Eddie Rockerz VibeZ

Sixty tracks and the volume that started the series — and the one most interested in women's voices from across the continent. African ChillZone Vol. 1 The first volume sets the template for everything that follows, and it does so with an unusually literary opening. Where a set like this could easily have led with a hit, it begins with a kora player and then a Sade collaboration, which tells you immediately that the brief is depth rather than energy. It is also the most female-led volume in the series, and that is clearly deliberate. Roughly two-thirds of these tracks are fronted by women, drawn from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Zambia, France and the United States. What to listen for Sona Jobarteh's "Reflections" opens the set, and she is a genuinely significant figure: the first woman from a major West African griot family to become a professional kora player, in a tradition that had been passed exclusively from father to son for s...

Thirteen tracks from the album that made a Washington DC singer the most quoted R&B voice of 2019 — and did it mostly by being funny. Ari Lennox: Shea Butter Baby (2019) Ari Lennox was the first woman signed to Dreamville , J. Cole's label, and Shea Butter Baby is the record that justified the signing several times over. It is a debut that sounds like a third album: confident, specific, structurally sound, and written in a voice that is recognisably one person's rather than a genre's. The thing that separates it from its contemporaries is tone. Most R&B debuts of that period aimed for either seduction or heartbreak. Lennox writes about rent, roommates, being broke, wanting to be left alone, and enjoying herself — and she is genuinely funny, which almost nobody in the genre risks. The voice does the rest. It is a rich, slightly husky instrument with an old-fashioned quality that makes even her most contemporary production sound like it belongs to t...

Eight tracks from a Southern California singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist who has quietly been a favourite of other musicians for years. Leven Kali Leven Kali occupies a specific and useful position in contemporary R&B: he is the artist other artists cite, without ever having had the record that would make him a household name. He writes, sings, produces and plays, which is why his tracks have a coherence that session-built records lack. The sound is Californian in the most literal sense — warm, unhurried, built on live bass and electric piano, with a lightness that is much harder to achieve than melancholy. Where most of his contemporaries were making records about damage, Kali has mostly made records about pleasure, and he does it without ever sounding trivial. He also turns up repeatedly on other people's playlists, which is the honest measure of a musician in this era. What to listen for "Do U Wrong" with Syd is the essential track an...

Twenty-seven tracks from an album about fire — twenty-seven short pieces that behave more like a suite than a collection of songs. Flying Lotus: Flamagra (2019) Steven Ellison works in a tradition he was partly born into: his great-aunt was Alice Coltrane , and the spiritual-jazz restlessness of that lineage runs through everything he makes. As Flying Lotus he became the central figure of the Los Angeles beat scene, and the founder of a sensibility that treats hip-hop production as composition rather than as backing. Flamagra is his most ambitious record. Built around the loose image of an eternal flame, it runs twenty-seven tracks in just over an hour, which means most pieces last two minutes or less and function as movements rather than songs. The guest list is enormous and none of the guests is allowed to take over. What to listen for "Fire Is Coming" with David Lynch is the most talked-about thing here, and rightly: Lynch narrates a short, deeply uns...

Thirty-three tracks from a Brooklyn rapper who has built an entire career without a label, and whose records are almost defiantly gentle. Kota the Friend Kota the Friend is one of the more instructive success stories of the streaming era: an independent artist from Brooklyn who has never signed a major deal, produces most of his own music, runs his own imprint, and has built a substantial audience entirely on word of mouth. The music is a deliberate refusal of the genre's defaults. His records are quiet, warm, jazz-sampled and conversational; he raps about his son, his mother, his uncle, therapy, travel and gratitude. There is almost no aggression in the catalogue at all, which in hip-hop is a genuinely unusual position to sustain across several albums. The interludes are the structural signature. His albums are punctuated by short spoken pieces from family members, which turns a collection of songs into something closer to a home recording. What to listen for ...