Eddie Rockerz VibeZ

Seventeen songs for a songwriter most listeners have never heard of, who wrote several records they can sing from memory. Andrea Martin died on 27 September 2021, aged forty-nine. Andrea Marin was a songwriter’s songwriter. Throughout the ’90s and 2000s she wrote songs for Monica, Toni Braxton, SWV, En Vogue, and more. Here are my favorite classic songs Martin wrote &/or produced. Andrea Martin (1972–2021) Andrea Martin belongs to a category the industry does not celebrate properly: the writer whose songs became other people's signatures. She was a fine singer with her own releases, and she was also one of the more reliable hitmakers of the late nineties and 2000s, working with Ivan Matias among others. Her catalogue includes material for En Vogue , Toni Braxton , SWV , Monica and Melanie Fiona . That is not a session career; that is a decade of American radio. She was a Grammy winner, and when she died at forty-nine the tributes came overwhelmingly...

Fifty tracks of soul from the part of the world map that rarely makes it onto American playlists. Volume twenty-five leans heavily, and correctly, British. The London axis What stands out in this volume is how much of it is British, and how little of that music gets heard internationally. The UK currently has a soul scene with more genuinely distinctive singers than it has infrastructure to promote, and a curated mix is one of the few ways it travels. The aesthetic is consistent: slow, jazz-inflected, harmonically ambitious, and produced with a lot of space. It descends from the British soul tradition that runs through Soul II Soul and Omar as much as from American R&B. What to listen for ENNY's "Peng Black Girls" with Amia Brave is the most significant record here — a south London rapper's meditation on colourism, beauty standards and self-image that became a genuine moment when Jorja Smith later appeared on a remix. Greentea Peng's "...

Fifty covers, and the through-line is nerve. Every artist here has taken on something they had no business touching and found a way through. What a cover is for A good cover is not a tribute; it is an argument. The interpreter has to find something in the song the original did not use, and the risk is total — if it fails, you have simply reminded everyone of a better record. What makes this collection work is that almost every selection takes on something canonical. These are not obscure songs being rescued; they are records people already love, being reopened. What to listen for D'Angelo's "Can't Hide Love" live at the Jazz Cafe in 1995 is the standout. The Earth, Wind & Fire song is already a masterclass in vocal arrangement, and hearing a twenty-one-year-old D'Angelo take it apart in front of a London audience is extraordinary. Alex Isley's "At Your Best (You Are Love)" carries real weight — the song is an Isley Brothers ...

Sixty-two slow jams selected by somebody who clearly knows exactly what he is doing. A guest playlist, and a superb one.   The art of the slow jam The slow jam is a discipline with rules. The tempo sits somewhere between 60 and 80 beats per minute. The arrangement leaves space. The vocal is close-miked and intimate rather than large. And the sequencing matters enormously — a well-built set holds one temperature for hours without ever becoming monotonous. What is assembled here is a working knowledge of that form across four decades, drawn heavily from the 1970s and 80s vocal-group tradition and the quiet storm radio format that grew out of it. What to listen for Con Funk Shun's "Love's Train" opens, which is the right call — it is one of the most beloved slow jams ever recorded and has had a second life through Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak's version. The Manhattans' "It Feels so Good to Be Loved so Bad" and The Intruders' "...

Thirty-six tracks chosen by somebody's father, and there is no better recommendation engine than that. Papa's mix A playlist inherited from a parent is a particular kind of document. It tells you what was on the radio in a house at a particular moment, and it preserves a set of tastes that no algorithm would ever assemble — because the criterion is memory rather than similarity. What is here is the American popular songbook as it sounded to an adult audience between roughly 1957 and 1975: orchestrated, melodic, sung by men with impeccable diction, and entirely unembarrassed about sentiment. What to listen for Johnny Mathis dominates, and rightly — "Chances Are," "Misty," "When Sunny Gets Blue" and "It's Not for Me to Say" are the core of a catalogue that defined romantic singing for a generation. "When Sunny Gets Blue" is the one that shows he was a genuine jazz singer. Andy Williams is the other pillar. ...

Thirty-eight tracks assembling the contemporary jazz canon as it is actually listened to rather than as critics file it. [spotify The essentials, honestly chosen Smooth jazz gets dismissed as a genre, and a selection like this is the best argument against the dismissal — not because it defends the format, but because it shows the range of musicianship inside it. There are serious jazz players here, gospel-trained saxophonists, and a couple of records that would sit comfortably on any contemporary jazz list. The lineage runs clearly from Grover Washington Jr. and George Benson in the 1970s through the radio format's peak in the 1990s to the present. What to listen for George Benson's "Breezin'" opens, which is correct — the 1976 album was the first jazz record to go platinum and effectively created the commercial category. Robert Glasper's "Cold" is the modern intrusion and the best track here by some distance. Glasper is a jazz p...