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Rock Dis! : Uptempo

Fifty-six tracks with the brakes off. The uptempo half of the set, and a reminder that pop music at full volume can still be genuinely adventurous.

Big records, wide net

If the downtempo companion is about restraint, this one is about scale — and about how thoroughly the borders between pop, rap, dancehall, Afrobeats and reggaeton have dissolved. The playlist moves between languages, continents and genres in consecutive tracks, and the joins barely show, because the common element is simply energy.

What makes it more than a party mix is the choice of big records. These are largely tracks that were commercially enormous and formally interesting — a combination that is rarer than it should be.

What to listen for

The Carters' "APESHIT" is the statement piece — Beyoncé and Jay-Z, filmed in the Louvre, and a record whose swagger is inseparable from where the video was shot.

Kendrick Lamar and SZA's "All The Stars" from Black Panther is the other monument. The Weeknd's "Popular" with Playboi Carti and Madonna is the strangest star alignment on the list.

The Caribbean and Latin selections are the heart of it. Skip Marley with Popcaan on "Vibe," J Balvin, Dua Lipa and Bad Bunny on "UN DIA," and "Boasty" — Wiley, Stefflon Don, Sean Paul and, improbably, Idris Elba, who is a working DJ as well as an actor.

FKA twigs with Rema on "jealousy" is the most interesting collaboration here — an avant-garde British artist and a Nigerian pop star finding a genuine middle ground. KIDS SEE GHOSTS with Yasiin Bey is the most out-there production.

Savara's "SABABISHA" brings Kenya into the mix, and Juls with Kota the Friend on "Lil Mama" is the smoothest thing at this tempo.

Go deeper

Follow Popcaan — his Forever and Fixtape are the best modern dancehall albums, and his influence on Drake and the wider pop mainstream is enormous and under-credited.

FKA twigs' MAGDALENE is one of the most singular albums of its decade and worth the commitment.

For the Kenyan scene that Savara belongs to, Sauti Sol is the essential group — East Africa's pop output gets a fraction of the attention Nigeria's does, and the quality gap is nowhere near as wide as the attention gap.

A note on how to play it. This is sequenced as a set rather than a shuffle, and the transitions between the Latin, Caribbean and American selections are doing real work — several of them only make sense in order. Fifty-six tracks is roughly three and a half hours, which is a full party rather than a warm-up, so start it early and let it find its own shape. And if it works, its downtempo companion is the natural landing at the other end of the night.

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