Roughly four years after 2016’s Dame Fortune, seasoned producer RJD2 has announced his next album, The Fun Ones, will arrive on April 17 RJ’s Electrical Connections.
The project marks RJD2’s seventh solo album but this time, he takes an unconventional approach.
The Fun Ones is assembled as a mixtape and uses samples from conversations with several of his contemporaries, including Phonte Coleman, J-Zone, Kid Koala, Mr. Lif and Son Little.
Ahead of its release, RJD2 has shared a snippet of the album in the form of “Pull Up On Love” featuring frequent collaborator STS (Sugar Tongue Slim), Jordan Brown and Khari Mateen.
“This tune started with some Zigaboo-inspired drums, a nice little sweeping guitar lick, and a bass line that left plenty of space for wherever Slim was gonna take the track,” RJ explained in a press release. “I purposely left some room to fill out the track once the vocals were in place. So when Slim sent it back to me, and Khari had did his thing on it, it had such a great vibe to it that I didn’t want to drench the track in production tricks and overdubs.
“I wanted the vocal performances to shine, so I basically cleaned up the mix, did a few breakdowns, and left it as is. It was great for the three of us to link up once again, since it had been years since we did ‘See You Leave’.”
The accompanying visual was filmed at Denver, Colorado’s Ogden Theatre and features RJD2, STS, Mateen and Brown alongside Chuck Palmer on drums and Stephen Greenberg on bass.
Watch the “Pull Up On Love” video above.