Mark Ronson has dropped the audio for his new single Uptown Funk - featuring Bruno Mars on vocals.

The song is the first track to be revealed from Ronson's next album Uptown Special.

But while the super-producer's new cut might sound like it could have strutted straight out of Harlem in the 1970s - he has explained that he actually took his influence from the late 1990s.

In a statement released along with the track, he waxed lyrical about his days as a club DJ in the Big Apple around the turn of the millennium.

"No matter how my taste in music and DJ-ing veers over the years, I always find myself coming back to that music I would play out in hip-hop clubs in NY in the late '90s/early 2000s," he explained.

"Biggie, Chaka Khan, Amerie, Boz Scaggs, Missy, Earth Wind & Fire, NORE... Those songs would set alight the dance floor.

"The NY club scene was filled with girls, boys, dancers, drug dealers, rappers, models and skateboarders who came mostly for one reason - to dance.

"And regardless of genre or era, if the song was good - if it had dope drums, if it had soul to it - they danced. Before smartphones, bottle service and smoking bans, people came to the club, found their spot and stayed all night, absorbed in the music.

"With Uptown Special I set out to capture the feeling I remember from those New York nights".

The single will be released on 11 January, with the album following on 26 January.