Eddie Rockerz VibeZ

Thirty-three tracks from the producer who rebuilt rhythm in popular music and made a decade of radio sound like nothing that came before it.   Timbaland Timothy Mosley is the most rhythmically inventive producer popular music has produced in the last thirty years, and the argument is not close. Working out of Virginia Beach with Missy Elliott and Magoo , he arrived in the mid-nineties with a drum programming style that owed almost nothing to what American radio was doing. The specifics: stuttering, syncopated patterns with beats deliberately left empty; percussion sourced from Indian, Middle Eastern and East Asian recordings; enormous amounts of space; and a habit of using his own breathing, grunts and mouth noises as instruments. He then did the whole thing twice — once in the late nineties with Missy, Aaliyah and Ginuwine, and again in the mid-2000s with Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado, when he essentially reorganised global pop. What to listen for Ginuwine'...

Thirty-eight tracks from a singer who has quietly released more consistently good R&B albums than almost anyone of his generation. Joe Joe Thomas has one of the more underrated careers in modern R&B, largely because he has never done anything to draw attention to it. He came from a church background in Georgia, writes and produces much of his own material, and has released album after album of well-made, adult, unfashionable soul music since the early nineties. The voice is a light tenor with real agility, and he is one of the few male singers of his era who never traded technique for style. He also writes well about a specific subject the genre mostly avoids — the mechanics of a relationship that is already established, with its compromises and negotiations intact. He has since become a substantially independent artist, which suits the catalogue. What to listen for "I Wanna Know" is the biggest record and remains one of the most-played R&B ba...

Twenty tracks from a singer whose records are almost defiantly grown-up — and who has spent thirty years refusing to chase a trend.   Kenny Lattimore Kenny Lattimore arrived in 1996 with a self-titled album and a single, "For You" , that became a wedding standard and has stayed one. He came from Washington DC, trained in church and in a group before going solo, and he has one of the cleanest technical instruments in contemporary soul — a light tenor with an unusually pure tone and no affectation at all. What has defined the career is the refusal to adapt. While his contemporaries moved toward hip-hop production, Lattimore kept making records built on live instruments, actual chord changes and adult subject matter. A substantial part of the catalogue is duets with Chanté Moore , to whom he was married, and those records are among the best of their kind. What to listen for "For You" is the one everyone knows and one of the most-perfo...

Meshell Ndegeocello     is the funkiest bassist on the planet, hands-down! From the moment I heard “Diggin’ You Like An Old Soul Record”, I was hooked! Meshell offers lyrical ruminations on race, love, sex, betrayal, God, and power, and she has simultaneously embraced and challenged listeners with her refusal to be pigeon-holed musically or personally.  Celebrated and castigated for her politically & sexually charged lyrics & for embarking on a road less traveled – she breaks the mold of industry standards and stuffy expectations & serves up the funk right in your face! Gotta love it!

This is my favorite TP album. Oh, he had plenty of hits with Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes and many more in his solo career, but this debut album raised the bar, in my opinion. People started taking notice of this brother who made the ladies lose their minds! When he followed u p with “ Life is a Song Worth Singing ” and “ Teddy “, it was over – TP was the King of R&B & the world was at his feet. As a youth,  I remember reading a New York Times piece on how women would fling their lingerie on stage at his concerts &  that kinda made me want to be a singer too….Of course, things didn’t work out the way I planned…

Thirty tracks from a baritone who sang blues, jazz, gospel and Philadelphia soul, and whose speaking voice was almost as famous as his singing. Lou Rawls (1933–2006) Lou Rawls came out of Chicago's church scene — he sang in a gospel group with Sam Cooke as a teenager — and built a career that refused to stay in any one genre. He recorded jazz standards, blues, soul, a Philadelphia International run, and a great deal of live material in which he would talk for minutes before singing a note. That speaking was a real part of the act and a real skill. The monologues — setting up a song's story, usually about Chicago, usually funny — are a direct inheritance from the blues tradition, and almost nobody else was doing them in a nightclub in 1966. He also spent decades raising money for the United Negro College Fund through an annual telethon, which is its own kind of legacy. What to listen for "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" ...

Sixteen tracks from the most physically beautiful body of recorded sound in American popular music. The essence of soul….. Al Green The records Al Green made in Memphis between 1971 and 1974 with the producer Willie Mitchell are, by a fairly broad consensus, among the most perfectly made in soul music. What makes them extraordinary is as much about the room as the singer. Mitchell recorded at Royal Studios with the Hi Rhythm Section — the Hodges brothers and drummer Al Jackson Jr. — and he deliberately kept everything soft: the drums damped with cloth, the horns low in the mix, the bass round rather than punchy. Into that space Green sings in a voice that does more or less anything, moving from a conversational tenor to a falsetto sigh within a phrase. He became an ordained minister in 1976 and turned to gospel for most of the following two decades, which makes the secular catalogue a finite and precious thing. What to listen for "Let's Stay ...

I felt t his woman’s soul the moment I heard her debut Black Diamond back in 1999. Like Eryka Badu, Lauren Hill & Jill Scott, Angie Stone bears the blessings of a deep-river soul which shines through her mature lyricism & smoldering vocals – a true archetype of a soul star.  Stone was once asked what makes a real soul singer & she responded, “ It’s not how well you sing, but what you sing about that counts, and if what you sing about relates to what you live out, if it’s real to you … “ Then you feel it .  Sadly, many of our top-performing artists today are deaf to this golden rule. 

Drift up, lovely smoke, drift up Her voice was like smoke that rose in tune to the soul-shaft rumblings of a coal-consuming furnace. Drift up, lovely smoke, drift up Her eyes were like smoke that revealed and concealed a flame too wise for believing in love that is stronger than death. Drift up, lovely smoke, drift up Her arms were trellises entwined by smoky vines clinging to the rise and fall of each despairing note. Drift up, lovely smoke, drift up   ~ David A.Welch   Amy’s tormented genius crafted lyrics that opened our souls to her anguish,vulnerability & unadorned honesty. Her art was her pain and you can’t help but be drawn into her audible sound painting. I recently opined to a friend that it seems odd that so many highly gifted people burned out so early. Carl Jung once stated, “Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang on the most slender twigs that are ...

The Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo) were amongst the most successful pop/hip hop producers of the early ’00s. They pretty much had a firm grip on the music charts in 2002 and 2003 with a run of hits that left their competition in the dust. Add to that Pharrell’s status as one of hip-hop’s most in-demand hook men. Simply put, this brother was delivering hits like time was running out. With two Grammys for Producer of the Year (one in 1999 and the other in 2014), it looks like he’s in the midst of another blazing run with “Blurred Lines” & “Get Lucky” leading the way. I included a few songs from his latest CD, GIRL, to add to my personal all-time greatest cuts that he produced. Like Prince who can pretty much do damn near everything –  produce, sing/rap, write, play multiple instruments – this brother is fixin’ to become one of the best producers of all time.

Twenty-one tracks from a Chicago singer with a church-trained voice who has spent his career as the R&B world's most reliable guest. Check out his Wikipedia bio here … BJ The Chicago Kid Bryan Sledge grew up singing in his parents' church on Chicago's South Side, and everything about how he sings comes from there: the runs, the way he sits on top of a beat, and a particular quality of strain at the top of his range that gospel singers use and R&B singers usually smooth away. His own catalogue is excellent and modest in size. His guest appearances are where he has had the largest influence — on records by Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, Anderson .Paak, Chance the Rapper and Kanye West, where his voice is used to supply the human element in an otherwise hard arrangement. He signed to Motown , which is fitting: he is one of very few modern singers who would have made sense on that label in 1972. What to listen for "Church" aside, "Good...

 In 1994. a number of outstanding Hip Hop albums were burning up the charts worldwide– Nas’ “Illmatic”, Notorious B.I.G’s “Ready to Die”, Common’s “Resurrection” & Warren G’s “Regulate…G Funk Era” to name a few.  When Outkast first hit the scene at that time with their seminal classic Southernplayalistcadillacmuzik , you sensed right away that these brothers were about to join the aforementioned artists & expand the genre in a big yet different way. They were fast & furious out the blocks & it didn’t hurt to have the hottest production team on board, Organized Noize , to orchestrate their debut. Five additional  hit albums to the present moment, this innovative pair have set themselves apart from the pack with their groundbreaking work. Who else can give you Dirty South, G-Funk, soul, pop, electronica, rock, spoken word poetry, jazz, blues & funk o...

Nineteen tracks from an artist who spent his early career writing hits for other people under a different name, then rewrote what an R&B album could be. Not included are these gems: Frank Ocean Before he was Frank Ocean , Christopher Breaux worked in Los Angeles as a jobbing songwriter under the name Lonny Breaux , placing material with Justin Bieber, Brandy and John Legend. The demos from that period circulated for years as the Lonny Breaux Collection , which is where the alternate name in this playlist's title comes from. What followed changed the genre. nostalgia, ULTRA (2011) was released free after a label impasse; channel ORANGE (2012) arrived with an open letter about falling in love with a man, published days before release, at a moment when that was close to unheard of in R&B or hip-hop. His records are structurally unusual: songs that do not repeat, narrators who change mid-verse, and an almost total absence of conventional choruse...

Seventy-seven tracks from Queensbridge — a catalogue survey that deliberately skips the obvious singles in favour of the album cuts. One of the greatest….. Nas Nasir Jones released Illmatic in 1994 at twenty, and it is still routinely named the best rap album ever made. That has been a mixed blessing: every subsequent record has been measured against a debut made before he had any professional experience at all. This playlist takes the sensible approach of mostly ignoring the famous material and building from the deep catalogue, which is where the case for him as a writer is actually strongest. He is a novelist's rapper — his best verses are constructed as scenes, with characters, dialogue and an ending. His father is the jazz cornettist Olu Dara , who plays on Illmatic , which is a neat piece of lineage. What to listen for "One Mic" is the technical showpiece — a song that starts almost whispered and builds to a shout three times...

This classic recording sounds better than 99% of the “music” polluting the airwaves today. I recently read this critique on a feminist blog comparing & contrasting the risw of Beyonce & the fall of Lauryn Hill which is quite interesting. Check it out.

Fourteen tracks from a singer with a four-octave range who came up singing behind Stevie Wonder and then made one of the most weightless records in soul. Deniece Williams Deniece Williams spent her apprenticeship in Wonderlove , Stevie Wonder's backing group, which is where she learned to sing in the extreme upper part of a range most people cannot reach at all. She then went to Chicago and made her debut with Charles Stepney and Maurice White producing, which is about as good a start as anyone has had. Her signature is that impossibly high, light tone — and, crucially, her refusal to use it for display. She sings up there conversationally, which is technically extraordinary and emotionally disarming. The career then split in two: a run of pop hits including one of the biggest American singles of the eighties, and a substantial second life as a gospel artist that has won her multiple Grammys. What to listen for "Free" is the essential track and one of...

  The whole idea of Roots Reggae music was to put a ‘riddim’ to a poor man’s cry while remaining true to the music and the oral story-telling tradition which brought the music to prominence…Our maxim: Quality not quantity & real instruments played by real musicians fueled by impulse, inspiration and the absolute need to express oneself.. – Taj Weekes (Musician/Songwriter , Poet , Humanitarian )