Arthur Baker<\/a>, who wiped out any memory of a less-than-positive experience I had with him decades ago with stories of his fascinating musical trajectory. He also shared tales of his early days, with Lati referring to him as \u201csuper-anal\u201d and \u201csuper-specific\u201d\u2014both meant as compliments. He further stated that Brooklyn Funk Essentials wouldn\u2019t have had the staying power they have had if Lati had not taken the project from studio to live performance.<\/p>\nEarlier this year, Brooklyn Funk Essentials released their eighth studio album, Black Butterfly. It features some longtime members including vocalist\/guitarist Desmond Foster who joined the band in 1999, and Alison Limerick, who rejoined Lati some 10 years ago as one of the band\u2019s lead vocalists. The chemistry is a proven one, and if there was any doubt, \u201cWhere Love Lives\u201d was back in the zeitgeist last holiday season in the UK when it was synced to a commercial for the John Lewis department store, which triggered highly charged nostalgia across the country, a great precursor to Black Butterfly.<\/p>\n
Lati is not immune to seeing his work go viral, but, at the same time, he\u2019s been at this music thing for so long, he has a grounded attitude toward it that I feel is at the core of his longevity. Then he tells me he read some of my writing on SPIN, and I am, naturally, charmed.<\/p>\n
How did you connect with Arthur originally?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve known Arthur a really long time. The first time I spoke to him, I lived in London. I was at my publishers, the phone rang, and it was Arthur. He said, \u201cI love your song [\u201cWhere Love Lives\u201d]. I\u2019m coming to London. Can we write some songs?\u201d Three days later, there\u2019s a knock on my door, and there\u2019s Arthur Baker with a pile of vinyl for us to sample. We got straight to working. It was as if we were friends for a long time. It continued like that. Shortly after, he asked me to join him in New York to work on this Al Green album. Brooklyn Funk Essentials was a spin-off of that. There were times in the studio when musicians wouldn\u2019t show up, and we started working on BFE. He let me stay in the studio because I didn\u2019t have anywhere to sleep in New York. He\u2019s always been a really close, good friend. It\u2019s funny that you said you had a hard time with him the first time you met. A lot of people have said that to me. He\u2019s always been a really lovely guy to me.<\/p>\n
How did you reconnect with Arthur a couple of years ago at the time of the 30th anniversary of Cool and Steady and Easy?<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve always been close, but two years ago, I was in the U.S., and me and my son went to stay with Arthur in Miami. We hung out for a week, and we did DJ gigs together. He said, \u201cI still have tracks. We could make another record.\u201d The kind of music we make, which is musicians playing, you need to physically meet somebody to really connect. It\u2019s not enough to just be sending tracks across continents. We\u2019ve done that too, but when we got to hang in Miami, it rekindled all those ideas we had initially in the early \u201990s when we started Brooklyn Funk Essentials. Arthur has always, to me, been an enormous source of inspiration. It would often be me on a drum machine or keyboards. Arthur would be in the back, and he\u2019d be like, \u201cI don\u2019t hear it now. You got to change. The snare drum is tired. We need a bridge, yeah.\u201d He\u2019d be sitting there flicking through Billboard or something, but he\u2019s always coming up with relevant, really good ideas. He\u2019s been very inspirational to me and a very good friend.<\/p>\n
He mentioned to me that if Cool and Steady and Easy had only been released in its original version as programmed samples and not recorded with live musicians, he didn\u2019t think it would still be talked about three decades later.<\/p>\n
Brooklyn Funk Essentials was Arthur\u2019s idea. We were waiting for a drummer who didn\u2019t show up, and he had these tapes of Maceo Parker and Tower of Power, all kinds of stuff that he\u2019d recorded in the \u201980s, which was never released. He said, \u201cMaybe we could do an Us3 kind of thing, put some beats together, maybe get some rappers in, put some singles out, get some club play.\u201d That was his whole plan. He was not thinking, \u201cLet\u2019s start a band that\u2019s going to be around for 35 years.\u201d There were a lot of loops and stuff. That\u2019s the way music was produced in the \u201990s. I\u2019ve been listening to some stuff that I missed in the \u201990s, and I realized that everybody was trying to do the Soul II Soul loop, or everybody was using the same basslines. I think we managed to find stuff that was original.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s two versions of the Cool and Steady and Easy album. The Dorado version, and when we got signed to RCA, they were like, \u201cAre there any samples we need to know about?\u201d This would have been \u201995 and all the craziness around samples was happening. They even put a clause in the contract that said if anyone were to sue us over a sample, it would be our responsibility, not theirs. For me, this was fine because we started to play live and I\u2019d found the live musicians. Let\u2019s redo all the percussive samples with E.J. [Rodriguez, percussion] and Yancy [Drew, drums]. Programmed beats can be fantastic, but when you merge them with live stuff you get a sound that only you have because it was actually recorded then and there, and it\u2019s going to be an ID stamp forever on that track. You\u2019re not going to sound like just everything else, because there was only X amount of loops you can use and eventually, people ran out. Arthur was like, \u201cNow you guys are playing live, this is going in a different direction.\u201d Having a funk band in New York was a dream come true for me. I couldn\u2019t even believe my luck playing with those kinds of musicians. We were playing pretty much every week in New York around that time. It drifted away from Arthur because he wasn\u2019t with us on stage, and he\u2019d done his thing.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Black-Butterfly-Image.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
How does the songwriting process work with the band?<\/p>\n
I have a kind of veto. If somebody brings something which is completely wrong, we don\u2019t do that. But lately, we jam a lot in the studio, especially me and Desmond and Hux [Nettermalm, drummer] who we\u2019ve had for the last 12 years. We are a really tight rhythm section. We like to play with grooves. That\u2019s where a lot of the songs happen. Most of the horn arrangements were written by Ebba [\u00c5sman, trombone]. She was in the studio with us, but she was in her own room so she could have isolation and I didn\u2019t have her very loud in my headphones because I was concentrating on grooving with Desmond and Hux. When we listened back, I was like, \u201cEbba, this thing that you\u2019re playing is absolutely beautiful.\u201d She would be coming up with melodies on the grooves that we were doing. It just happened in the studio. Before, you can start a groove, but if you\u2019re going to have a piece of music that\u2019s going to sound like something more intentional, then it\u2019s interesting to bring in breaks and actually have an arrangement. Then you get good at it and you\u2019re on your tiptoe rather than just starting a groove. That was more an \u201980s thing when you would just play and then you would edit stuff together. What we\u2019re trying to do is to actually play the thing from beginning to end, and that will be the song. It\u2019s very much a collaborative effort now, more than it used to be.<\/p>\n
Did revisiting Cool and Steady and Easy have an impact on the creation of Black Butterfly?<\/p>\n
Cool and Steady and Easy is a very popular record. I\u2019m still spinning it and we keep playing those songs with the band live. The songs we do, they\u2019ve developed. I thought it would be an especially good thing for people who can\u2019t come and see us to get this 100% live record as opposed to the \u201990s way of recording, which was hip-hop fashion with drum machines and stuff. We haven\u2019t used machines in a long time and I really love that. It really works for us. That\u2019s also how the new record came together, from the joy of us playing together.<\/p>\n
The records we\u2019ve done in the last 15 years have been really successful. A lot of bands, after a certain period become bands that tour around, playing the stuff from when they were successful back in the day. We\u2019re really fortunate that people are actually digging our new stuff and following it. The inspiration is 100% musical, and that\u2019s what it should be. This new album is songs we started on the previous album that we didn\u2019t finish because if we continue to write, then we\u2019ll never stop. Sometimes you just got to say, \u201cLet\u2019s take these 12 songs and make an album. These other 10 we\u2019ll leave those for now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite your name, Brooklyn Funk Essentials is based in Europe, aren\u2019t you?<\/p>\n
After 9\/11, me and my wife decided to leave New York. We moved to this house. Everybody moved. New York felt like a scary place. Then we took a hiatus of about five years. We got back together again and by that time, I had moved to Stockholm in Sweden, which is where I was originally from. The band was still U.S.-based, but we toured in Europe mainly. We did some U.S. gigs too, but it\u2019s a hard country to tour. The promoters give you nothing. A lot of the time they even want you to pay to play. That system started in the late \u201990s, early \u201900s. In Europe, you get hotels, you get backline. You just need to get there and everything is there and the fees are better. One musician was like, \u201cSorry, I can\u2019t make that tour,\u201d so I had to find a musician here. I was living here, and bit by bit, the band became a European band.<\/p>\n
I like it when you can link something to a geographical place, but it really doesn\u2019t matter. It\u2019s wonderful that Springsteen is always based in New Jersey, but he doesn\u2019t have to be. He could have been from anywhere, because it\u2019s the music, it\u2019s the songs, it\u2019s the lyrics. After a bit, I don\u2019t think that anybody cared that Bowie was from London. To me, Brooklyn is a sound. It\u2019s not about geography. It\u2019s about the melting pot.<\/p>\n
Is the promoter situation in the U.S. still like what you just described?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s even more so, and I\u2019m really sad about that because I would love to play in the U.S. like we used to, but we just cannot afford it. I would have to put together a U.S.-based band again, and that would be a different band. The thing that\u2019s really important about Brooklyn Funk Essentials is that it\u2019s an all-star band. It\u2019s not a group of musicians supporting a star. That inspiration comes from the bands of the \u201960s and \u201970s like Sly [and the Family Stone] or War and Ohio Players. All of those bands, it was about everybody. The other thing that\u2019s really important is that it\u2019s men and women together\u2014preferably as many women and as men. It\u2019s always been straight and gay. It\u2019s always been Black, white, Asian, everybody together. That\u2019s the whole idea of the band.<\/p>\n
Are you finding at this point in your life that you\u2019re a bit more relaxed in your approach to creation?<\/p>\n
We operate 100% out of love and with no pressure. I used to freak out every time I had to say no to a gig because I couldn\u2019t afford it. Now, I\u2019m going to have to be fine with it because I can\u2019t afford to lose money. The most fun gigs are always the ones in clubs when you\u2019re right there next to the audience. But if you only do clubs, you\u2019re going to be ruined in one year, so you have to play the big festivals, and then you\u2019re in competition with everybody.<\/p>\n
When we came out, we were hip [he uses air quotes for the term]. They would write about us in the right magazines and we would play the festivals with all the cool bands. Other bands came out that were more hip because they were younger and whatever. When we came back in 2005, we started to play jazz festivals more and more instead of the Lollapalooza kind of festivals with the young talent. We would be playing with Parliament-Funkadelic and Kool and the Gang, or even straight up jazz\u2014which was great, but we wanted to support Bj\u00f6rk and Massive Attack. But we\u2019d moved away from that because we never belonged to that. That was really problematic, because I was like, \u201cI love Kool and the Gang, but can we get one gig where we\u2019re playing with some young talent?\u201d These days, I\u2019m really happy about being on the jazz circuit because a lot of those electronic acts, they\u2019re not even around anymore and people don\u2019t even know who they are. There\u2019s so much that happens that disappears.<\/p>\n
Being cool is temporary. Longevity is what you want.<\/p>\n
Fuck being cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Years ago, when Brooklyn Funk Essentials first came on the scene, I held their name against them: a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,101278,100,99,9,24,63,58930],"class_list":["post-260609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-funk-essentials","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-pushly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}