Brooklyn Funk Essentials

“Their ineffable funkiness always seems to prevail - there’s no stopping them…”
Emrys Baird - Blues & Soul

Across a career that stretches over 30 years, Brooklyn Funk Essentials have established themselves as an audacious project fusing soul, hip-hop, spoken word, jazz and of course, funk. Between recording seven studio albums, the Essentials have made a name for themselves as absolutely electric performers, exhilarating their loyal and adoring fanbase with performances across every continent. With over 50 million collected streams on Spotify, the band has a devoted audience around the globe.

Established in the early ‘90s by Arthur Baker and Lati Kronlund, Brooklyn Funk Essentials were regulars of New York’s vibrant club scene by the time their debut album ‘Cool & Steady & Easy’ hit the shelves. Released by pioneering funk and electronic taste-makers Dorado Records and combining classic funk’s raw, mind-bending basslines, peak-era disco’s euphoric vocals and early hip-hop’s observational lyricism, the album was an immediate hit in the US and elsewhere, securing a No 1 spot on Billboard’s Alternative R&B Album of the Year chart in 1995. Tracks like ‘Take The L Train’ and ‘Big Apple Boogaloo’ became DJ favorites, while their version of Pharoah Sanders’ and Leon Thomas’ classic ‘The Creator Has A Master Plan’ reached into the Top 20 singles chart. The album currently (2025) has over 25 million streams.

The success of ‘Cool & Steady & Easy’ ensured much international touring for the band. A particularly inspired tour in Turkey in 1996, resulted in the band recording their second album, ‘In The BuzzBag’ in Istanbul. A collaboration with the Turko-Roman folk band Laço Tayfa, lead by young clarinet virtuoso Hüsnü Senlendirici, the project injected complex Turkish rhythms and instrumentation into the Essentials’ already expansive sound palette, earning them a US Grammy nomination in the process. The song ‘Istanbul Twilight’ was the theme for Fatih Akin’s hit movie ‘In July’ which also featured another three songs off the album. ‘In The BuzzBag’ currently has over 3 million digital streams.

With their third album, ‘Make Them Like It’ from 2000 on Dorado Records, Brooklyn Funk Essentials were back on their home turf with a funk-disco-jazz sound, delivering classics such as the incongruous x-rated p-funk poetry of ‘I Got Cash’ or the boogie/disco/dub of ‘Date With Baby’. The band toured extensively throughout 2000 and 2001, sharing the stage with giants such as James Brown, Parliament-Funkadelic, The Fugees, The Meters and Erykah Badu including a show at the Festival de Vieille Charrues in France, where Brooklyn Funk Essentials played to an audience of 80,000 people. The ‘Make Them Like It’ album has streamed close to 9 million times.


After a five year hiatus following 9/11 Brooklyn Funk Essentials released their fourth album ‘Watcha Playin’ in 2008. With fan-favorites such as ‘Dance-Free Night’, ‘The Park’ and ‘Need’ the band explored deep grooves and complex vocal arrangements and featured guest appearances by Hüsnü Senlendirici and Tunisian rai-star Amina Annabi. Spotify play over 1,5 million to date.

Twenty years after the US release of their debut album, Brooklyn Funk Essentials dropped ‘Funk Ain’t Ova’ on Dorado Records in 2015 with the singles ‘Dance Or Die’, ‘Blast It!’ and the Crystal Waters co-penned ‘Prepare’ exploding on streaming platforms. Recorded in Brooklyn and featuring appearances by most of the band’s original members, the core of the band was based in Europe at this time. During touring in support of ‘Funk Ain’t Ova’, Brooklyn Funk Essentials were joined by UK soul singer Alison Limerick, for whom the band’s leader Lati Kronlund had written and produced the house anthem ‘Where Love Lives’ in the early 90s. Current Spotify activity clocks in over 8 million streams for the ‘Funk Ain’t Ova’ album.

When the band’s original singer, Papa Dee, left the band in 2016 to pursue a solo career, Limerick stepped up as the new lead singer alongside the band’s long-time singer and guitarist,
Desmond Foster (David Byrne, Boy George). The album ‘Stay Good’ released in September 2019 was the first recording featuring the duet voices of Limerick and Foster. Spearheaded by the singles ‘No Strings’, ‘Ain’t Nothing’, ‘Watcha Want From Me’ (co-written by Frankie Knuckles) and ‘Funk Ain’t Ova’, the album had over a million streaming spins in its first week of release. Michael Rand wrote in Mo Bangles (US): “Brooklyn Funk Essentials are proving once again that it takes freeform inventiveness to turn out life changing music, and they just happen to be the best in the business at it.” ‘Stay Good’ has so far had over 5 million spins on Spotify.

All touring in 2020 was cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic, but the band managed to be back on the road in 2021 for several European dates including a headline spot at Jazz à Vienne and opening for Kool & The Gang at Jazz in Marciac in France. The shows sparkled with the energy of young new band member Ebba Åsman (Nils Landgren) on trombone as well as the return of keyboard player Kristoffer Wallman (Neneh Cherry, Jody Watley) who hadn’t played with the band since the ‘Cool & Steady & Easy’ album from 1994.

After road testing the new songs during touring in 2022 and releasing four of them as singles, the ‘Intuition’ album was released in May 2023. Reviews where overwhelmingly positive. The B-Side Guys (US) wrote: “With their 7th studio album “Intuition,” Brooklyn Funk Essentials (BFE) reaffirm their place as torchbearers of the modern funk movement. This masterfully assembled collection exhibits the band’s knack for intricately designed R&B, discofunk, and poly-riddims, tied together with contagious grooves and pop-inspired hooks.” In its first 6 months since release, ‘Intuition’ had more than 1,5 million streams on Spotify. The band was nominated for Artist Of The Year 2023 by Soul Tracks and the song ‘AA Side Single’ for Best Song Of 2023. It also topped the Spotify playlist Best New Funk of 2023.

2024 marked 30 years since the band’s first shows on the New York club scene as well as the release of Brooklyn Funk Essentials’ debut album ‘Cool & Steady & Easy’. With over 23 million Spotify streams to date, the album is still very much alive and arguably one of the most loved recordings of its kind and era. In celebration of the anniversary, Brooklyn Funk Essentials released a two-track single of new re-recordings of the album classics ‘Blow Your Brains Out’ and ‘Brooklyn Recycles’ on June 28, 2024 followed by new versions of ‘Take The L Train’ on November 20.

Summer touring kicked off in Manchester, UK on June 7 at Band On The Wall followed by a string of dates in the UK, France, Sweden, Spain and Serbia. In addition to the line-up from 2023’s ‘Intuition’ album, the tour also featured Jessica Pina (Madonna) on vocals and trumpet and Loïc Gayot (De La Soul) on saxophone.

In January 2025, Brooklyn Funk Essentials went back in to the studio to write and records their eighth studio album. The first single will drop on Dorado Records around mid-summer with a string of singles to follow before the album release which is anticipated for mid-autumn. Touring will start in June where the band have festival dates lined up in France.