Truth & Soul co-founder J. Dynamite releases single ‘Re-education’
For more than two decades, Jeff Silverman—better known as J. Dynamite—has helped shape the sound of modern soul, funk, and cinematic grooves from behind the scenes. As a co-founder of Truth & Soul Records alongside Leon Michels, a producer on Aloe Blacc’s breakthrough Good Things album, and later a soundtrack producer for Rockstar Games on Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2, Silverman has spent much of his career building worlds for other artists. With “Re-Education”, the first single from his upcoming album The Powers That Be, he finally steps forward with a vision entirely his own.
The track opens in unexpected fashion: thirty seconds of smoky exotica and late-night jazz before snapping into focus with a driving drum break, Latin-inflected rhythms, and soaring flute melodies. Equal parts rare groove, library music, and dance-floor mover, “Re-Education” unfolds like the lost score to a 1960s French crime film set on the Riviera—cinematic, sophisticated, and impossible to sit still through.
If the song feels lived-in, that’s because it is.
The Powers That Be reunites Silverman with many of the musicians who helped define the New York soul revival that emerged from the Desco, Soul Fire, Truth & Soul, and Daptone orbit. “Re-Education” features Grammy-winning bassist Nick Movshon, whose credits include countless Truth & Soul productions, Aloe Blacc’s “I Need A Dollar” and Amy Winehouse’s chart-topping album; Stuart Bogie (Antibalas, TV On The Radio, Arcade Fire, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings) on flute; guitarist Luke O’Malley (Antibalas, The Roots); Miles Francis Artzen (Antibalas, EMEFE) on drums, Philadelphia vibraphonist Angelo Outlaw, Grammy-winning latin percussionist Reinaldo DeJesus, and a cast of longtime collaborators whose collective résumé spans decades of adventurous music-making.
Yet The Powers That Be is anything but a nostalgic exercise. Drawing inspiration from the adventurous spirit of artists like Roy Porter, Donald Byrd, Del Jones, and Marcus Belgrave, Silverman set out to create something that pushed beyond the increasingly familiar tropes of contemporary ‘cinematic soul’. The result is an album built on uptempo breaks, melodic invention, and a sense of movement—music designed as much for dancers as deep listeners.
For longtime followers, the album marks the return of a producer whose influence can be traced through much of the soul and funk renaissance of the last twenty-five years. For everyone else, The Powers That Be serves as an introduction to an artist who has spent decades shaping the conversation and is finally telling his own story.
With “Re-Education”, J. Dynamite isn’t revisiting the past. He’s re-entering the conversation.
“Re-education” out digitally on July 3rd 2026 via Mighty Eye Records
