Eddie Rockerz VibeZ

Fifty-four tracks tracing what happened after nine men from Staten Island signed a deal that let each of them sign somewhere else. The solo-deal clause Wu-Tang Clan arrived in 1993 with Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and a business arrangement that had no precedent: RZA negotiated a group deal that explicitly allowed every member to sign individually to any label they chose. It was, in retrospect, one of the smartest moves anyone in the genre has made. What followed was an extraordinary run of solo albums — Method Man's Tical , Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx , GZA's Liquid Swords , Ghostface Killah's Ironman , Ol' Dirty Bastard's Return to the 36 Chambers — mostly produced by RZA, and collectively more influential than the group albums. This playlist concentrates on that solo material and on the R&B crossover records, which is the right emphasis — it is where the Clan's reach is widest. What to listen for "I'll Be Th...

Twelve tracks from a guitarist who studied the Wes Montgomery method so closely that he became the most convincing inheritor of it. Norman Brown Norman Brown is from Shreveport, Louisiana, raised in Kansas City, and studied at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, where he later taught. He was signed to Motown's jazz imprint MoJazz in the early 1990s. The defining technical feature is the octave technique — playing a melody in two octaves simultaneously, with the thumb, which Wes Montgomery developed and which almost nobody else has made their own. Brown uses it constantly, and it gives his lines a warmth and thickness that a single-note player cannot achieve. After the Storm (1994) was his commercial breakthrough and remains his best-known record. He later won a Grammy for Just Chillin' . What to listen for "That's The Way Love Goes" is the Janet Jackson song, and it is the track that made the album — a genuine crossover hit for an instr...

The Foreign Exchange is probably one of the most melodic & funked-up Hip Hop groups in the underground scene today. It’s a real shame that more people don’t know the crazy talent the members of this group possess. The combination of Phonte’s inventive lyricism & soulful falsetto and Nicolay’s ambient grooves and brilliant sequencing is really impressive stuff.

Thirteen songs by one writer. If you know soul music at all, you know at least eight of them — and you probably have never said his name aloud. One of the finest R&B songwriters who will always be remembered through his timeless hits. Skip Scarborough (1944–2003) Clarence "Skip" Scarborough wrote or co-wrote a startling number of the ballads that define seventies and eighties soul, and he did it as a working songwriter rather than a star. He died in 2003, and his name still means almost nothing to general listeners while the songs remain in constant rotation. What is most striking about his catalogue is its consistency of temperature. Scarborough wrote warm songs — not sentimental, not showy, but generous. The melodies sit comfortably in the middle of a singer's range, the chord movements are richer than they first appear, and there is almost always a turn in the bridge that lifts the whole thing. What to listen for Bill Withers'...

Twenty-eight tracks connected by one man's pen. If a soul record from the last forty years has strings that make you sit up, Clare Fischer probably wrote them. Clare Fischer Clare Fischer (1928–2012) is one of the most consequential musicians almost nobody outside the profession can name. He was a serious jazz pianist and composer — his tunes "Morning" and "Pensativa" became standards, and he was a pioneer of Latin jazz and bossa nova in America. Herbie Hancock has said flatly: "I wouldn't be me without Clare Fischer." That is not a small statement. From the 1970s he became the most sought-after orchestral arranger in popular music. His longest and most productive relationship was with Prince , from 1984 onward — and by most accounts the two men never worked in the same room. Prince would send tapes; Fischer would return arrangements. The distance seems to have suited both. He received thirteen Grammy nominations and won...