The Soothing Sound of Silk Sonic
Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s “feel-good” music comes from hard times and real pain. Inside the duo’s deep friendship and quest for the perfect throwback jam
Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak are enjoying the sun-dappled courtyard of a recording studio — lighting up American Spirits with a Gucci-monogrammed lighter, appreciating the gentle birdsong wafting down from the trees overhead, admiring some orange hibiscus flowers growing up a nearby wall — when a studio assistant named Alex walks over with a surprise to complete the laid-back scene: “Rumritas!” he announces, setting down three frothing salt-rimmed glasses.
“We hide the stress well,” .Paak says, sitting back, taking a sip. It’s late June in Los Angeles, and work is nearly done on An Evening With Silk Sonic, the debut LP from Mars and .Paak’s superduo of the same name, which began life five years ago as a joke the two friends hatched on the road, then got real enough to spawn a Number One hit in the Seventies-soul-indebted ballad “Leave the Door Open.” About 20 seconds into that track, .Paak (with Mars serving background ad-libs) coos that he’s “sippin’ wine (sip sip) in a robe (drip drip),” and those nine words crystallize the song’s appeal: It’s extravagant, soft, slightly woozy, and just the right amount of winningly, winkingly ridiculous. “That song was like our mission statement,” .Paak says. “It’s the intro to the book, to set the tone and let you know the sound. There’s different kinds of waves, but the whole album is wrapped around that.”
An Evening With Silk Sonic was originally slated for the fall, but the band pushed it to January 2022. Mars and .Paak decided they’d rather put out more songs, Mars explains, letting each one breathe a bit, before dropping the LP in full: “I don’t want to be binge-watched.”
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