With insurance money
from a recently overturned
Buick Century, brothers
Andre and Pierre Lewis
went on a recording
tear through the
Twin Cities in 1978,
cutting a half-dozen
songs in as many studios.
Combining the astrosexuality
of Parliament
with the sophisticated
flammability of Earth,
Wind & Fire, the
Lewis Connection’s
misspelled debut captures
the Minneapolis Sound’s
founding fathers—Prince
among them—at the
paradigm-shifting confluence
of funk, jazz, and pop
for which the Land of
10,000 Lakes is famed.