Jon Batiste goes galaxy-building with ambitious new album ‘World Music Radio’

By MARK KENNEDY
AP Entertainment Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — How do you top a five-time Grammy Award-winning album that had critics applauding its rich blend of R&B, hip-hop, swing, jazz and pop? If you’re Jon Batiste, you go even higher and wider. The singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist returns this month two years after his triumphant album “We Are” with the complex “World Music Radio,” a collection he calls an “expansive, genre-less, popular music concept record.” “World Music Radio” is conceived like a timeless radio broadcast from a sort of interstellar DJ, gradually taking the listener from a hip-hop, pop and dance party to soul, Latin ballad, folk and gospel. It’s like moving from a rave to church.