Fourteen tracks from two brothers from Tupelo, Mississippi, who made some of the most joyful and least self-serious rap records of their decade. Rae Sremmurd Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi are brothers from Tupelo, Mississippi, and their group name is their label spelled backwards — Ear Drummers , the imprint run by producer Mike WiLL Made-It , who is effectively the third member. They arrived in the mid-2010s as something close to a pop group: irrepressibly energetic, melodically inventive, and entirely uninterested in the seriousness that dominated rap at the time. That got them dismissed as lightweight, which missed the point badly — the songwriting is considerably more sophisticated than the tone suggests. Swae Lee in particular turned out to be one of the most gifted melodists of his generation, which the later solo work made unmistakable. What to listen for "Black Beatles" with Gucci Mane is the biggest record here and a genuinely strange one to ha...

Fourteen tracks from a classically trained London pianist who won a television talent show and used the platform to make something considerably stranger than expected. Tokio Myers Tokio Myers won Britain's Got Talent in 2017, which is usually the end of an artistic story rather than the beginning of one. In his case the background was already unusual: he had trained at the Royal College of Music as a scholar, and had worked for years as a touring keyboard player for other artists. What he does is a genuine hybrid rather than a crossover gimmick. He plays classical repertoire and contemporary pop through the same instrument and the same sensibility, often layering a piano performance over programmed beats and electronic textures, and he treats Debussy and Ed Sheeran as equally available material. The gap between where that could have gone — light classical covers albums — and where it went is the interesting part. What to listen for "Bloodstream" i...

I’ve been listening to the sounds of Thom Bell since I was a kid & have yet to grow tired of listening to his productions. I’ve compiled playlists of various producers from Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis to Gamble & Huff, but it’s Bell’s music the goes the deepest. This masterful producer, arranger, and songwriter, with a  preference for substance over style has gifted us with an unforgettable musical legacy. Though he was never in the limelight driving the ladies crazy  like Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson, his work behind the scenes made him arguably the most important figure of soul music throughout the 1970s. Born in Jamaica but raised in Philadelphia, Bell found his love for music very early in life while studying classical piano at the age of 5. Working diligently throughout his childhood, Bell’s recognition rose fast and he was conducting and arranging songs for local groups by his late teens. When Bell caught his first break and a major...

Twenty-eight tracks from a singer who arrived in 2001 with an acoustic guitar and a song about self-worth, and has spent twenty-five years refusing to be anything else.   India.Arie India.Arie emerged at the height of the neo-soul wave with "Video" , a song that rejected the beauty standards the music industry ran on, and which became a hit anyway. She has spent the following quarter-century making records with a consistency of purpose that is almost unmatched in the genre. The purpose is essentially devotional, though not in a narrowly religious sense. Her albums are structured around wellbeing, self-acceptance, healing and spiritual practice, and the music is built to serve that: acoustic guitar at the centre, arrangements that stay out of the way, and a voice that never pushes. She is also a genuinely fine guitarist, which gets mentioned far less often than it should. What to listen for "Video" is the calling card and remains a remarkable piece o...

“I wanna go home not sing this song but I’m forced to perform speech napalm” —PRODIGY, “Genesis” To be a black man in America is to be under a constant state of enormous pressure, stress and danger, from outside, from within. From outside there is the ruthless reality of racism, jabbing and stabbing at you from every angle, in the mass media culture, at school with textbooks that forever omit you, with those police encounters that put your soul on trial even if a simple traffic stop, from individual meetings with those who view you as dangerous, immoral, aggressive, violent, whether you’ve demonstrated any such behavior or not. And then if you are me or the late Prodigy of the rap duo Mobb Deep, and happen to hail from one of America’s ghettoes, your end could also easily come at the hands of people who look like you, too. Because not only is the racism mad real, but so is the internalized racism and toxic manhood we’ve ...

Twenty-nine records from a single year — 1999 — when R&B and hip-hop had merged so completely that nobody bothered marking where one ended.     1999: the year of the crossover The premise here is the same as the 1979 set elsewhere on this blog: take one year, play everything, and let the pattern emerge. What emerges from 1999 is the completion of a process that had been running for a decade — the total integration of rapping and singing into a single commercial format. Almost every record on this list has both. The rapper brings the verse, the singer brings the chorus, and by this point neither is the guest; it is simply how records were made. What to listen for TLC's "No Scrubs" is the defining single of the year and one of the best-written pop records of the nineties — a Kandi Burruss and She'kspere song whose structure is closer to a rap record than to an R&B one. "Un...

Fifty-six tracks and the most genre-indifferent volume in the series — jazz vocals, Persian classical, Icelandic folk, gospel and British soul in one sitting. ChilledSoul 7 The seventh volume is where the series' definition of soul music stops being a genre and becomes a temperature. Nothing here is filed under the same heading and everything belongs. The connective tissue is a preference for acoustic space, unhurried tempos and voices used at conversational volume. Once that is the rule, an Ella Fitzgerald recording and an Icelandic songwriter's debut turn out to be doing very similar things. What to listen for Axiom Of Choice's "Valeh" is the most unusual thing here — an ensemble working in Persian classical tradition with Mamak Khadem singing, placed in the middle of a soul playlist without comment. Sweetback appears twice, which is a knowing choice: they are Sade's band recording without her, and their instrumental records are the missin...

Twenty-seven tracks from the Lagos singer who did more than anyone to make African pop a global default rather than a specialist interest. Wizkid Ayodeji Balogun is the most quietly influential African musician of his generation. Where his contemporaries pursued crossover with volume and spectacle, Wizkid's method has been the opposite: his records are soft, unhurried and almost conversationally sung, and they succeeded by changing what international pop was willing to sound like rather than by adapting to it. His delivery is the key. He sings low in his range, slightly behind the beat, with an almost lazy phrasing that makes even the busiest arrangement feel relaxed. It is a deceptively difficult thing to do and it has been widely imitated. He came up through the Lagos scene under Banky W's EME label, went independent, and by the end of the 2010s had a Grammy and a global audience. What to listen for "Ojuelegba" is the essential track — named after t...

Seventeen tracks from one of the great roots reggae vocal groups, built around a singer whose voice was as distinctive as any in Jamaican music.   Culture Culture were Joseph Hill , Albert Walker and Kenneth Dayes , and their 1977 debut Two Sevens Clash is one of the essential roots reggae albums — a record built around a prophecy attributed to Marcus Garvey that chaos would come when the sevens clashed on 7 July 1977. Reports at the time described parts of Kingston shutting down that day in anticipation. Hill's voice is the reason the group endures. It is rough, high and slightly cracked, entirely without polish, and it carries a conviction that smoother singers could not manage. He wrote almost everything and led the group for nearly thirty years until his death in Berlin in 2006, during a European tour; his son Kenyatta has continued the name since. The album also had an unexpected second life: it was widely cited as an influence by the British punk generation, ...

Fifteen tracks from an album that set out to write the history of Black America as a single continuous argument, and largely pulled it off. Common: Black America Again (2016) By 2016 Common had been rapping for twenty-five years, had won an Oscar for "Glory" from Selma , and had earned the right to make exactly the record he wanted. What he wanted was an album-length essay, and Black America Again is one of the most coherent statements of his career. The production is the first thing to notice: Karriem Riggins and Robert Glasper built it around live players, so the record moves like a jazz album rather than a rap one, with interludes, tempo changes and instrumental passages that go where they want. The second thing is the subject. Mass incarceration, policing, Chicago, gentrification and Black women's labour are the recurring themes, and the album does not treat them as separate topics. What to listen for "Black America Again" with Stevie W...

Eleven tracks built from Miles Davis's own master tapes, released for what would have been his ninetieth birthday, and far stranger than a tribute album.     Miles Davis & Robert Glasper: Everything's Beautiful (2016) Columbia/Legacy gave Robert Glasper access to the Miles Davis archive and told him to make something. What he produced is not a covers record and not a remix album: it is a set of new compositions built from fragments of Davis's tapes — isolated trumpet lines, studio chatter, rhythm parts — recombined into songs that never existed. Released in May 2016 to mark what would have been Davis's ninetieth birthday, it divided people sharply, which is appropriate for a musician who spent his career alienating purists. The defence of the method is Davis himself. He rebuilt his own music every few years, took whatever was happening in popular music and absorbed it, and was contemptuous of the idea that jazz should be preserved. A reverent tribute ...

Fourteen tracks from a British singer, writer and producer who has been quietly excellent for three decades and remains almost unknown outside soul circles. Don-E Don-E belongs to a specific and under-documented tradition: British soul artists who made genuinely first-rate records in the nineties, had a measure of chart success at home, and were almost entirely invisible in the United States. He writes, sings, plays and produces, which is why his records have a coherence that the era's session-built British soul often lacked. The sound is warm, keyboard-led and rhythmically loose, drawing on American soul without ever quite imitating it — the phrasing stays recognisably London. He has also worked steadily as a producer and collaborator for other artists, which is how a catalogue this good ends up this obscure: the work is spread across other people's records. What to listen for "So Cold" is the track that will draw most people in, and for good reason ...

Nine tracks from an Atlanta songwriter whose voice is warm enough to disguise how sharp the writing underneath it is. Anthony David Anthony David is a songwriter first, and he came to notice partly through his long association with India.Arie — they have written together, recorded together, and his best-known song, "Words" , is the kind of record that spreads by word of mouth rather than by promotion. His voice is the opposite of showy: a mid-range, slightly husky instrument used conversationally, with acoustic guitar frequently at the centre of the arrangement. That places him in the Atlanta strand of neo-soul that grew up alongside the Philadelphia and Chicago scenes without ever getting the same attention. What distinguishes the catalogue is the writing. His songs are specific, funny in places, and unusually willing to sit in ambivalence rather than resolving. What to listen for "As Above So Below" is the best thing here and the most musical...

Forty-eight tracks tracing a twenty-year career that moved from teenage pop stardom to something closer to a body of work. Beyoncé The interesting thing about Beyoncé's catalogue is how completely the second half rewrites the first. Up to about 2011 she was the most technically accomplished pop singer of her generation, making excellent records within a form that was already settled. After that she started making records that changed the form. BEYONCÉ (2013) arrived with no announcement and a video for every track, which changed how albums were released industry-wide. Lemonade (2016) was structured as a visual essay with chapter headings. Homecoming documented a Coachella performance built entirely around historically Black college marching-band traditions. RENAISSANCE (2022) was a study of Black and queer dance music's history. Whatever one makes of the results, the ambition is not in doubt, and this playlist is at its most interesting where it mov...

Eleven tracks from a singer whose voice invites an obvious comparison, and who has built an entire career on being brave enough to invite it. October London October London has one of the most immediately identifiable voices in contemporary soul, for a reason that is both his greatest asset and his biggest problem: he sounds startlingly like Marvin Gaye . Rather than run from that, he has leaned into it. He signed to Death Row Records after Snoop Dogg acquired the label, and released an album titled The Rebirth of Marvin , which is about as direct as an artistic statement gets. The reception has been mixed — members of Gaye's family have expressed complicated feelings about it — and the argument about whether homage of that directness is legitimate is a real one. What is not in dispute is the singing. The falsetto control, the layered backing arrangements and the phrasing are all genuinely accomplished, and the songwriting on this earlier set is better than the...

Twelve devotional pieces drawn from several traditions at once — Sanskrit mantra, Buddhist chant and the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic. Indiajiva Indiajiva work in the broad field of contemporary devotional music, setting sacred texts to arrangements that draw on Indian classical instrumentation and modern ambient production. The result sits somewhere between a meditation record and a world-music album, and it is unusually well made for either. What distinguishes this set from most of the category is the breadth of its sources. Hindu mantras, a Buddhist dharani, and Christian prayers rendered in Aramaic all appear, and they are treated with the same musical seriousness rather than being flattened into a single generic mood. That choice carries an argument: that these traditions share a purpose and a vocal technique — sustained repetition, breath control, the voice used to still rather than to express — even where their theology diverges completely. What to lis...

Sixteen tracks from the album that won a Pulitzer Prize for Music — the first record outside classical or jazz ever to do so. Kendrick Lamar: DAMN. (2017) DAMN. is the record where Kendrick Lamar stopped making sprawling conceptual statements and made something tighter, harder and considerably more unsettling. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2018, a decision that caused a great deal of argument and has aged extremely well. The album's organising idea is a set of one-word titles — PRIDE. , LUST. , FEAR. , GOD. , LOVE. — that function as a moral inventory. Underneath sits a theological argument about whether the narrator's life is governed by divine judgment or by chance, which the album refuses to settle. It is also constructed to be played in reverse. Lamar confirmed this: run the tracklist backwards and the story changes from a fall to a rise, and the opening and closing tracks connect either way. What to listen for "DUCKWORTH."...

Thirteen tracks from a Brooklyn rapper's angriest record — released, deliberately, on the fourth of July. Joey Bada$$: ALL-AMERIKKKAN BADA$$ (2017) Joey Bada$$ arrived as a teenager with a nineties-revivalist aesthetic, rapping over dusty boom-bap beats with a technical facility that made comparisons to the previous generation inevitable. This album is where he stopped being a revivalist. The production moves towards soul and funk, the hooks get bigger, and the subject becomes explicitly political. The three Ks in the title are not decoration; the record is a sustained argument about American racism, released on Independence Day, by an artist who had previously been praised mainly for his technique. Not all of it lands. But its ambition to be a protest album in a commercial format — at a moment when very few mainstream rappers were making one — is why it still matters. What to listen for "LAND OF THE FREE" is the centrepiece and was released a...

Ten tracks from a Nigerian singer who built a career on being unfashionably romantic in a scene that mostly rewarded swagger.   Ric Hassani Ric Hassani occupies an unusual position in Nigerian pop. While the mainstream of afrobeats was built on rhythm, party records and a certain kind of bravado, he built his on melody and courtship — his self-description as an artist has consistently emphasised the romantic, and his best-known album is called The African Gentleman . The musical consequence is that his records sound different. Acoustic guitar is frequently at the centre, the tempos are gentler, and the arrangements owe as much to soft rock and soul balladry as to Lagos club production. That has made him a specialist taste internationally and a considerable star at home, particularly for a certain kind of occasion — these are wedding records in the best sense. What to listen for "Gentleman" is the signature and the clearest statement of the whole pr...

Twenty-five tracks from a Ghanaian rapper who writes in three registers at once and comes from one of the most distinguished musical lineages in Africa. M.anifest Kwame Ametepe Tsikata is the grandson of J.H. Kwabena Nketia , the Ghanaian ethnomusicologist whose scholarship effectively established the academic study of African music. That is an unusual inheritance for a rapper, and it is visible in how seriously he treats the traditional material in his work. He studied in Minnesota, which put him in contact with the American independent hip-hop scene, and the result is a style that moves between English, Twi and Pidgin, frequently within a verse. The writing is dense, literary and funny, and he is one of the very few African rappers taken equally seriously as a lyricist on both continents. The production draws on highlife, hiplife and contemporary Ghanaian pop, which keeps the records from ever sounding like American rap made elsewhere. What to listen for "Someway ...

Fourteen tracks from a Chicago artist who grew up in a church, took the whole congregation with him, and made gospel that sounds like a street procession.   Sir the Baptist: Saint or Sinner (2017) Sir the Baptist is the son of a Chicago pastor, and his debut album is built on a premise most gospel records avoid: that the sacred and the profane are not separable, and that a church which pretends otherwise is failing the people in it. The sound reflects that. There are full choirs — his ChurchPpl ensemble appears throughout — alongside hip-hop production, brass that sounds like a New Orleans funeral march, and guest verses from people the gospel industry would not normally book. The result made a certain amount of trouble for him in both directions, which is usually a sign that a record is doing something real. What to listen for "Raise Hell" with Killer Mike is the best track here and the clearest statement of intent — a gospel song with one...