Do It Any Way You Wanna
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Album Summary
Do It Any Way You Wanna was laid down and released in 1975 on Philadelphia International Records — that hallowed house that Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff built into the most soulful address in the music business. Gamble and Huff themselves sat in the producer's chair, right at the peak of their powers, coaxing something raw and righteous out of People's Choice that felt like the streets of Philly talking back to the world. This was a group that had been putting in work, and this album was the moment everything clicked — the sophistication of the Philadelphia sound wrapped tight around a funk groove that wouldn't let you go.
Reception
- The album made serious noise on the Billboard R&B charts, planting People's Choice firmly in the upper echelon of funk and soul acts working during the mid-1970s golden era.
- The lead single 'Do It Any Way You Wanna' hit radio like a freight train, earning widespread airplay and locking itself in as one of the defining recordings in the group's catalog.
- The album's irresistible combination of groove-deep production and dancefloor instinct connected with listeners coast to coast, representing the commercial high-water mark of People's Choice's career.
Significance
- Do It Any Way You Wanna stands as a crown jewel of the mid-1970s Philadelphia funk-soul fusion movement, where Gamble and Huff's polished orchestration met the uncut funk energy that was bubbling up from the ground floor.
- The album sits right at the crossroads of soul, funk, and the emerging disco wave — a living document of a moment when those sounds were all pulling from the same deep well and hadn't yet gone their separate ways.
- People's Choice announced themselves here as true standard-bearers of the Philadelphia International sound, their tight vocal arrangements and locked-in musicianship representing everything the label stood for during its most commercially powerful years.
Samples
- "Do It Any Way You Wanna" — one of the most heavily sampled funk tracks of its era, its irresistible break became a cornerstone sample source for hip-hop and rap producers throughout the 1980s and well into the decades that followed.
Tracklist
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A Do It Any Way You Wanna 111
3:15
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B The Big Hurt —
3:25
Artist Details
People's Choice was a Philadelphia soul and funk outfit that came together in the early 1970s, blending gritty street-level funk with smooth Philly soul in a way that made jukeboxes shake and dance floors erupt from Broad Street to the Bronx. Their 1975 smash "Do It Any Way You Wanna" was an undeniable groove that hit the top of the R&B charts and crossed over to pop audiences, cementing their place in the golden age of Philly funk alongside giants like MFSB and the O'Jays. As architects of that hard-driving, bass-heavy East Coast funk sound, People's Choice helped lay the very foundation that would eventually feed into the disco era and beyond, making them unsung heroes of one of the most fertile periods in Black American music.
