Eddie Rockerz VibeZ

Seventy-three tracks distilled from a long-running series. This is the Chilled Soul project's greatest hits, and it doubles as a map of independent R&B. A series, condensed A greatest-hits volume drawn from a curator's own long-running series is a genuinely useful object. It tells you what survived — which records kept getting played after the initial enthusiasm faded — and that is a more reliable filter than any chart. The aesthetic is consistent: mid-tempo, warm, harmonically rich soul with a strong bias toward independent artists and toward production that leaves space. Seventy-three tracks is roughly four and a half hours, and it holds a single temperature throughout. What to listen for Cleo Sol's "Don't Let It Go to Your Head" and Childish Gambino's "Summertime Magic" are the two most recognisable names, and both sit at the softer end of their catalogues. Mereba's "Living on a Dream" with Doug E. Fresh ...

Ten tracks from the British band who made one of the most sampled records in soul history and never quite got the credit at home. Loose Ends Loose Ends — Carl McIntosh, Jane Eugene and Steve Nichol — formed in south London and became, in 1985, the first British Black group to reach number one on the US R&B chart. That is a genuinely significant milestone and it is remarkably little discussed. Their sound was a specific British thing: the sleek machine funk of the mid-1980s crossed with a jazz-funk sensibility that came out of the UK's rare groove and soul weekender culture. Working with producer Nick Martinelli in Philadelphia, they arrived at a hybrid that was polished enough for American radio and strange enough to stand apart from it. What to listen for "Hangin' On A String (Contemplating)" is the record. That number one R&B hit is built on a groove that has been sampled and interpolated endlessly, and the production — that dry ...

Fifty-six tracks of roots reggae with its faith fully in view. This is not a party mix — it is a devotional one, and it treats the subject with the seriousness it deserves. Rastafari, in its own music Roots reggae is inseparable from Rastafari , a religious and cultural movement that emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s following the coronation of Haile Selassie I as Emperor of Ethiopia. Its adherents drew on Marcus Garvey's pan-Africanism, on biblical prophecy, and on a reading of history in which Africa is Zion and the West is Babylon. The music that came out of it in the 1970s is among the most substantial devotional music of the twentieth century — and it is routinely reduced, in international listening, to a handful of songs about smoking. This mix corrects that. It spans the roots era, the digital period, and the current revival, and it holds a consistent focus on chant, prayer and praise. What to listen for Bob Marley's "Jah Live" is the essent...

A Swiss harpist who rebuilt the instrument to suit himself, won a Grammy, and made records with Bobby McFerrin, Milton Nascimento and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Fifteen tracks of Andreas Vollenweider. The man who electrified the harp Andreas Vollenweider was born in Thalwil, Switzerland in 1953, the son of an organist and composer and a painter. He found the traditional concert harp limiting for what he wanted to do and built his own electroacoustic version — modified, amplified, and capable of textures the acoustic instrument cannot produce. His 1984 album Down to the Moon won a Grammy in 1987, and he became one of the defining figures of what got filed as new age — a label he has never much liked and which undersells the music. The New York Times described his style as swirling atmospheric music evoking nature, magic and fairy tales, which is closer. He is also a committed pacifist and environmentalist who has worked with Greenpeace and Amnesty International...

Thirteen tracks from a Pasadena vocal group who were briefly enormous and are now remembered mostly by people who were there. Troop deserve the revisit. Total Respect Of Other People Troop formed in Pasadena, California in the late 1980s — the name is an acronym for Total Respect Of Other People — and became one of the most successful of the new jack swing-era vocal groups, with a run of R&B hits between 1988 and 1992. They occupy a specific place in the lineage. Coming after New Edition and before Jodeci, Troop sat between the clean teen-idol model and the harder, sexually explicit groups that followed. Their strength was harmony — five voices, arranged tightly, with real gospel training underneath — and their records hold up better than their profile suggests. What to listen for "All I Do Is Think of You" is their biggest and best. It is a Jackson 5 song — a 1975 album track that was never a single — and Troop's vers...

Eight tracks each, alternating one for one across sixteen. Two R&B supergroups, two decades apart, and the most evenly matched fight in the whole battle series. The tale of the tape LSG was Gerald Levert , Keith Sweat and Johnny Gill — three established solo stars who came together in 1997 and produced one of the most successful R&B albums of the decade. Between them they had Levert's gospel-weighted baritone, Sweat's distinctive whine and near-perfect ear for a hook, and Gill's enormous New Edition-trained power. The self-titled debut went double platinum. TGT was Tyrese , Ginuwine and Tank , formed in 2007 and releasing Three Kings in 2013. They came from a different tradition — smoother, more explicitly sexual, and shaped by producers like The Underdogs rather than by the Cleveland and New Jersey soul world LSG grew out of. Both groups were built on the same premise: three men who could each carry a record alone, agreeing to share one. Roun...

Twenty-three tracks from three women from the Bronx who could out-sing almost anyone and chose to do it over hip-hop beats. Sisters With Voices earned the name. SWV Cheryl "Coko" Gamble , Tamara "Taj" Johnson and Leanne "Lelee" Lyons came out of the Bronx with gospel backgrounds and a producer, Brian Alexander Morgan , who understood exactly what to do with them. It's About Time arrived in 1992 into the same moment as Mary J. Blige's debut, and the two records between them established hip-hop soul as the dominant mode. Coko's lead vocal is the group's defining asset — a bright, agile, heavily ornamented instrument with a distinctive break in it, and one of the most imitated voices of the decade. But the group's real strength is the blend: three voices that were recorded close and stacked, giving even their up-tempo records an unusual warmth. What to listen for "Weak" is the number one and the standard — wr...

He was a jazz-fusion drummer with the Mahavishnu Orchestra before he produced "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." Twenty-five tracks of Narada Michael Walden's improbable career. From Mahavishnu to Whitney Michael Walden — given the name Narada by the spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy — began as a drummer of formidable technical ability. He joined John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra in the 1970s, one of the most demanding gigs in jazz fusion, and played with Jeff Beck and Weather Report. Then he became a pop producer, and one of the most commercially dominant of the 1980s. His touch was a specific thing: enormous gated drums, bright synth textures, a chorus that hits hard, and an ability to get a career-defining vocal out of a singer. He produced Whitney Houston's biggest uptempo records, launched Mariah Carey with "Vision of Love," and won Producer of the Year at the Grammys. It is a genuinely odd trajectory and one very few musicians have...

Seventy tracks distilled from a long-running series. If you want one playlist that explains where African music went in the last decade, this is a strong candidate. The greatest hits of a whole project A greatest-hits volume from a curator's own series does something a chart cannot: it shows what kept getting played. Seventy tracks drawn from a decade of African ChillZone volumes is effectively a decade of listening, filtered twice. The geographic spread is genuinely continental — Nigeria and South Africa lead, as they do commercially, but Ghana, Tanzania, Angola and the diaspora are all present, and the mix moves between Afrobeats, amapiano, deep house, gqom and soul without treating any as the default. What to listen for Black Coffee and Nakhane's "We Dance Again" is the record to start with. Black Coffee is the most internationally significant South African producer, and Nakhane is a genuinely singular artist — queer, formerly evangelical, from...

Fifteen tracks from the soundtrack to a film about the Rwandan genocide. This is not background listening, and it should not be treated as such. Hotel Rwanda, 2004 Terry George's film tells the story of Paul Rusesabagina , the manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali, who sheltered over a thousand Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees during the 1994 genocide in which roughly 800,000 people were murdered in a hundred days while the international community declined to intervene. The soundtrack is unusually thoughtful for a film of this kind. Rather than scoring African tragedy with a Western orchestra, it foregrounds Rwandan and East African musicians alongside the score, and gives substantial space to Dorothee Munyaneza — a Rwandan singer who survived the genocide as a child and who both performed on and consulted for the film. That decision matters. It means the music is partly the testimony of a survivor rather than only an outsider's interpretation. W...