The soul stalwart releases "It Rains Love," along with a self-directed video, proving that after a fifty year career, the sixty-eight-year-old still has a lot more to offer.
Lee Fields is one of the most prolific artists of the soul-funk scene. He has worked with the likes of Kool and the Gang, Betty White, B.B. King, Bobby Womack and many others. But such is his influence that it stretches to modern hip hop artists, too (he has recently been sampled by A$AP Rocky and Travis Scott). Alongside his new producer, Leon Michaels (Adele, Beyoncé, Jay-Z), he has returned for a fifth studio album with The Expressions, who play with a soulful mix of old and new, accompanying Fields’ own style.
The sense of a golden past that lingers in the music is echoed in the artist’s life story. Fields arrived in New York at the age of seventeen, famously with only a few cents in his pocket. Since then it has been quite the ride, having recorded far more than most people know about. One near-constant, however, has been the presence of his wife, whom he has been with for more then forty years.
In similar fashion to a man his voice is often compared to, Charles Bradley, Fields was discovered late in life as a singer with raw vocal power as well as the ability to give off a pained and delicate romance. He does so in “It Rains Love,” a homage to conjugal happiness. The simple music video, which pictures men returning from work to loving relationships, alongside warm bass and bright, familiar horns, extolls the notions of a normal, happy life. As Fields says before the track starts:
“If you don’t even have any money, if you’ve got somebody whose really, really in your corner, who really loves you … basically you’ve got everything.”
The full album It Rains Love will be released on April 5 2019.
Watch here:
