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Hear Menahan Street Band’s Funk-Soul Blitz ‘Lights Out’

Menahan Street Band Lights Out The Crossing

If the eerily cinematic and surging sound of Brooklyn funk-soul ensemble Menahan Street Band seems like something that’d be sampled by some hip-hop mega-producer, well, there’s a reason for that. The group’s vintage-flavored horn-blazer “Make the Road By Walking” was borrowed by Diddy for Jay-Z’s 2007 standout “Roc Boys (And the Winner Is),” and their new single “Lights Out” is postively ripe for the picking. The song will be released as a 45 single (out today) and as part of the band’s sophomore effort The Crossing, due October 30 via Daptone. The throwback label’s colorful description credits the song with “conjur[ing] images of hard-fighting pugilists battling it out under a bare bulb,” and we’d be wrong to begrudge them that. Those horns pack a serious punch.