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Chilled Soul Vol. 8

Fifty-two tracks that move between Lagos, London, Kingston, Tokyo and Los Angeles without ever flagging the border crossings.

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Chilled Soul Vol. 8

This is the most restless volume in the series and the one least concerned with being soul music. Electronic producers, Japanese beatmakers, Nigerian singers, South African rappers and American pop all appear, and the connective tissue is texture rather than genre.

It is also the volume most rooted in a specific year. Almost everything here is from 2017, and hearing it now is a good reminder of how quickly the boundaries between these scenes were dissolving.

What to listen for

Uyama Hiroto's "Spektrum" with fat jon is the deepest cut here by some distance — Japanese instrumental hip-hop from the circle around Nujabes, and one of the most beautiful things on the list.

9th Wonder's "TheAnimalSoul!!!!!" is the American equivalent, and placing the two next to each other is a real piece of curation.

Corinne Bailey Rae's "Green Aphrodisiac" is the best-written song on the list and comes from The Heart Speaks in Whispers, an album almost nobody heard.

Cleo Sol's "Why Don't You" is here again and worth flagging again: this is years before Sault, and she already sounds fully formed.

Runtown's "Mad over You" is the biggest afrobeats record of that year, and Odunsi's "Desire" with Tay Iwar and Funbi is the alté answer to it.

Cassper Nyovest's "Destiny" with Goapele is the South Africa-to-California collaboration, and Ammoye's "The Light" is the reggae entry.

Logic's "1-800-273-8255" with Alessia Cara and Khalid is the most famous record here — a song named after a crisis line, which is a genuinely unusual thing for a hit single to be.

The Blaze's "Territory" and Ibeyi's "I Wanna Be Like You" are the French selections, and both are excellent.

Go deeper

Nujabes' Metaphorical Music is the entry point for the Japanese instrumental tradition Uyama Hiroto comes from, and it is one of the most quietly influential records of the 2000s.

Corinne Bailey Rae's The Sea and Ibeyi's self-titled debut are the two albums to hear next.

Why the crossings work: the set never announces a change of continent, and that restraint is the argument. By 2017 a Japanese beatmaker, a Nigerian singer and an American rapper were drawing on overlapping reference points and mastering to the same loudness, so the only thing a border would have marked was the listener's own expectation.

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