(November 5, 2017) I don’t know if Nicole Willis has a motto. If she doesn’t, a good one would be: if you need some soul, I will travel. Willis has been adding soul and funk to music since at least the mid 1980s. She’s done it as a part of Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators and as Leftfield. She’s done it standing on her own as she currently does on her latest project, titled My Name is Nicole Willis. The album is a straight up soul record that might be right on time for those mourning the loss of another soul music dynamo – Sharon Jones.
(November 5, 2017) I don’t know if Nicole Willis has a motto. If she doesn’t, a good one would be: if you need some soul, I will travel. Willis has been adding soul and funk to music since at least the mid 1980s. She’s done it as a part of Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators and as Leftfield. She’s done it standing on her own as she currently does on her latest project, titled My Name is Nicole Willis. The album is a straight up soul record that might be right on time for those mourning the loss of another soul music dynamo – Sharon Jones.
The record is filled with tunes that feature funky bass lines and a lot of brass from Willis’ musicians. Willis hangs right in there with them throughout, and the track that we will hit you with on this First Listen is a funky up-tempo number that has all of those elements and is titled “(Everybody) Do the Watusi,” which is both an ethnic group living in Rwanda and Burundi and a dance made popular in the 1960s by James Brown and others. Willis may bring the Watusi back into fashion thanks to this energetic track. Check it out.
By Howard Dukes
Nicole Willis – “(Everybody) Do The Watusi