By Lady Lyfe | CR8V Culture
The Black Academy of Arts and Letters — Dallas Mavericks Jazz Stage, State Fair Automobile Building
You don’t so much walk into a RC & The Gritz set as get pulled into one. RC Williams and the band were already deep in a groove before I had fully settled, built on a sample every child of the 2000s would recognize: the filtered soul-loop at the heart of Kanye West’s “I Wonder,” only looser now, breathing the way the radio version never gets to.
Kazunori stepped up on trumpet and carried it somewhere new. J. Aeria’s vocals settled smooth over the top, the whole thing slid into a bass-heavy pocket, and the lead guitar took me through several sounds I only half knew until it set me down in the middle of The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination.” That’s the magic of this band, taking the familiar and remaking it right in front of you.
Then came a tenderhearted Dionne Warwick proclamation, “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” performed like a statement the room had been waiting to hear out loud: mixing a little jazz, a little reggae, a whole lot of heart and soul. Making that wide, loud building feel small and amicable.
Rihanna’s “Please Don’t Stop the Music” surfaced next, folded into Yarbrough & Peoples’ 1980 classic of the same command… don’t you stop it, don’t stop the music… until the two songs sounded like they’d always belonged together. Nobody hit the brakes, and you didn’t want them to.
Somewhere in there, the band leaned into Marvin Gaye’s “Falling in Love Again,” right alongside a snippet that nodded to Patrice Rushen’s “You Remind Me,” her cool groove reappearing like it never left. And finally, the Bill Withers’ classic “Lovely Day.” R&B, disco, soul, gospel. Stitched into one nonstop jam that never felt like a history lesson. Through all of it, RC Williams led. Masterfully. The band owned that stage, moving through the setlist like someone who knows these songs the way he knows his own Dallas neighborhood.
