GRAMMY Nod: Gregory Porter
GRAMMY Nomination: Best R&B Album "ALL RISE"
Undeniably one of the best voices of our generation, two-time GRAMMY Award winning singing sensation Gregory Porter has announced his sixth studio album ALL RISE (Blue Note).
Following 2017's Nat King Cole & Me, a loving dedication to his lifelong idol, ALL RISE marks a return to Porter's beloved original songwriting — heart-on-sleeve lyrics imbued with everyday philosophy and real-life detail, set to a stirring mix of jazz, soul, blues, gospel, and pop. The album also represents the evolution of Porter's art to something even more emphatic, emotive, intimate, and universal too.
As Porter worked out this album's direction, he looked inward, upward, and around him, and arrived at a raison d'être found in the title, ALL RISE. “We hear that phrase when presidents or judges come into the room,” says Porter, “but I'm thinking all of us rise — not just one person being exalted. We are all exalted and lifted up by love. This is my political thought and my real truth. It comes from my personality, my mother's personality, the personality of the blues, and of black people. It's this idea of making do with the scraps, of resurrection and ascension, and of whatever the current situation is, it can get better through love.”
And that's the thing about love that ALL RISE keeps circling. Even when it's painful, confusing, out of reach, or under attack, love is ultimately curative. Drop the needle on “Revival” and just try to pretend you aren't lifted by the spirit no matter your personal faith or affiliation. Once again, Porter cuts through the noise of genres and the mess of life to reach us all where we live: the heart.
"The next great male jazz singer" -NPR Music