Eddie Rockerz VibeZ

Forty-one records assembled in the summer of 2020, arguing that reggae had been making this case for fifty years before the slogan existed. Black Lives Matter: A Reggae Tribute Protest playlists made in 2020 mostly reached for the obvious American canon. This one does something more interesting: it goes to Jamaica and Britain, and it demonstrates that a complete vocabulary for talking about state violence, dignity and resistance had already been built in reggae — and had been in continuous use since the early seventies. The sequencing makes the argument chronologically as well as musically. Roots reggae, dub poetry, dancehall and the contemporary revival all sit together, and the continuity of concern across five decades is the point. What to listen for Linton Kwesi Johnson opens the set, and that is the right decision. Britain's foremost dub poet wrote about policing, deportation and racial violence in London with a precision no song has improved on, and hearing h...

Twenty-two tracks from the most technically gifted rapper of his generation, caught at the point where the rest of the world was starting to notice. JID Destin Route came out of Atlanta by way of Hampton University , where he was on a football scholarship, and by way of Spillage Village , the collective built around EARTHGANG that also drew in 6LACK and Mereba. He signed to J. Cole's Dreamville in 2017. What makes him remarkable is purely technical in the first instance: an extremely high, nasal delivery, an ability to switch rhythmic patterns mid-bar, and breath control that lets him rap at speeds where most people lose diction. Then, underneath that, the writing — dense, funny, and far more interested in specificity than in flexing. This playlist catches him mid-ascent, which is a good time to hear an artist: enough catalogue to judge, not yet enough fame to distort it. What to listen for "Off Deez" with J. Cole is the technical showcase and the one...