01 The Story

The People's Choice: "I Likes To Do It" (1971)

The People's Choice emerged from the Philadelphia soul scene in the early 1970s as one of the city's most energetic funk and soul groups, and "I Likes To Do It" was the record that put them on the national map. Released in 1971 on TSOP/Philadelphia International Records, the single entered the Billboard Hot 100 on July 24, 1971, debuting at number 88, and then climbed steadily over the following weeks, reaching its peak position of number 38 on the week of September 11, 1971, spending a total of 10 weeks on the chart. On the R&B chart, where the group's core audience lived, the song performed even more impressively.

The People's Choice were led by Frankie Brunson, a vocalist whose gruff, insistent delivery gave the group a personality that stood apart from the smoother Philadelphia International acts with which they shared a city and sometimes a label. The group had formed in Philadelphia in the late 1960s, drawing on the rich tradition of doo-wop and soul that the city had been generating since the 1950s. Philadelphia in the early 1970s was arguably the most important city in Black popular music, home to the production team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, who were in the process of creating the lush orchestrated soul sound that would come to be known as Philadelphia Soul or "Philly Soul."

"I Likes To Do It" rode the momentum of that Philadelphia moment while maintaining a rawer, more funk-oriented approach than the polished productions that Gamble and Huff were creating for acts like the O'Jays and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. The grammatically unconventional title was deliberate, a stylistic choice that aligned the song with the vernacular directness of funk music and signaled to listeners that this was music of celebration and physicality rather than sophisticated romantic reflection.

The song's production placed a driving rhythm section at the center of the arrangement, with Brunson's vocal performances riding the groove with an ease that suggested absolute confidence. The horn charts, a signature element of the Philadelphia sound, added brassy punctuation without softening the track's basic funk orientation. This combination of polish and rawness was the People's Choice's particular contribution to the Philadelphia sound ecosystem, occupying a space between the slicker work of their Philly peers and the harder funk coming out of James Brown's operation.

The chart run that began on July 24, 1971 and culminated at number 38 was a significant commercial achievement for a group that was still establishing itself nationally. Ten weeks on the Hot 100 demonstrated that "I Likes To Do It" had genuine crossover appeal beyond the R&B audience, which was exactly the kind of traction that could sustain a long-term career. The record was one of several that helped establish the People's Choice as a reliable commercial presence in early 1970s soul and funk.

The group continued recording through the decade, releasing material on TSOP and later on other labels, and they maintained a loyal following in Philadelphia and the broader Northeast even as musical fashions shifted. Their connection to the Philadelphia music ecosystem meant they were always proximate to talent and infrastructure that could support their work, and the city's extraordinary density of musical skill during this period meant they could draw on sidemen, arrangers, and producers of exceptional quality.

"I Likes To Do It" stands today as a document of a moment when Philadelphia was redefining Black popular music, and the People's Choice were one of the city's working bands doing the ground-level work of that redefinition. The record's directness and physicality represent values that were central to the funk tradition, and its chart success demonstrated that those values had commercial resonance far beyond the group's home city. The song has been sampled and referenced by later artists working in hip-hop and contemporary R&B, confirming its status as a genuine building block of the broader funk and soul tradition.

02 Song Meaning

Funk Directness and Communal Joy in "I Likes To Do It"

"I Likes To Do It" belongs to a tradition within funk and soul music of pure, unqualified celebratory declaration. The song is not interested in ambivalence or emotional complexity; it asserts the pleasure of a particular activity (dancing, moving, participating in communal musical experience) with a directness that is itself part of the message. The grammatical unconventionality of "likes" rather than "like" is a deliberate stylistic signal, aligning the song with the vernacular speech patterns of the Black urban community from which the People's Choice emerged.

This kind of intentional vernacular deployment in song titles and lyrics has a long history in African American music. It functions partly as an in-group marker, a signal that this music is made by and for a particular community rather than polished for mainstream palatability, and partly as a form of cultural pride, an assertion that the language and speech patterns of that community are valid and worthy of celebration rather than correction. Frankie Brunson's gruff vocal delivery reinforces this message: here is a singer who is not softening his voice for crossover appeal but presenting himself on his own terms.

The subject matter of the song, the pleasure of physical activity and communal participation in music and dance, connects to one of the deepest currents in African American expressive culture. From the ring shout to the juke joint to the discotheque, Black musical culture has consistently celebrated the integration of body and spirit in collective physical experience. Songs like "I Likes To Do It" participate in that tradition by making the pleasure of movement itself the primary lyrical subject, without apology or irony.

The Philadelphia funk context in which the song was created is significant for understanding its meaning. Philadelphia in the early 1970s was a city with enormous social energy, a large African American population that had developed its own rich cultural institutions over generations, and a music industry infrastructure that was increasingly asserting its own aesthetic priorities against the prevailing trends coming out of Detroit and New York. The directness and physicality of "I Likes To Do It" reflect the particular confidence of a musical community that knew its own value.

At the same time, the song's pop-chart success, reaching number 38 on the Hot 100, demonstrates that its celebration of communal joy was broadly legible beyond any single community or demographic. The pleasure of dancing, of moving with other people to music that commands the body to respond, is a universal human experience, and funk at its best communicates that universality through the very physicality of its rhythm. The People's Choice understood this, and "I Likes To Do It" is one of their clearest demonstrations of the principle that music built for a specific community can, precisely because of that specificity and authenticity, reach everyone.