising amount of acoustic elsewhere) and bassist Noah Young steps forward on “Gotta Get Back,” which has a bass-driven arrangement in the vein of classic Earth, Wind & Fire. That will be your go-to track if you yearn for something funkier, and it would have admittedly been nice to have one hot instrumental in the mix. But this is a solid album that stakes out some individual territory for Naughty Professor. It also makes a good soundtrack for intimate moments if that’s what you’re after.
Naughty Professor has released monthly singles from Voices starting in May 2024. The featured vocalists that have been released thus far are Tarriona “Tank” Ball, Josh Kagler, Jermaine Holmes & Rojo Lavoe, Chrishira Perrier, Maggie Koerner, Marcus King and Berkley the Artist. Sam Kuslan, and Jordan Anderson will complete the album. The full album will be released on February 21, 2025.
