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<\/a>\u201cRaindance\u201d (feat. Native Soul) \u201cIt\u2019s trap, it\u2019s reggae, and it has an orchestral influence mixed with indigenous Native American chants. I went to the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and found an incredible group of artists who are Native, and they showed me their traditions of drumming and singing and all of these incredible ideas about life and spirituality that are just a part of their generation\u2019s long-sacred rituals and traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBe Who You Are\u201d (feat. JID, NewJeans & Camilo) \u201cOne of the things that Billy Bob does is he takes moments that are happening in the present and, just as a DJ would, he may blend in an interpolation or a nod to a song that is on wax from the past. He\u2019ll even sometimes bend time and space and take a performance that\u2019s happened in the future. This song exemplifies that to a T, where you have echoes of \u2018Pass the Dutchie,\u2019 you have this K-pop section, then you have Camilo from Colombia coming in on the horns, and JID is rapping, and then I have my verse and I\u2019m rapping. It\u2019s a mission statement\u2014I wouldn\u2019t call it the deepest, but it\u2019s the most banner track of what World Music Radio is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWorship\u201d \u201cWe wanted to create an experience that brought you to a sense of real perspective and appreciation of your own humanity and the collective of humanity. When you hear these lyrics over and over again as the chords swell, and the synthesizers are crafted in this way that feels like samba-slash-Swedish House Mafia, something about both of those sounds together is catharsis. It creates a release in people when you\u2019re collected in a community, whether it\u2019s at a festival or at a game at a stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy Heart\u201d (feat. Rita Pay\u00e9s) \u201cRita is a trombonist and singer from Catalonia, an unsigned artist in her early twenties who\u2019s been playing and composing her own music. I was lucky enough to discover her online, and when we connected to write this song, I wanted to sing in the Catalonian dialect of Spanish to bring a certain feeling to the piece. It was already going to be an intimate and beautiful composition, but when we decided to put it in her native language, it really channeled something. Languages just have this ability to speak to art in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cClair de Lune\u201d (feat. Kenny G) \u201cKenny G is probably still the most acclaimed, or at least the most commercially successful, instrumental artist of all time. And on World Music Radio, we have several different languages and several different kinds of vocalists, but I was thinking, \u2018Who is an instrumentalist who has reached cultures around the world in a really profound way?\u2019 I\u2019d put Kenny G on the top five of that list. And it\u2019s crazy because he\u2019s got so many people who hate him! But just getting to know him through this process, you see that it\u2019s not a gimmick for him. And when you listen to him here, he plays in a way that he doesn\u2019t play on any of his other records. He really stretches, you know? And I loved hearing him do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cButterfly\u201d \u201cI really am proud of this one, of how transcending of any genre or any sort of classification it is. There\u2019s a lot of textures and sonics and a very maximalist approach in a lot of the music here, but this is transcendent and simple. You can sing it as a nursery rhyme. You can sing it as a lullaby. You sing it as a ballad. I\u2019ve heard kids sing it when we did a workshop at a school; it just has some timeless quality to it. But it\u2019s a personal song for me, in my life as well, that was part of the inspiration\u2014my wife [journalist Suleika Jaouad, who recently survived a second bout with leukemia] and particularly our relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUneasy\u201d (feat. Lil Wayne) \u201cWayne! That is [area code] 504 representing. You know, the 17th Ward where he hails from, I partially grew up there. He\u2019s a little older than me, but we were in that neighborhood three minutes apart from each other, probably around the same time. And together with the \u201817th Ward Prelude,\u2019 which leads into \u2018Uneasy,\u2019 this is definitely the most New Orleans segment of the record.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCALL NOW (504-305-8269)\u201d (feat. Michael Batiste) \u201cWho do you get when you call? You get Billy Bob Bo Bob, the real number. And sometimes you get Jon Batiste.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMOVEMENT 18\u2019 (Heroes)\u201d \u201cWhen you let the subconscious mind, the nonlinear mind, be heard through the frequency of the radio station, what would it sound like? Those are my thoughts coming up and my ruminations on things some of my musical heroes have said to me. You got Wayne Shorter in there. You got Alvin Batiste and Quincy Jones and Duke Ellington. The Wayne sound that you hear is him actually playing with me, and it\u2019s layered on top of the piano that I\u2019m playing on the track.\u201d<\/p>\n
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