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Chilled Soul Vol 14: Underground Fire

Thirty-eight tracks of new soul from the years when the genre's centre of gravity moved decisively away from radio.

Chilled Soul Vol. 14: Underground Fire II

Assembled around 2019, this is a set that reads better now than it did then, because a striking number of these artists went on to become significant. That is the mark of a curator listening ahead rather than behind.

The organising taste is clear: warm production, live-sounding rhythm sections, jazz-derived harmony, and singers who prefer nuance to volume. What it avoids entirely is the trap-adjacent R&B that dominated the charts in the same period.

What to listen for

Lucky Daye appears three times, which is the strongest signal here. "Roll Some Mo" and "Little More Time" with Victoria Monét both came from Painted, the debut that turned him into a Grammy-winning artist.

Ari Lennox and J. Cole's "Shea Butter Baby" is the title track of the album that established her, and it is one of the best-constructed R&B singles of its decade.

Frank Ocean's "Ivy" is the only unambiguously famous record on the list, and its placement in the middle rather than at the front is a curator's choice.

Jordan Rakei's "Midnight Mischief" in the Tom Misch remix is the London connection, and the two names between them account for a great deal of what British soul sounded like in these years.

Black Thought's "Conception" with Salaam Remi is the hip-hop entry and the most lyrically dense thing here.

Leven Kali also appears three times, and "Smile" is the pick.

Jorja Smith's "The One", Kehlani's "Honey" and TOBi's "City Blues" are the other names worth following, and Jennah Bell's "The End" is the deepest cut on the set.

Go deeper

Lucky Daye's Painted (2019) and Ari Lennox's Shea Butter Baby (2019) are the two albums to own from this moment.

Jordan Rakei's Origin and Jorja Smith's Lost & Found are the British equivalents, and TOBi's STILL is the Canadian one.

Why it reads well now: a set like this is really a set of predictions, and the scoreboard is unusually kind here. Several of these artists went on to Grammys and arena tours within three years, which means the curation was hearing something the radio formats of the day were not built to notice. The test of a playlist is whether it still makes sense after the artists become famous, and this one does.

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