Eddie Rockerz VibeZ

Forty-nine tracks from the keyboard player who is the connective tissue of neo-soul. If you love a record from that world, James Poyser is probably on it. The Soulquarian at the piano James Poyser was born in Sheffield, England to Jamaican parents and raised in Philadelphia, and he is one of the central figures in a scene that is usually described through its singers. As a keyboard player, producer and songwriter, he was part of the Soulquarians — the loose collective around Questlove, D'Angelo, J Dilla, Erykah Badu, Common and Bilal that gathered at Electric Lady Studios and produced an extraordinary run of albums around the turn of the century. He is also, since 2014, a member of The Roots and therefore of the house band on The Tonight Show , which means a great many people hear him nightly without knowing it. What he brings is harmony. Poyser's chord voicings — jazz-derived, unresolved, warm — are what give neo-soul its particular colour, and they...

Thirty-seven tracks, and the striking thing is how few of the obvious ones are here. This is a Rihanna playlist built from album cuts, and it makes a better case than the hits do. The most adaptable pop star of her generation Robyn Rihanna Fenty left Barbados at sixteen after auditioning for Evan Rogers in a hotel room, and spent her first few years being handed material — competent Caribbean-tinged pop that could have gone to anyone. What changed was Good Girl Gone Bad in 2007 and, more importantly, her own growing willingness to choose strange records over safe ones. What she developed is unusual: not a great technical voice, but an extraordinarily distinctive one, with a specific rasp and a phrasing that sits slightly behind the beat. She became the artist producers wanted to work with because she made unusual production sound like pop. She has since largely stopped releasing music in favour of Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty, which have made her a billionaire...

Thirteen tracks from a Philadelphia singer who arrived with one of the best debut singles of the 2000s and has been quietly excellent ever since. Vivian Green Vivian Green is from Philadelphia and came up the traditional way — church, then a girl group, then backing vocals for Jill Scott, then songwriting. She wrote for Boyz II Men before she released anything of her own. Her 2002 debut A Love Story arrived at the height of the neo-soul wave and stood out for two reasons: she is a genuinely capable pianist who writes at the instrument, and her songs deal with the unglamorous middle of relationships rather than their beginnings or ends. She has since released steadily, largely outside the major-label system, and her more recent work is arguably stronger than the early records that made her name. What to listen for "Emotional Rollercoaster" is the record everyone knows — a Grammy-nominated single and one of the most durable R&B songs of its dec...

Twenty-two tracks from an American house producer who made emotional, melodic dance music at a moment when the market wanted aggression. Kaskade Ryan Raddon is from Chicago, which matters — he grew up around the birthplace of house music, and his records retain a warmth and a song-orientation that most of the American EDM boom abandoned. He built his career through the 2000s on progressive and deep house releases, and became one of the biggest live draws in American dance music without ever really making the hard, drop-driven records that defined the festival era. He is also a practising Mormon, which made him an unusual figure in a scene not known for sobriety, and he has spoken about it candidly. His defining quality is melancholy. Kaskade records are frequently in minor keys, built around a vocal hook that sounds like a regret, and designed to work at four in the morning rather than at peak time. What to listen for "Move for Me" and "I Remembe...

Fifteen tracks from a Japanese producer whose piano-and-breakbeat records helped invent a genre that now soundtracks half the internet. DJ Okawari DJ Okawari emerged from Japan in the late 2000s making instrumental hip-hop built on live-sounding piano, jazz samples and soft, dusty drums. His track "Flower Dance" became one of the most-played instrumental pieces of its era, and his aesthetic — melancholy, unhurried, structurally simple — is a direct ancestor of what is now called lo-fi hip-hop. That lineage matters. The whole "beats to study to" phenomenon descends fairly directly from a Japanese scene built around Nujabes , whose Samurai Champloo soundtracks made jazz-hop a global taste before he died in 2010. Okawari is one of the most accomplished figures working in that tradition. What to listen for "Bounce" with Talib Kweli is the highest-profile track here and a genuinely well-matched pairing — Kweli's dense, rhythmi...

Ten tracks from a family band of French-born Romani musicians who took flamenco to the world's stadiums and were dismissed by purists for it. Play it loud anyway. The Gipsy Kings The Gipsy Kings are made up of members of two families — the Reyes and the Baliardo s — who are Gitanos : Spanish Romani whose parents fled Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War and settled in Arles and Montpellier in the south of France. That history is the key to the music. They sing in Gitano , a Romani-inflected Andalusian Spanish, and they play a style that is rooted in flamenco — Nicolas Reyes is the son of the flamenco singer José Reyes, and lead guitarist Tonino Baliardo is a formidable player — but crossed with pop production and rumba rhythm. Flamenco purists have never fully accepted them. That is a real argument and worth understanding, but it should not obscure that these are genuine Gitano musicians playing their own tradition, not outsiders borr...

Fourteen tracks from a British band who had no guitarist and became enormous anyway. Keane's piano-led melancholy defined a particular mid-2000s mood. Keane Keane formed in Battle, East Sussex, and made a decision early on that shaped everything: they dropped their guitarist and never replaced him. Tim Rice-Oxley's piano, run through effects to fill the sonic space a guitar would occupy, carries the harmony, with Tom Chaplin's high, clear voice on top and Richard Hughes on drums. That arrangement is why they sound the way they do, and it put them at odds with a British scene then dominated by guitar bands. Hopes and Fears (2004) sold in enormous quantities anyway and made them, briefly, one of the biggest bands in the country. Chaplin has since been open about the addiction that nearly ended the band, and their later work is considerably darker for it. What to listen for "Somewhere Only We Know" is the one everybody knows, helped by a Lily ...

Sixty-eight tracks of music that was critically despised for thirty years and is now quietly beloved. Soft rock has had the last laugh. The rehabilitation of the seventies Soft rock — the melodic, immaculately produced, largely Los Angeles-made pop of roughly 1972 to 1984 — was for a long time the most sneered-at music in the rock canon. It was too clean, too commercial, too obviously the work of session professionals rather than tortured artists. The reassessment came from two directions. Musicians noticed the harmonic sophistication and the playing; hip-hop and modern-funk producers noticed the immaculate recordings and started sampling them. What was once called adult-oriented rock is now discussed as yacht rock, and the affection is genuine. Sixty-eight tracks is a proper survey, and it takes in the disco-adjacent, the country-adjacent and the straightforwardly strange. What to listen for Boz Scaggs' "JoJo" is the sophisticate's pick. Scaggs...

Sixteen tracks from one of the best-curated soundtracks in film. Love & Basketball uses music the way the film uses time — to mark exactly where you are. Love & Basketball, 2000 Gina Prince-Bythewood's debut feature tells the story of Monica and Quincy across four "quarters," from childhood in 1981 to adulthood in the 1990s, and the soundtrack is structured to match. Each era of the film gets its era's music, which means the record functions as both a soundtrack and a compressed history of Black popular music across two decades. It was produced by Spike Lee's 40 Acres and a Mule, and the music supervision is unusually intelligent — the songs are chosen for what they meant at the time rather than for what sounds good now, which is a harder and more rewarding standard. What to listen for Al Green's "Love And Happiness" opens and is close to a shorthand for the whole film: joy and difficulty in the same song, with that organ...

Six tracks. That is all it takes to understand why Lila Iké is one of the most important voices to come out of Jamaica in a decade. On the rise, and staying there Alicia Grey — Lila Iké — is from Manchester parish in Jamaica, and came up through Protoje's In.Digg.Nation Collective , the label and crew at the centre of the island's reggae revival. What makes her distinctive is refusal to stay in one lane. She is a reggae artist by lineage and by community, but her records take in R&B phrasing, hip-hop cadence and dancehall attitude, often within the same song. Her voice is warm and slightly husky, and she sings behind the beat in a way that owes as much to American soul as to Jamaican tradition. She is also, notably, one of very few women in the reggae revival to have broken through as a headline artist rather than as a featured vocalist. What to listen for "Where I'm Coming From" -era material established her, but "True Lo...

Fifty-one tracks from a New Jersey singer with a Teddy Pendergrass voice and a street lyricist's vocabulary. Jaheim made grown-folks R&B out of the projects. The last of the traditional male R&B stars Jaheim Hoagland is from New Brunswick, New Jersey, and won Showtime at the Apollo three times as a teenager. His grandfather, Victor Hoagland, sang with the doo-wop group The Drifters, and that lineage is audible: Jaheim's voice is a full, gospel-weighted baritone in a direct line from Teddy Pendergrass and Luther Vandross . What made him distinctive was the combination. Signed to Divine Mill by Kay Gee of Naughty By Nature, he sang like a 1970s soul man over hip-hop-informed production, and wrote about working-class life with a specificity that most R&B avoided. His records are about rent, family obligation, fidelity under pressure, and the actual texture of a relationship rather than its romance. He was one of the last male R&B singers to sust...

Seventeen tracks from a Cleveland singer who has been quietly making excellent records for twenty-five years. Avant is the definition of underrated. Myron Avant Avant is from Cleveland and was discovered by Steve Huff , who produced his early material. His 2000 debut My Thoughts arrived at a moment when male R&B was crowded, and he has spent the quarter-century since releasing consistently strong albums to consistently modest attention. His voice is a light, agile tenor with a distinctive slightly nasal quality, and his records sit in the traditional lane — slow tempos, real songwriting, relationships examined at length. He is a genuine album artist who happened to have a few large singles. The KeKe Wyatt partnership is the thing most people know him for, and it produced two of the best R&B duets of the era. What to listen for "My First Love" with KeKe Wyatt is a cover of the René & Angela song and is the record that made both of...

Twenty tracks from a singer with a four-octave range who spent much of her career making duet records. Chanté Moore is worth hearing alone as well. Chanté Moore Chanté Moore is from San Francisco, raised in a religious household — her father was a minister — and emerged in 1992 with Precious . Her voice is the immediate distinguishing feature: a light, extremely agile soprano with a genuine whistle register, deployed with more taste than most singers with that equipment manage. A substantial part of her recorded output is duet work, particularly with Kenny Lattimore , to whom she was married from 2002 to 2011. Their two joint albums are among the best grown-folks R&B records of the 2000s, and the partnership defined a decade of her career. She has also worked extensively in television and remains a formidable live performer. What to listen for "Love's Taken Over" is the debut single and the one that announced the voice. ...

Thirty-four tracks from a singer who took the word "sophisticated" and made it a career. Will Downing has been doing this at the highest level since 1988. The prince of sophisticated soul Will Downing is from Brooklyn and began as a session and backing vocalist — he sang on records by Arthur Baker and Jennifer Holliday before his own debut in 1988. His voice is a rich, warm baritone with a jazz singer's sense of phrasing, and he has spent nearly four decades in a lane he essentially defined: adult contemporary soul with genuine harmonic ambition. He is enormously popular in Britain, where his career effectively began — his cover of John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" was a UK hit in 1988 — and that transatlantic relationship has shaped his output. In 2007 he was diagnosed with polymyositis, an inflammatory muscle disease that left him unable to walk for a period. He returned to recording and performing, and the albums since carry that ...

Twenty-nine tracks for a voice that has not been equalled. Whitney Houston died in February 2012, and the catalogue is the only sensible way to remember her. (we miss you sis) Remembering Whitney Whitney Houston came from an extraordinary lineage: her mother was Cissy Houston of the Sweet Inspirations, her cousin was Dionne Warwick , and Aretha Franklin was a family friend. She sang in the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark from childhood, and by her teens was doing session work and modelling. Clive Davis signed her to Arista in 1983, and what followed was a run of commercial success that has few parallels — seven consecutive number one singles, a debut album that became the best-selling debut by a solo artist, and a version of a Dolly Parton song that became the best-selling single by a woman in history. The last decade of her life was difficult and extensively documented, and she died at forty-eight. The temptation is to let that history dominate. The better respo...

(Big up to the musicians of the beautiful island of St. Lucia)

(Taken from the movie “Lift” starring Kerry Washington)

Twenty-nine tracks from a singer and songwriter who has written for Usher, Rihanna and Trey Songz and made his own strange, atmospheric records on the side. Elijah Blake Elijah Blake was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Florida, and came to attention first as a songwriter — he has credits with Usher (including "Climax"-adjacent material), Rihanna , Rick Ross and Trey Songz . His own work is considerably darker and less commercial than that pedigree suggests. Blake's records are atmospheric, harmonically ambiguous, and frequently concerned with faith, doubt and moral compromise — a preacher's-son sensibility applied to secular R&B. The Common relationship has been the most productive of his career, and the two tracks here are the best evidence of what he does. What to listen for "Real" and "X.O.X." with Common are the entry points — Common's warm, conversational delivery against Blake's smoke-and-sha...

Twelve Temptations, ten Four Tops. Two Detroit vocal groups, the same building, the same writers, and one of the great arguments in American music. The tale of the tape The Temptations formed in Detroit in 1960 and became Motown's most successful male group. Their advantage was versatility: five singers who could each lead, spanning David Ruffin's raw, gospel-scarred baritone, Eddie Kendricks' falsetto, Dennis Edwards' power and Melvin Franklin's bass. They could sing a sweet ballad in 1965 and a seven-minute piece of psychedelic social commentary in 1972. The Four Tops formed in 1953 and are the more remarkable institutional story: the same four men — Levi Stubbs , Abdul "Duke" Fakir, Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence Payton — sang together for over four decades without a single lineup change until Payton's death in 1997. Their advantage was Levi Stubbs, one of the most desperate, urgent voices in popular music, and a b...

Fifteen tracks from a songwriter whose one great album has been quietly influencing R&B for twenty years. Teedra Moses is a cult figure for good reason. (damnnn) Complex Simplicity Teedra Moses is from New Orleans, moved to Los Angeles, and worked as a stylist and a songwriter — writing for Christina Milian and others — before releasing Complex Simplicity in 2004. The album did modest commercial business and then would not go away. Over the following two decades it became one of the most quoted, sampled and cited R&B records of its era, championed by artists and DJs long after the label had moved on. Its combination of lush, live-feeling production with unusually candid songwriting turned out to be a template. She later signed to Rick Ross's Maybach Music Group, which is one of the odder label pairings in recent memory and produced some genuinely good work. What to listen for "Be Your Girl" is the signature record. It has been remixed e...

Fifteen tracks from a British collective who have been making jazz-funk for forty years and are treated as national treasures everywhere except the charts. View Post Incognito Incognito is essentially the life's work of Jean-Paul "Bluey" Maunick , who was born in Mauritius and raised in London. The band formed in 1979 out of the British jazz-funk scene — the world of soul weekenders, all-dayers and specialist DJs that ran parallel to the mainstream for decades — and has continued, with a rotating cast of dozens of musicians, ever since. They became central to the acid jazz movement of the early 1990s alongside the Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai, though Incognito predates all of it. Their approach is consistent: a large band with horns, real percussion, multiple vocalists, and an unembarrassed debt to Earth, Wind & Fire and to 1970s Brazilian music. What to listen for "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing" in the Frankie Foncett mix...