“The way What’s Going On tugs at the hems of gospel while not losing any of its grief, its rage, its longing – the album feels to me now like it did when I first heard it. Like a small corner of a city. A corner that might feel like a corner I have known and loved. With towering churches, and concerned grandparents, and children playing with a balance of worry and carefree exuberance. Conversations held in the heat of a night around a card table after those kids go to bed. Where the talk gets a little realer, the songs get a little heavier. The album’s concept – a soldier, based on Marvin’s brother Frankie to be exact, returning home from war and sinking into a country’s many oppressions – makes for a tightly woven sequence, but the album’s atmosphere and geography has always far outpaced its concepts. It is an album that I knew I understood even before I understood what its central concerns were. I understood it by the way older people I love hummed along to it, or turned it up, or shook their heads solemnly when certain lines hung in the air.” - Award-winning poet/author and Columbus native Hanif Abdurraqib
New, sealed.
Tracklist:
- Disc 1 -
1. What's Going on
2. What's Happening Brother
3. Flyin' High (In the Friendly Sky)
4. Save the Children
5. God Is Love
6. Mercy Mercy Me
- Disc 2 -
1. Right on
2. Wholy Holy
3. Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
- Disc 3 -
1. What's Going on Stripped Version
2. What's Going on Mix 1/No Strings or Horns
3. What's Going on Rhythm & Strings Instrumental Mix
4. Symphony Demo Version
- Disc 4 -
1. What's Going on
2. God Is Love
3. Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
4. Sad Tomorrows
5. Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
6. Wholy Holy