Eddie Rockerz VibeZ

Forty tracks from the two men who built Philadelphia into a city that could compete with Motown, and who put a political conscience inside a dance record. Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff met in a Philadelphia elevator in the early 1960s. By 1971 they had founded Philadelphia International Records , and over the following decade they wrote and produced a body of work that rivals anything in American popular music. The sound — lush strings, a full horn section, immaculate arrangements by Thom Bell and Bobby Martin , and the house band MFSB — became known as the Philly sound, and it is the direct bridge between 1960s soul and disco. What distinguished them from their competitors was content. Gamble in particular insisted on records about work, family, racism and collective responsibility, delivered inside music designed for the radio and the dancefloor. "Wake Up Everybody" and "Love Train" are protest songs you can d...

Fifty-two tracks catching the exact moment when African pop stopped needing to be introduced to anybody. Volume six. The crossover years What this volume documents is a transition. Earlier editions of a series like this were doing discovery work; by this point the artists involved were charting internationally, appearing on American records, and being sought out rather than sought. The mix holds the chill-out brief while taking in Nigerian pop, South African house, amapiano, and the British Afro-fusion scene, which by this stage were effectively one industry with several postcodes. What to listen for Lojay and Sarz appear twice — "LV N ATTN" with Wizkid and "Monalisa" — and the LV N ATTN EP is one of the best Nigerian projects of its year. Sarz's production is the sparsest thing on this list and the most distinctive. Jorja Smith and GuiltyBeatz's "All of This" is the clearest illustration of the London–Accra connectio...