“What’s up people?”

The first voice you hear on Red Balloon, after a quick spin of a radio dial, is not Tarriona “Tank” Ball. It’s TV star Wayne Brady, in the role of DJ for station TATB.

“At TATB, we really want to make you smile.”

And off we go into 45 minutes “on air” at the radio station of Tank and the Bangas’ group mind, where soul-jazz and slam poetry, Disney movies and intense sexual politics, light romantic interludes and heavy examinations of the tragic weight of history all fit together. Tank, along with Questlove and WWOZ’s DJ Soul Sista, who introduce some songs, that this is meant to evoke classic Black radio of days gone by. 

But needless to say, no station like this has—or could have—ever existed anywhere.

The light sunshine funk of “Mr. Bluebell” gives way to the house-of-mirrors jitter of “Anxiety,” which leads to the sweet romance of “Oak Tree,” followed by the, well, communion of “Communion In My Cup,” none of which prepares for the Simpsons-sparked freestyle frenzy of “Who’s In Charge” and… and…. and…. and… So, Marge Simpson is sitting in Café Du Monde before going to see Maze at Jazz Fest? It’s dizzying. 

Where’s the center? The rooted, lush “Oak Tree” is the center around which all else revolves. No, “Black Folk,” the vast and detailed account of what it is like to be Black in America, Black in New Orleans, is the center. Or maybe that pairs as co-center with “Stolen Fruit,” a brilliantly nuanced yet vivid impression of the enduring damage and loss from centuries of slavery and oppression, nodding to Billie Holiday and “Strange Fruit” and to Stevie Wonder.

The 8th Ward, where Ball was raised, is the center. The open-mic nights at the Liberation Lounge, where the band formed, is the center. Really, Tank and the Bangas are the center, wherever their seemingly infinite reach takes them—so much so that the various guest artists seem, at times, just kinda there. That is no knock on any of them or what they bring to this, which is unfailingly stellar.

That’s true for those who are in and of the New Orleans community—Big Freedia, Trombone Shorty, Jamison Ross—and those from other places—Lalah Hathaway, Jacob Collier, Alex Isley, Masego, the Hamiltones. None of them dominates or distracts. What they do is help TATB confirm its place in a noble lineage that includes Wonder, Jill Scott, Alicia Keys, D’Angelo, Maxwell, Beyoncé, Janelle Monáe and Kendrick Lamar, among many.

And center or no, there is something of an epigraph, coming in the album’s final song, “Where Do We All Go,” which most profoundly and explicitly holds the impact of Wonder in the sounds and sentiments: “Beyond clouds and covers/Airplanes fly above us/Spreading/Heading Towards/Home”

Home—literal and figurative, its geography and landmarks found both on the streets and inside Tank’s being—is the landing spot, the destination of the soaring Red Balloon. And this, even more than the “radio” thread, is the ribbon (in the sky) that ties it all together.

That’s what’s up, people.

—Steve Hochman