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Sweet Soul Chillout

Sixty-five records that between them define what most people mean when they say the word soul — and a useful reminder of how high the ceiling is.

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Sweet Soul Chillout

This is the canon set, and its value is exactly that. Where most of the playlists on this blog exist to argue for records nobody plays, this one is the baseline: sixty-five tracks that a serious listener should be able to recognise within two bars, assembled without any attempt at obscurity.

It functions best as a standard against which the other collections can be measured. Almost everything ambitious in contemporary soul is in conversation with something on this list.

What to listen for

Maxwell's "Ascension" opens the set, which places the whole thing: 1996, the moment when a generation of singers decided to rebuild the seventies from the inside.

The Isley Brothers appear twice, and "Footsteps In the Dark" is arguably the most consequential four minutes here — the source of Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day" and of a good deal else.

Al Green appears three times, and the Willie Mitchell productions behind those records are the template for almost everything soft and warm in this music.

Keni Burke's "Risin' to the Top" and William DeVaughn's "Be Thankful for What You Got" are the two most sampled grooves on the list.

Janet Jackson's "Got 'Til It's Gone" with Joni Mitchell and Q-Tip is the most interesting single record here — a Jam and Lewis production built on a Joni Mitchell song, which nobody expected to work.

Sade appears three times, and "No Ordinary Love" is the one that shows how much of her power comes from what the band leaves out.

Donny Hathaway's "Love, Love, Love" and Roberta Flack's "Feel Like Makin' Love" are the early-seventies peak, and Michael McDonald's "I Keep Forgettin'" is the one that proves the format was never a matter of race or genre.

Snoh Aalegra's "Find Someone Like You" is the only genuinely contemporary record on the list, and its placement among this company is the compliment.

Go deeper

Al Green's Call Me, Donny Hathaway's Extension of a Man, Sade's Diamond Life and Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite are the four albums that contain most of this playlist's DNA.

Then go back to the other volumes on this blog. Almost every artist in them is answering something on this list.

How to use it: treat this one as the baseline rather than the discovery. Nearly everything ambitious in the other collections on this blog is in conversation with something on this list, and playing it alongside them turns a set of playlists into a genealogy — which is the most useful thing a canon set can do.

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