Billy Porter is strutting off in an entirely new sonic direction on his fifth album. The Broadway, runway and TV star has pivoted to dance music.
“I’m a new artist. There’s a transformation that has happened,” the Tony-, Emmy- and Grammy-winner tells The Associated Press. “I’ve been offered a real second chance.”
“Black Mona Lisa” sees Porter embrace club, house and old-school disco over 12 tracks, creating a warm, welcoming space that showcases his voice and redemption story.
“It’s been fun. It’s been a healing. It’s been beyond anything that I could have dreamed,” he says. “I’m trying to bring some positivity into the world. I’m trying to heal people.”
The songs veer from the dance anthem “Broke a Sweat,” to the soulful “Stranger Things,” the four-on-the-floor of “Baby Was a Dancer” to the pop of “New Shoes.”
“I had a lot of different genres in this album and we manage to stay coherent because the cohesive energy comes from me,” he says. “It’s taken me 30 years to figure out how to do that.”
There’s a playful strut to the lyrics, with a confidence Porter says he feels now. On the song “Funk Is on the One,” he sings: “They give me Emmy from the TV like a showgirl/Gotta Grammy so big I gotta park it on the curb/Rubbing elbows with the superstars like Big Bird.”
“It’s the first time that I am singing music that feels a little bit like a flex, a little bit like a brag,” Porter says. “I would never, ever in my life have sung anything like that before now. I embrace it, but sometimes I go, ‘OK, calm down, girl. Calm down.’”
The bright album stands in stark relief to his 1997 debut, his self-titled R&B collection, which largely languished despite his Tony-winning voice (“Kinky Boots”), Emmy-winning pathos (“Pose”) and Met Gala attitude.
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