R&B, funk and soul icons Kool & The Gang are returning with a new album release - People
Just Wanna Have Fun is out July 14, 2023 on Astana Music Inc.
With six decades of hits, the internationally celebrated group continues to tour the world and
recently performed on Good Morning America. The band is led by founding members
Robert 'Kool' Bell (bassist) and George 'Funky' Brown (keyboardist, drummer & producer of
this album), whose book Too Hot: Kool & the Gang & Me will be released on July 11, 2023.
Continuing to release music that makes the good times better and the bad times more
bearable, this collection will be the band's 34th studio album, featuring some of the last
studio work by founding horn players, Kool's brother Ronald 'Khalis' Bell and Dennis 'D.T.'
Thomas, who passed in 2020 and 2021. Lead vocals on the album also include Sha Sha
Jones, Shawn McQuiller, Lavell Evans, Dominique Karan, Rick Marcel and Walt Anderson,
plus rappers Ami Miller & Ole'.
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' & 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's bass
guitar is even featured in the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture
in Washington, DC.
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, JayZ, Beastie Boys, Janet Jackson, Cypress Hill and P. Diddy. Not to mention their music on
soundtracks from Rocky, Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction to Wreck-It Ralph and many
more.
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've got the funk, you've 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 '70s, the '80s, right into now. It's old school, it's new school -
we kinda captured it all here. With all our music over the years, people have had fun. So I'd
say this album just about sums it all up.'
