Something Special

About Something Special

Along with Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & The Gang was arguably the only mainstream Black American band to successfully transition from the 1970s to the 1980s. But where Earth, Wind & Fire toyed with disco as part of a broader diet of RNB, jazz, and other Black idioms, Kool & The Gang embraced the sound consciously and head-on. Released in 1981, Something Special would become the band’s third platinum album in three years. It wasn’t all that functionally different from 1979’s Ladies' Night or 1980’s Celebrate!: It’s polished, pop-friendly, and song-oriented—a sound that scanned as Black, but was easily .

Text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.

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