Modern, infectious soul grooves fringed with Latin and jazz, buoyed by fiery dashes of rock and funk; when musicians create, as well as sustain that level of quality for nearly two decades, they are more than an average group or band...they become, in fact, Mint Condition.

After five successful studio albums, over a dozen hit singles, multiple world tours and collaborations with some of the biggest stars in the genre (Alicia Keys, Jill Scott, Janet Jackson, Charlie Wilson of the Gap Band and Maurice White of Earth, Wind &Fire, to name a few), Mint Condition is a rarity in today's R&B, their generation's lone example of 'old school' bands that now serve as templates for many of their peers. And it's their classic, yet contemporary approach, combined with Stokley's agile and emotive tenor, which fuels their sixth studio CD and the second release from their independent label (Cagedbird Entertainment), eLife. The recurring theme: filtering the challenges of family and relationships through the murky cosmos of the internet. According to their bass guitarist, Rick Kinchen, those are issues that nearly everyone's encountered before. "People text-message, use MySpace and e-mail, so it's about having relationships in the context of our world today. Everybody's said 'in a minute' to their kid, stayed on the computer and watched it turn into three and four hours later. "