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A Holiday Gathering At The Crib

Sixty-one tracks, and not one sleigh bell. This is a holiday playlist in the truest sense — what actually gets played when the family is in the house.

The music that fills a room full of people who grew up together

The title suggests carols. What you get instead is a deep, loving reconstruction of late-1990s and early-2000s R&B and hip-hop — the music of a specific generation's youth, which is exactly what tends to go on when everyone comes home for the holidays and somebody takes over the speaker.

That is a smarter idea than a seasonal playlist. Holiday music is nostalgic by design; this achieves the same effect with records people actually love rather than ones they tolerate once a year.

What to listen for

The Notorious B.I.G. appears twice — "Big Poppa" and the "One More Chance / Stay with Me" remix — and both are pure party records rather than the harder material, which is the right call.

Busta Rhymes gets two of the mix's biggest moments: "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See" and "I Know What You Want" with Mariah Carey.

The Bad Boy run is the spine. "I Need a Girl (Pt. 2)," Mario Winans' "I Don't Wanna Know" — built on a Fugees interpolation of Enya, which is a genuinely absurd chain of custody — and the Diddy-era productions generally.

Aaliyah's "Rock The Boat" and TLC's "No Scrubs" are the ones the whole room sings. OutKast's "Ms. Jackson" is the one everyone claims to have loved first.

Mobb Deep's "Quiet Storm" with Lil' Kim is the hardest thing here and a genuine classic. Fugees' "Ready or Not" is the most beautiful.

Tamia's "Into You," Monica's "Knock Knock" and Toni Braxton's "He Wasn't Man Enough" handle the R&B side, and Miguel's "All I Want Is You" is the one modern intrusion.

Go deeper

If this era is your era, the albums are worth revisiting whole rather than in singles form. Aaliyah's self-titled 2001 record, OutKast's Stankonia, Fugees' The Score and Biggie's Ready to Die are four that hold up completely.

For the Bad Boy production machine specifically, The Hitmen — Deric Angelettie, Stevie J, Mario Winans and others — are the team behind most of it, and their approach of building records on recognisable interpolations shaped an entire era of radio.

And a small note on the concept: the best playlists are often the ones built for a room rather than for a listener. This one knows exactly whose living room it is in.

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