Van Hunt’s Unreleased Third Album, Popular, Now Available [FULL STREAM]

Van Hunt Popular

Let’s just say right off that we are HUGE fans of Van Hunt.  This brother is one of the most talented musicians we have come across in quite a while.  His debut album, Van Hunt, is a bonafide classic with intense grooves and lyrics to match.   Hailing from the home of the Funk, Dayton, Ohio, Van Hunt is an artful craftsman when it comes to creating his style of aural magic.  Tracks like “Dust,” “Seconds of Pleasure,” and “Down Here (In Hell With You)” still hold up 13 years later as does his follow up On The Jungle Floor.   It didn’t hurt that the personnel on his debut included none other than Wendy Melvoin from Prince’s band The Revolution.  Seemingly out of nowhere, the brother that everyone was talking about disappeared.   It was rumored that there was a third LP that never made it out of the office of Blue Note Records.  In soul music circles, cats sat around with long faces listening to his first two projects.  Well, that is, until today.  We learned that Blue Note is now making that work available for stream.

Here is more from Blue Note:

Popular was originally intended for release in January 2008, but was pulled from Blue Note’s release schedule in late 2007 during a tumultuous time for the label’s prior parent company EMI. Hunt had been moved to Blue Note’s roster following the release of two albums for EMI’s Capitol Records: Van Hunt (2004) and On the Jungle Floor (2006).

 

In 2016, Hunt re-approached Blue Note (now underneath the Capitol Music Group, a division of the Universal Music Group) to reconsider releasing the album. Current Blue Note President Don Was—who has cultivated a movement of forward-thinking artists who blur the lines of R&B, hip-hop, funk, rock and jazz like Robert Glasper, José James, and Chris Dave—readily agreed, allowing the album to finally see the light of day.

 

Popular was so far ahead of its time that it sounds fresh today and reaffirms Van Hunt as an important musical voice,” says Was. “The opportunity to right this wrong is both karmically and musically solid.”

Popular’s 14 tracks show the evolution of Hunt’s sound from his first two albums, an assemblage of funk, rock, soul and all styles in between that followed in the vein of his primary influences: Prince and Sly Stone. LA Weekly called the album “a left-field stunner” for its “trippy fusion of funk grooves, punk guitar and soul vocals.”

 

“This record is all the way me,” said Hunt in 2007. “Without a doubt, it’s certainly personal, in its sound, in its lyrics. I wouldn’t necessarily call it autobiographical, but it’s all about how I feel. Picasso said that art should disrupt, and it does that a bit.”

 

10 years later Hunt reflects back and looks ahead: “I put my whole world into making this record. But looking back, my world was a different place then. I was different, then. I thought my world was all there was. I was to learn that the emotions on that record couldn’t overwhelm the events that would befall its release. Piracy, changing technology, collapsing economy – we – this entire industry – went under.

Check out the album below:

FULL ARTICLE

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