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ChilledSoul 15: Late Night Edition

Fifty-five records for the small hours, built almost entirely from artists who were nobody's household name when this was assembled.

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ChilledSoul 15: Late Night Edition

The late-night set is the oldest format in Black radio and the easiest to do badly. What lifts this volume above the average is that it is almost entirely contemporary and almost entirely un-famous — a set of records made between roughly 2016 and 2019 by artists who were then building audiences without radio support at all.

That gives it a documentary value the big-name quiet-storm collections lack. This is what the format actually sounded like once it moved from radio to streaming, and the production consistency across fifty-five tracks by fifty different artists is remarkable.

What to listen for

MFSB's "Lay In Low" opens the set, which is a deliberate piece of framing — the Philadelphia house band that played on hundreds of records, placed first so that everything after it inherits that lineage.

Snoh Aalegra's "I Want You Around" is the best-known thing here and deservedly so: a Swedish-Iranian singer working with an Al Green-era sense of patience.

The Internet's "Hold On" is the band entry, and it matters because they are a band — Syd, Steve Lacy, Matt Martians and Patrick Paige II all writing and playing, which is rare in this music.

Marsha Ambrosius's "Grand Finale" is the veteran's masterclass, and Sonder's "One Night Only" — Brent Faiyaz with Atu and Dpat — is the trio project most people missed.

Bootsy Collins and Kali Uchis's "Worth My While" is the funniest and strangest inclusion, and it works.

Kenyon Dixon's "Bitter" and JaVonté's "Outta Town" are the deepest cuts, both by singers who have since built proper careers.

Terrace Martin's "You And Me" and Brian Culbertson's "Don't Go" hold the instrumental end, and Sinéad Harnett in the acoustic reading is the most exposed vocal on the list.

Go deeper

Snoh Aalegra's -Ugh, those feels again and The Internet's Hive Mind are the two albums this volume most clearly recommends.

Sonder's Into EP is the one to find if you want the sound at its most concentrated, and Kenyon Dixon has since become one of the best straight-ahead soul singers working.

Why it is worth keeping: almost none of these artists had radio support when this was made, and the production quality across fifty-five tracks is nonetheless completely consistent. That is the real story of what changed in this music — the tools got cheap, the gatekeepers got irrelevant, and the format survived the move from the airwaves to the playlist intact.

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