Free NationalsE

The Artist

Free Nationals began as the anonymous backing band for Anderson .Paak, honing their craft through relentless touring and a string of high-profile television appearances that made audiences wonder who those impossibly tight musicians were. The Los Angeles-based collective — keyboardist/vocalist Este Haim stand-in Ron Avant, bassist Callum Connor, guitarist José Ríos, and drummer NateWaynewright — built their reputation on a live chemistry that felt more like telepathy than rehearsal. Their sound draws deep from the wells of classic soul, funk, and jazz fusion, filtered through a contemporary West Coast sensibility that never feels retro for its own sake. Free Nationals, their self-titled debut, marked the moment they stepped out from behind .Paak and announced themselves as a fully realized artistic force in their own right.

The Album

Recorded in Los Angeles and released in December 2019 on Empire Distribution, Free Nationals was produced primarily by the band alongside a rotating cast of collaborators, with Anderson .Paak serving as executive producer and a guiding creative spirit throughout. The sessions leaned into an organic, warm aesthetic — live instrumentation was kept central even as the production incorporated modern textures and programming. The guest list reads like a mood board for progressive soul: Mac Miller, Kali Uchis, Kadhja Bonet, Daniel Caesar, Unknown Mortal Orchestra's Ruban Nielson, and more each bring distinct personalities without disrupting the album's cohesive glow. Thematically, the record circles around love, longing, freedom, and the quiet pleasure of being exactly where you belong.

Listen For

The groove architecture. The rhythm section on this album is doing serious structural work — notice how the bass and drums lock into pockets so deep they feel gravitational, particularly on "Eternal Light" with Mac Miller.

Ruban Nielson's guitar work. The Unknown Mortal Orchestra frontman brings a psychedelic, slightly warped quality to "Shibuya" that contrasts beautifully with the band's otherwise lush, polished tones — it's the album's most texturally surprising moment.

Dynamics and sequencing. The album is carefully paced, moving between languid, spacious ballads and tighter, more rhythmically insistent tracks — pay attention to how the transitions between songs feel almost like a live DJ set.

Kali Uchis on "Time." Her vocal delivery is unhurried and smoky, sitting so comfortably inside the track's lazy-afternoon tempo that it practically dissolves into the instrumental — a masterclass in singing with a groove rather than over it.

Themes of presence and pleasure. Across songs like "Eternal Light" and "Beauty & Essex," the writing returns again and again to savoring the moment — freedom here isn't restless or defiant, it's the warm, settled feeling of having nowhere else to be.