I was already sold on “funky, soulful and gospel-inspired” music, but this project is even more than that. Kinshift is the house band of KinShift Music Studio out of St. Louis, led by musician and pastor Monty Jackson, and built as a multi-ethnic, intergenerational group with a mission that goes well beyond just making records: promoting equity, unity, and compassion through music, under a genre they’ve coined “Ambipop,” meant to blend sacred and secular themes without drawing a hard line between them. “Mercy Mercy,” out June 5th, features two of the group’s lead vocalists and pushes that mission into a specific, timely message: moving from certainty toward humility, and from judgment toward actually seeing and understanding someone else.
Musically, this is exactly what you would expect. It’s an incredibly groovy song with an impeccable rhythm section and such great human chemistry among all the musicians, which is at the heart of the project both musically and thematically. That chemistry isn’t incidental to the message; a song about finding connection and mercy across division works a lot better coming from a group whose whole identity is built around musicians of different backgrounds and generations actually playing in the same pocket together. The groove itself becomes an illustration of the point the lyrics are making.
Pulling from neo-soul storytelling, classic gospel, and a Motown-pop crossover energy, “Mercy Mercy” sits comfortably next to acts like Silk Sonic and Sammy Rae & The Friends without losing the more explicitly spiritual undertone that separates Kinshift’s mission from a straightforward funk revival act. The song doesn’t preach so much as it demonstrates, letting a tight, joyful arrangement carry a message about unity that would risk sounding hollow if the band itself weren’t visibly living it out in how the track was made.
“Mercy Mercy” works both as a genuinely fun, danceable soul cut and as a clear statement of what Kinshift is actually trying to build. For a project this explicit about its values, that’s the hardest trick to pull off, and the chemistry in the room is what makes it land.