Sixty-four records about what is wrong and what might be done about it, drawn from six decades of soul music. Conscious Soul for Dark Times Every generation assumes its own protest music is unprecedented. The value of a set like this is that it flatly disproves that assumption: the arguments here, made between 1964 and 2018, are substantially the same arguments, and the musical vocabulary for making them was largely settled by 1975. What makes it work as listening rather than as a lecture is that almost every track is a good song first. The politics is carried in the writing rather than announced over the top of it. What to listen for Harold Melvin and Teddy Pendergrass's "Wake up Everybody" opens the set, which is the right choice — a Philadelphia International record from 1975 that manages to be a call to action and a slow jam at once. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" needs no comment except this: Motown initially did not want to re...

Forty-five pieces assembled for something harder to describe than a mood — a set about scale, grief and the natural world. Chilled Soul XI: The Transcendence Collection This is the strangest volume in the series and probably the most personal. It abandons genre entirely: soul, Indigenous ceremonial song, contemporary classical, folk, film score and ambient recordings all sit together, and the organising principle is closer to a subject than to a sound. The subject seems to be perspective — the deliberate act of making yourself small against something larger. That is an unusual thing for a playlist to attempt and it mostly works, though it demands to be heard in order. What to listen for Meshell Ndegeocello appears three times and effectively anchors the set. "Haditha" is named after the Iraqi town where American marines killed twenty-four civilians in 2005, and knowing that changes the piece entirely. Joanne Shenandoah's "Prophecy Song"...

  My resistance is getting weaker I cant stand the pressure I cant get any weaker I’ve got to find some other treasure I need nothing to be a man Because I was born a man And I deserve the rights to live Like any other man   My mind in such a state Sometimes it makes me sick Sometimes I try to hate But I just don’t know the trick I need nothing to be a man Because I was born a man And I deserve the rights to live Like any other man   Experience costs you wisdom Thank God I got some let I’m getting out for certain My soul can stand the test I need nothing to be a man Because I was born a man And I deserve the rights to live Like any other man  

Taj Weekes & Adowa are back with that burning bush of wisdom & melody! From their first album, Hope & Doubt to Deidem (shortlisted for a Grammy) to now their sixth studio album, To All My Relations, Taj Weekes & Adowa continue to roll on their mission to elevate us through the conscious vibes they deliver. Staying true to the essence of Roots reggae which is really an intersection where the spiritual, poetical & political meld, To All My Relations delivers a mighty blow to a Babylonian system that seems to be unsteady & gasping its last breath, The topics they cover range from police brutality (“41 Shots”) to political misleadership (“Terror Is Him”, “Insecurities”, “Son Of a Bitch”) to resistance & hope (“You & I”,”Standing Rock”, “Vibe Up”, “One Little Spark”, “What Do You Believe In”), but the golden thread that weaves this work ...

Thirty tracks from a singer whose records are too honest for gospel radio and too devout for R&B radio — which is exactly what makes them interesting. Christon Gray Christon Gray came out of the Christian hip-hop and R&B world — he is a member of the collective W.L.A.K. alongside Alex Faith , Swoope and Dre Murray , and he appears on records by Tedashii and Da' T.R.U.T.H. — and he has spent his career testing how far that world will let an artist go. The answer, on the evidence of this playlist, is fairly far. His records deal with marriage, infidelity, doubt, money and reputation in explicit terms, set to production that owes far more to D'Angelo and Maxwell than to contemporary worship music. The result sits in a genuine no-man's-land, and it is considerably better than most of the music on either side of it. His voice is the other reason to pay attention: a light, flexible instrument with real gospel training behind it, used with unusual res...

Forty tracks from an Atlanta singer whose entire style is built on saying less than he could — and a guest list that proves how much people wanted him. 6LACK Ricardo Valdez Valentine spent years signed to a bad contract before anything of his reached the public, which is worth knowing because it explains the tone of everything he has since recorded. His records are cautious, withholding and slightly weary, and that is not a pose. He belongs to the LVRN collective in Atlanta — the same circle as Summer Walker and, at a slight remove, Mereba and DRAM — and his breakthrough was almost entirely driven by streaming rather than by radio, which shaped the sound: quiet, close, low-mixed, built for headphones. What he does better than almost anyone is the guest verse. More than half of this playlist is features, and the reason is that he makes other people's records better by lowering their temperature. What to listen for "Ex Calling" and "Prblms...

Twelve tracks from a mixtape that turned a self-taught Atlanta singer with a few hundred followers into one of the most-streamed artists in R&B within a year. Summer Walker: Last Day of Summer (2018) Summer Walker is the clearest example of what the streaming era actually changed. She was working as a house cleaner in Atlanta, posting acoustic guitar covers online, with no industry connection at all. Last Day of Summer , released through LVRN in 2018, was a mixtape recorded quickly and with very little apparatus. It made her a star. What it captures is a specific quality her later, bigger records partly smoothed away: the roughness. Her voice on this tape is small, close and slightly unsteady, the production is minimal, and the writing is unguarded in a way that felt like eavesdropping rather than performance. She has since been open about her discomfort with fame, and hearing this tape it is easy to understand why — the appeal was always intimacy, and ...

Sixteen tracks from a Miami singer who built a career on breath, restraint and an almost total refusal to raise her voice. Sabrina Claudio Sabrina Claudio emerged from Miami with a sound that was unusually complete from the start: sparse, reverb-heavy production, Spanish-guitar textures, and a vocal approach built on breath rather than power. She sings almost everything just above a whisper, and layers her own harmonies rather than pushing a single lead line. It is a genuinely distinctive approach and it works because the writing is patient enough to support it. Her songs do not build to anything; they establish a mood and then explore it, which is closer to how ambient music works than to how R&B usually does. Her Cuban and Puerto Rican background shows up in the arrangements rather than the language — the guitar figures and the percussion carry it. What to listen for "Confidently Lost" aside, "Belong to You" is the record most people fin...

Born into a family of musicians (now performing as  Peace Industry Music Group )  Victory Boyd  started singing at the age of four. Now almost 20 years later, the young artist writes/plays/sings with the sagacious nuance of an old soul, effortlessly blending folk, jazz, classical, gospel and soul. While dreamy, lithe and colored with youthful optimism, her voice also bears the weight of experience. The resulting project aims to motivate and inspire with profound storytelling, artful metaphors and lyrical affirmations infused with hope, rather than starry-eyed naiveté. Album opener “Against the Wind” possesses a quiet beauty that belies a fiercely empowering message, providing a perfect segue to the uplifting anthem, “Open Your Eyes.” Another highlight is “Don’t You Ever,” a heartwarming ditty about faith and love featuring her siblings  Abraham Boyd  and  Angel Boyd  (the trio is collecti...

Forty-four tracks with a title that admits the brief: a bit of this, a bit of that. In practice it is the most musically curious volume in the series. ChilledSoul 12 The disclaimer in the title is a little misleading. This is not a grab-bag; it is a set that deliberately reaches outside R&B into contemporary jazz, British pop, Hawaiian soul and hip-hop instrumentals, and the through-line is a preference for real players over programming. More than any other volume, this one rewards reading the credits. Several tracks here are by musicians rather than by artists in the marketing sense, and they are the best things on it. What to listen for Makaya McCraven's "Black Lion" is the most significant inclusion — a Chicago drummer and producer whose method involves recording live improvisation and then editing it like hip-hop, with Brandee Younger on harp and Joel Ross on vibraphone. It is jazz made by someone who grew up on J Dilla. Trevor Lawrence Jr.'s...

Fifty-six records for one specific room, sequenced with a frankness that most quiet-storm sets avoid. / Cloud 9: The Bedroom Suite Mix There are two kinds of late-night playlist: the kind that is about atmosphere, and the kind that is about what the atmosphere is for. This is emphatically the second, and it is better for being honest about it — there is no pretence that this is dinner music. What makes it work across fifty-six tracks is range. It moves between seventies soul, nineties R&B, smooth jazz instrumentals and contemporary bedroom production, and it never stays in one decade long enough to become a nostalgia exercise. What to listen for The Art Of Noise's "Moments In Love" is the most surprising and most inspired inclusion — a 1983 British art-pop instrumental built from samplers and studio experiment, which became one of the most reliable slow-jam records ever made. Nobody involved in making it intended that. The Isley Brothers' ...

Twenty-eight tracks from an El Paso teenager who became, almost accidentally, the defining pop-R&B voice of the late 2010s. Khalid Khalid Robinson was still in high school in El Paso when "Location" started spreading, and the speed of what followed is genuinely unusual: within two years he was on records with Calvin Harris, Billie Eilish, Disclosure and half the American charts. The reason is the voice. It is warm, slightly hoarse, and sits in a low, conversational register that almost never strains — which makes it unusually easy to place next to anyone. He is a superb collaborator precisely because he does not compete with whoever else is on the track. The other reason is the subject matter. American Teen is one of very few R&B albums genuinely about being young: phones, cars, curfews, group chats, moving town. He wrote about adolescence while he was in it, which is harder than it sounds. What to listen for "Location" is the one...

Nineteen tracks from the Toronto singer, writer and producer who supplied the blueprint that a great deal of the last decade's R&B was built from. PARTYNEXTDOOR Jahron Brathwaite was the first artist signed to OVO Sound , and his influence considerably exceeds his fame. The murky, sparse, dancehall-inflected sound that dominated R&B from roughly 2014 onwards — low vocals, heavy reverb, tempos that sit between singing and rapping — is largely his invention, and a great many more famous records are built on it. He is also a serious songwriter for other people. He co-wrote Rihanna's "Work" , among other things, and his writing credits are a better measure of his importance than his own chart positions. What makes his own records worth hearing rather than merely respecting is the atmosphere. They are genuinely unsettling in places — records about excess that never sound like they are enjoying it. What to listen for "Come and See M...

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/21IgQkQ0WwnU773Hkw8Pvu?si=3f36b8de62c14ced

Sixty-five tracks and the longest volume in the series — and the one most interested in singers who had not yet been discovered. Chilled Soul Vol. 10 The tenth volume is the point at which the series stops being a personal mixtape and starts behaving like an A&R department. Sixty-five tracks, assembled around 2018, and an unusually high proportion of them by artists who were either unsigned or on their first release. Several have since become significant, and a few have vanished entirely, which is exactly what an honest snapshot of a moment looks like. What to listen for WILLOW and SZA's "9" is the most prescient pairing here — both artists were at very different points in their visibility and the track treats them as equals. Jorja Smith's "February 3rd" is early and essential, and Lianne La Havas's "Empty" recorded in Paris is the best vocal performance on the list. JP Cooper's BBC session reading of "Ex-Factor...

Fourteen tracks from a band that was dismissed as a disco act and has turned out to be one of the most important groups in the history of recorded music. CHIC CHIC were not a studio project with session players; they were a band, and that distinction explains everything. Nile Rodgers on guitar and Bernard Edwards on bass had played jazz and rock before they played anything danceable, Tony Thompson was one of the great rock drummers of the era, and Alfa Anderson and Luci Martin sang the parts rather than merely delivering them. Rodgers and Edwards worked to a principle they called Deep Hidden Meaning — the idea that every record needed a concept underneath the groove, something being said that was not the same as the words. It is why their catalogue survives when so much disco does not: the songs are about something. The band's commercial life was brutally short. The backlash against disco in 1979 made the name unsellable almost overnight, and both men spent...

Sixty records that never got the radio play they deserved. The title is a complaint and the playlist is the evidence. Underlooked / Underplayed / Undercharted This is the companion piece to the Unheralded set, and it makes a slightly different argument. Where that one collected artists who were unknown, this one collects records that were available, professionally released, often by artists with real careers — and simply did not get played. The reason matters. By the late 2010s American R&B radio had narrowed to a very small number of formats, and a great deal of excellent music fell outside all of them. This playlist is what that music sounds like. What to listen for Sabrina Claudio appears four times, which makes the point efficiently: a singer with a completely distinctive sound and almost no radio presence. Cleo Sol's "Why Don't You" is the most important inclusion in hindsight. At the time she was a little-known British singer; she has since ...

Nine tracks from a Colombian-American singer who has spent her career refusing to pick a genre, a language or a decade. Kali Uchis Karly-Marina Loaiza grew up between Virginia and Pereira, Colombia, and that split is the organising fact of her music. She sings in English and Spanish, sometimes in the same verse, and her records draw on doo-wop, bolero, reggaeton, psychedelic soul and trap without ever settling into any of them. What holds it together is a consistent aesthetic rather than a consistent sound: a deliberately retro, slightly lurid glamour, and a voice that is small, high and used with real precision. She writes about money, ambition and self-possession far more than about romance, which makes her lyrics considerably tougher than the sweetness of the production implies. She also made the rare move of building a Spanish-language career in parallel rather than as an afterthought, and it worked. What to listen for "After The Storm" with Tyler, The Cre...

Ninety-five records in tribute to the radio host who invented an entire format by accident, at the age of twenty, on a station that had nothing else to play.   The Original Quiet Storm: a tribute to Melvin Lindsey Melvin Lindsey was a student intern at WHUR , Howard University's radio station in Washington DC, when in 1976 he was asked to fill an evening shift at short notice. He played slow records — soul ballads, jazz-inflected pop, quiet album tracks — and the show, named after a Smokey Robinson song, became the most influential programming idea in Black American radio. Within a decade, stations across the United States had a Quiet Storm slot. The format is now so established that people assume it was always a genre. It was not: it was one young man's late-night record selection. Lindsey died in 1992, aged thirty-six. A ninety-five track tribute is the appropriate scale, because the format was always about duration rather than highlights. What to listen for...

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2JhwKYWfVj5YUJDsiZJYh7?si=7fe292a49b014fdc

Twenty-seven tracks from a rapper who called himself the Overweight Lover, meant it as a joke, and turned out to be one of the most consequential figures in hip-hop history. Heavy D (1967–2011) Dwight Arrington Myers was born in Jamaica, raised in Mount Vernon, New York, and was the first artist signed to Uptown Records — Andre Harrell's label, the institution that essentially invented the fusion of hip-hop and R&B that dominated the following two decades. That position matters more than his hit records. Heavy D was not just Uptown's first act; he later ran the label as its president, and he was the person who brought in a young intern named Sean Combs . A remarkable proportion of nineties Black music traces back through him. As an artist he was a genuine anomaly: a large man who danced superbly, a rapper whose records were unfailingly good-humoured at a moment when the genre was turning hard, and a Jamaican who kept dancehall audibly in his delivery. He di...

Fifty-six tracks with an unusually high proportion of singers who were, at the time, entirely unknown outside their own city. Chilled Soul Vol. 9 The ninth volume sits at the point where the series' taste crystallises. The production values are consistent — live-sounding, warm, uncluttered — and the selections come from an international spread of artists who had almost no commercial profile. What is notable in retrospect is the ratio. Roughly two-thirds of the artists here never became famous, and the set still holds up completely, which is the strongest possible argument for this kind of curation. What to listen for Thirdstory appears twice, and they are the discovery: a New York trio built on three-part harmony in a decade that had almost entirely abandoned it. "Only Love" is the pick. Seinabo Sey also appears twice — a Swedish-Gambian singer with an enormous, church-derived voice, and "I Owe You Nothing" is one of the best recor...