Eddie Rockerz VibeZ

Every era has an abundance of classic recordings making it hard for me to say which era was the “best”. I think some genres did better in particular eras like Reggae which was truly ground-breaking in the 70s. Pop was at its best in the 80s & Neosoul held the 90s down indubitably. The 2000s has its memorable moments that many future music historians as genre-breaking in its own right. I love it all!! I’ve gathered here my R&B faves of the 2000s broken down by year. I threw in some Pop/Rock classics that are downright soulful……. 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Forty-four tracks and a title that tells you the brief: this is the volume that moves. Deep house from Johannesburg, afrobeats from Lagos, and the beginnings of amapiano. African ChillZone III — Move!!! The third volume is the most South African of the series, and that focus is what makes it valuable as a document. Assembled around 2020, it catches the exact moment when amapiano stopped being a Pretoria township sound and started travelling — and it puts that transition alongside the deep house and Afro-house scene that preceded it. If you want to understand how South African dance music got to where it is, this is a better education than any single album. What to listen for Master KG's "Jerusalema" in the Burna Boy remix opens, and its global success in 2020 remains one of the strangest chart stories of the decade — a gospel-inflected house record in Zulu, spread by a dance video from Angola. Sha Sha's "Tender Love" with DJ Maphor...

Nineteen tracks from the South African DJ who took deep house out of Durban and made it a global language. Black Coffee Nkosinathi Maphumulo is the most internationally significant South African musician of his generation, and the story of how he got there includes a detail most profiles mention and few explore: in 1990, as a teenager celebrating Nelson Mandela's release from prison, he was among a crowd struck by a car. The injury left his left arm permanently impaired, which is why he DJs almost entirely with one hand. His music is unmistakable. Where European deep house tends towards minimalism, Black Coffee builds records with real melodic and percussive density — layered African percussion, prominent vocals in Zulu and English, chords that resolve like gospel — and mixes them with a depth of low end that makes them work on the largest systems in the world. He won a Grammy for Subconsciously , which confirmed formally what the residencies in Ibiza had alrea...

Twenty-six tracks from the two producers who invented a genre, most of them recorded in a burst of activity that changed South African music entirely. Kabza De Small, DJ Maphorisa & Friends Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa — working together as the Scorpion Kings — are the central figures in amapiano , the South African genre that emerged from the townships around Pretoria in the mid-2010s and became the dominant dance music of the continent. The sound is specific and easy to identify once you know it: a slow tempo, usually between 110 and 115 beats per minute; deep, resonant bass often produced by the log drum, a percussive bass patch that slides between notes; sparse, jazz-derived keyboard chords; and shakers doing most of the rhythmic work. It descends from kwaito and from deep house, and it is unusually patient — tracks take minutes to arrive anywhere. Their working method matters too. Both are prolific to an almost unreasonable degree, releas...