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Chilled Soul Vol. 5

Thirty-three tracks from 2017 and the volume with the highest strike rate of picking artists a year before everyone else did.

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ChilledSoul 5

Judged as a set of predictions, this is the most successful volume in the series. Several of the artists here were entirely unknown when it was assembled and are now significant, and at least two of these tracks became genuinely canonical records of their decade.

The taste is consistent: warm, live-sounding production, singers who favour restraint, and a strong British and Nigerian presence alongside the American material.

What to listen for

Daniel Caesar and Kali Uchis's "Get You" is the most important record here. Released independently by a Toronto artist with no label, it became one of the defining slow jams of the era and earned a Grammy nomination, which for a self-released record was close to unheard of.

Childish Gambino's "Redbone" is the other canonical entry — a record built on Bootsy Collins-era funk, pitched up, and it won a Grammy.

Jorja Smith's "Blue Lights" is early enough to be a genuine find. She was nineteen, unsigned, and the song — built on a Dizzee Rascal sample and about police fear — is still the best thing she has written.

Ari Lennox's "Bound" predates her breakthrough album by two years.

Bruno Major's "Easily" is the British songwriter's entry and one of the most harmonically sophisticated things on the list.

FKJ's "Blessed" is the French multi-instrumentalist, and McClenney appears twice as the deep-catalogue pick.

THE-DREAM's "Ferris Wheel" is the veteran entry — a songwriter responsible for a startling share of the previous decade's hits, working in his own name.

Rapsody's "Good Good Love" with BJ The Chicago Kid and Don-E's "Hott Honey" are the two that connect to other playlists on this blog.

Go deeper

Daniel Caesar's Freudian and Jorja Smith's Lost & Found are the two albums to hear whole.

Bruno Major's A Song for Every Moon — twelve songs released one a month for a year — is the most quietly impressive project to come out of this set.

Why the strike rate matters: a playlist assembled from unknowns is a set of bets, and this volume's bets came in. Two of these records became canonical within eighteen months and several of the artists went from unsigned to Grammy-nominated. That is not luck across thirty-three tracks — it is an ear working ahead of the market.

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