If Marcus Miller's bustlingly brilliant previous album Renaissance documented the sheer power and excitement of his road-toughened live band in a relatively stripped back recording, then Afrodeezia, his debut for Blue Note, sees him return to painting on a much larger sonic canvas. Named as an UNESCO Artist for Peace and subsequently appointed as a spokesman for their Slave Routes Project, it's to Miller's considerable credit that he illuminates this dark subject with plenty of musical light and shade – from uplifting grooves to brooding laments – his bass, and bass clarinet, effectively bridging this bittersweet duality. ‘Hylife’ is the joyous opener, Miller's bass shaking its booty out front, leading off in a life-affirming strut, before switching to the direct pentatonic simplicity of a plucked gimbri – a traditional African ancestor to the bass guitar – on the blue, melancholic funk of ‘B's River’. There are guests aplenty befitting of a major label debut, with Robert Glasper dispatching a tasty Rhodes solo on ‘We Were There’ and Snarky Puppy's keyboard prodigy Cory Henry rips out a typically effusive Hammond solo on ‘Preacher's Kid (Song for William H)’ – aptly dedicated to Miller's own church organ-playing father. Label mate trumpet star Ambrose Akinmusire and resurgent Grammy winning diva Lalah Hathaway are in the mix too. The funky standout of the record is Miller's crafty arrangement of ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’ – which once again provides a great example of how the best African American music can combine commercial success, a socially conscious message and an intensely personal narrative. With Afrodeezia Miller does all this and more, albeit in a more lushly composed and meticulously constructed set: the end result is perhaps less viscerally thrilling but its emotional punch still hits you between the eyes.