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The Brand New Heavies: 'Get Used to It'

The British funk and soul group The Brand New Heavies has been flying a little below the U.S. radar since the height of their popularity, when their 1992 hit single "Never Stop" broke into the American R&B charts.

But now, after more than a decade apart, the three original band members -- U.K. natives Jan Kincaid, Simon Bartholomew and Andrew Love Levy -- and powerful vocalist and Atlanta native N'Dea Davenport have reunited for a new CD, Get Used to It.

The group got its start as an instrumental band in the mid-1980s. A few years later, the band found its voice with the addition of Davenport on vocals. The group's third album went platinum in Britain just before Davenport left for a solo career.

Levy says the group's sound is heavily influenced by U.S. funk and soul, and in Europe it evolved into a genre dubbed rare groove.

"It's soul music, but it's funky and it's got a little bit of jazz -- it's uplifting," he says.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Farai Chideya
Farai Chideya is a multimedia journalist who has worked in print, television, online, and radio. Prior to joining NPR's News & Notes, Chideya hosted Your Call, a daily news and cultural call-in show on San Francisco's KALW 91.7 FM. Chideya has also been a correspondent for ABC News, anchored the prime time program Pure Oxygen on the Oxygen women's channel, and contributed commentaries to CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and BET. She got her start as a researcher and reporter at Newsweek magazine. In 1997 Newsweek named her to its "Century Club" of 100 people to watch.
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