The brother was a fucking genius! Who else can combine Pop, Gospel, Funk & Rock like this & command the stage??

Nineteen records from the guitarist who wrote the rhythm part that half of modern pop is still trying to copy. Nile Rodgers Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards formed the most efficient hit factory of the late seventies and then, unusually, kept going. Their working method as the Chic Organization was unlike anyone else's: they wrote, produced, arranged and played the records themselves, treating each act they took on as a separate creative brief rather than a chance to repeat the formula. Rodgers' guitar style is the most imitated element — that clipped, percussive chord figure he calls chucking, played high on the neck with almost no sustain, functioning as a rhythm instrument rather than a lead one. It works because it leaves a hole exactly where Edwards' bass wants to be. Then came the second career. When disco collapsed and the Chic name became commercially toxic, Rodgers reinvented himself as a producer for hire and made career-defining records for artis...

Seventeen tracks from the producer who built the sound of SOLAR Records — and, through it, a large part of what the early eighties sounded like on the radio. Leon Sylvers III Leon Sylvers III came out of a family act. The Sylvers were a large, talented Memphis-born family group whose hits he wrote and played on, and his younger brother Foster Sylvers had a hit of his own as a child. Where he mattered most, though, was as the in-house producer at SOLAR — Dick Griffey's Sound of Los Angeles Records — where between roughly 1979 and 1984 he was responsible for an extraordinary run of records by The Whispers, Shalamar, Dynasty and Carrie Lucas. His signature is instantly identifiable once you know it: a hard, clipped synthesised bass, bright keyboard stabs, handclaps on the backbeat, and an arrangement that keeps the midrange almost empty so the vocal sits forward. It is one of the most heavily sampled sounds in hip-hop, precisely because there is so much ro...

Sixty-six records for the hours after midnight, sequenced by someone who understands that the point of a late-night set is patience. Til The Break Of Dawn Jamz Vol. 1 The quiet-storm set is one of the hardest formats to get right, because the failure mode is so obvious: string enough slow songs together and you produce wallpaper. What keeps this one alive across sixty-six tracks is that it refuses to stay in one decade, and it keeps changing the kind of intimacy on offer. There are seventies Philadelphia ballads next to 2020 R&B, smooth jazz instrumentals next to neo-soul, and the transitions work because the sequencing is matching feel rather than tempo or era. What to listen for The Isley Brothers' "Don't Say Goodnight" in both parts is the centrepiece of the older material — eight minutes of Ernie Isley's guitar and Ronald's falsetto that essentially defines the format. Maxwell's "This Woman's Work" is the bravest inc...

Thirty-eight tracks from the volume where the series deliberately wanders off the map — alternative soul, left-field R&B, and a few things that defy the label entirely. Chilled Soul 22: Mo' Alt Shit The subtitle is doing real work here. Most volumes in this series stay within a recognisable soul tradition; this one goes looking for the edges, and the result is the most unpredictable set in the run. The organising idea seems to be texture rather than genre: everything here has a certain haze to it, a preference for atmosphere over impact, and a willingness to let a song end without resolving. That lets Nina Simone sit next to Steve Lacy without either sounding out of place. What to listen for Nina Simone's "Baltimore" is the boldest inclusion. It is a Randy Newman song, recorded in 1978 in a reggae-inflected arrangement Simone reportedly disliked, and it is extraordinary — one of the saddest vocal performances in her catalogue. Steve Lacy's ...

Fifteen tracks from a preacher's son who made one of the best R&B debuts of the 2010s and then took his time about everything that followed. Ro James Ronnie James Tucker was born on a United States military base in Germany and raised largely in the church — his father was a minister — which is the standard biography for a soul singer except that in his case the tension between those two facts is audible in the music. His records are explicitly, unapologetically sensual, and they are also structured like gospel: call and response, sustained builds, the voice cracking at the top of a phrase rather than gliding. He sounds like someone who learned to sing in a place where the subject matter was different but the technique was identical. What kept him from a bigger career is probably the pacing — long gaps between albums, and no interest in chasing whatever the radio was doing. What it produced instead is a catalogue with almost no filler. What to listen f...

Seventeen tracks from a songwriter, poet and multi-instrumentalist whose records sound like nothing else coming out of Atlanta.   Mereba Mereba is the most quietly impressive member of Spillage Village , the Atlanta collective that also produced EARTHGANG, JID and 6LACK. She is Ethiopian-American, grew up partly in the American South and partly abroad, and came to music through poetry — which is obvious in the writing and unusual in the genre. She plays guitar and produces, and the records are built accordingly: acoustic figures under programmed drums, folk phrasing over hip-hop rhythm, and a voice that stays low and conversational where most singers would push. The result sits somewhere between neo-soul, folk and rap without belonging to any of them. What to listen for "Black Truck" is the signature, and the extended version here is the one to hear — a song that manages to be about leaving, driving, and self-possession all at once, over almost noth...

Fifty-one records from the production duo who made hip-hop commercially unstoppable and got criticised for it for twenty years. Trackmasters (Poke & Tone) Jean-Claude "Poke" Olivier and Samuel "Tone" Barnes are among the most consequential producers in hip-hop and among the least celebrated, for one reason: they were unembarrassed about making hits. Their method was straightforward and enormously effective. Take a recognisable pop or soul record, keep enough of it that a listener recognises the melody within two bars, add a hard New York drum programme, and put a great rapper over the top. Purists called it selling out. It also took the music from a specialist audience to the centre of American pop, and the records themselves are far better made than the criticism allows. What to listen for The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Juicy" is the argument-ending track. Built on Mtume's "Juicy Fruit" , it is simultaneously one of th...

Twenty-one tracks from the most divisive British band of their generation — and the one most likely to be taken seriously in twenty years. The 1975 The 1975 are four men from Manchester who have been playing together since school, and who arrived looking like a straightforward pop-rock band before revealing themselves to be something considerably odder: a group whose albums include ambient interludes, gospel choirs, saxophone solos, spoken-word essays and an environmental address delivered by Greta Thunberg. The polarisation is the point. Matty Healy writes lyrics that are self-aware to the edge of self-sabotage, and the band's production — mostly by drummer George Daniel with Healy — is deliberately maximalist, drawing on eighties pop, ambient music, Britpop and contemporary R&B within a single album. What survives the arguments is the songwriting. Underneath the conceptual apparatus there are a great many extremely well-built pop songs. What ...

Twenty pieces for the times when words are the problem. Classical repertoire, film themes and a little modern minimalism, sequenced purely for stillness. ...meditate... A classical playlist assembled by someone whose main territory is soul and jazz is usually worth more than one assembled by a specialist, because the selections are made by ear rather than by catalogue. That is exactly what this is: twenty pieces chosen for how they feel rather than for their place in the repertoire. The result cuts across four centuries without apology, and it works because the organising principle is consistent — slow tempo, small forces, no drama. What to listen for Satie's Gymnopédie No. 3 in the Branford Marsalis arrangement is the perfect opening. Satie wrote these pieces in 1888 as deliberately furniture-like music, decades before anyone used that phrase, and the saxophone reading honours that intention rather than decorating it. Max Richter's "On the Nature of ...

One hundred records chosen not because they are the best but because they mattered — which makes this the most revealing playlist on the site.   This playlist represents some of the songs that shaped me from a child all the way to today. These songs are the ones that resonate the most & will never grow old. 100 Songs That Impacted My Life Every serious listener eventually attempts this list, and almost everyone fails in the same way: they produce a list of great records instead of a list of consequential ones. This set avoids that trap, and you can tell because of what is on it. There is no attempt at balance, no defensive inclusion of critically respected albums, and no shame about soft rock, adult contemporary or the songs that were simply playing at a particular moment. That honesty is what makes it worth hearing rather than merely worth scrolling. What to listen for Marvin Gaye's "Mercy Mercy Me" opens, which places the whole list: What's Goin...

  New York Times : Andre Harrell, an innovative music executive who in the late 1980s founded Uptown Records, a crucial bridge between the worlds of hip-hop and R&B, and who gave the first career break to Sean Combs, who became one of hip-hop’s signature moguls and global ambassadors, died late Thursday night at his home in West Hollywood, Calif. He was 59. His ex-wife, Wendy Credle, said that the cause was heart failure and that Mr. Harrell had had heart problems for some time. In the early to mid-1980s, hip-hop was growing prodigiously, and Mr. Harrell was at the center of the genre as a rapper and an executive. But his vision for the music wasn’t always in line with his peers’ — he preferred a splash of sophistication and an approach that would speak to older and younger generations alike. When he founded Uptown Records in 1986, he created a home for artists who melded hip-hop swagger with traditional R&B smoothness, who had sleek surfaces and hard edges. For almost a ...

Thirty-one tracks tracing a catalogue of just three studio albums across twenty years. D'Angelo died on 14 October 2025, aged fifty-one. D'Angelo (1974–2025) Brown Sugar arrived in 1995 and reset what R&B could sound like. Michael Eugene Archer was twenty-one, played most of the instruments himself, wrote and produced nearly all of it, and delivered a record whose rhythm sat so far behind the beat that it initially sounded like a mistake. That looseness was the innovation. Working from Al Green, Prince, Marvin Gaye and the church, D'Angelo built a groove that breathed — drums slightly late, bass slightly early, everything blurred at the edges — and an entire movement followed him into it. The word neo-soul was invented largely to describe what he had done. He then released only two more albums in twenty years, and both were extraordinary. His death in October 2025 closed one of the most frustrating and most admired catalogues in modern music. What to...

Thirty-two tracks balanced on the line between hip-hop and R&B at the moment when that line stopped meaning very much. ChilledSoul Vol. 19: Hip Hop / R&B Mix The premise of this volume is a distinction that was already dissolving when it was made. By the late 2010s the separation between rapping and singing had become a matter of degree rather than of kind, and the most interesting records were the ones that refused to choose. What holds the set together is production rather than genre — a shared preference for muted drums, jazz-derived chords and vocals mixed into rather than on top of the track. What to listen for Robert Glasper's "Gone" , with Cordae, Bilal and Herbie Hancock , is the most significant thing here. Glasper's Black Radio project put jazz musicians and hip-hop artists in a room as equals rather than as guests, and having Hancock on the track makes the lineage explicit. Brent Faiyaz's "Trust" is the template for a ...

Twenty-one tracks from a singer who spent years engineering other people's records before anyone heard his own — and it shows in every mix.   SiR Sir Darryl Farris came into the business through the back door. He worked as an engineer and a background vocalist, wrote for other artists, and only stepped forward as a solo act in his thirties, by which point he had a technical command of the studio that most singers never acquire. That history explains what his records sound like. They are unusually well balanced, with real attention to the low end and to how much space a vocal actually needs, and they are patient in a way that suggests someone who has spent a long time listening to other people's sessions and forming opinions. His brother is D Smoke , the rapper and teacher who won the first season of Rhythm + Flow — which makes for one of the more remarkable family records in contemporary music. What to listen for "John Redcorn" is the one to hear...

Sixteen tracks of something close to weather — ambient folk built from reverb, falsetto and a great deal of restraint. Haux Haux is the recording name of American songwriter Woodson Black , and the project belongs to a specific corner of contemporary music that has no settled label: acoustic songwriting recorded with the production values of ambient electronica. The method is consistent. A guitar or piano figure is played simply, then placed in an enormous amount of reverb; a falsetto vocal sits just above the noise floor; strings or synthesised pads arrive late and leave early. Nothing is emphasised. The emotional information is carried almost entirely by texture and space rather than by dynamics. Done badly this is wallpaper. Done as well as it is here, it produces music that rewards close listening precisely because so little is happening — every small change registers. What to listen for "Caves" is the entry point and the most complete realisa...

On March 30th, 2020, we lost a legend. Bill Withers was one of the few authentic souls in the music industry that opened his soul to the world for us to peer through & to a greater or lesser extent, we were transformed. That was the power of his music. Of all the articles I’ve read over the years about this extraordinary artist, this is the one that stands out for me: Bill Withers: The Soul Man Who Walked Away . Collected here are my favorite songs by Bill Withers. This is the perfect music for us to listen to as we stay locked inside our homes amidst the chaos & tragedies swirling outside our door steps. Be kind to each other, y’all & stay safe.

Every era has an abundance of classic recordings making it hard for me to say which era was the “best”. I think some genres did better in particular eras like Reggae which was truly ground-breaking in the 70s. Pop was at its best in the 80s & Neosoul held the 90s down indubitably. The 2000s has its memorable moments that many future music historians as genre-breaking in its own right. I love it all!! I’ve gathered here my R&B faves of the 2000s broken down by year. I threw in some Pop/Rock classics that are downright soulful……. 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Forty-four tracks and a title that tells you the brief: this is the volume that moves. Deep house from Johannesburg, afrobeats from Lagos, and the beginnings of amapiano. African ChillZone III — Move!!! The third volume is the most South African of the series, and that focus is what makes it valuable as a document. Assembled around 2020, it catches the exact moment when amapiano stopped being a Pretoria township sound and started travelling — and it puts that transition alongside the deep house and Afro-house scene that preceded it. If you want to understand how South African dance music got to where it is, this is a better education than any single album. What to listen for Master KG's "Jerusalema" in the Burna Boy remix opens, and its global success in 2020 remains one of the strangest chart stories of the decade — a gospel-inflected house record in Zulu, spread by a dance video from Angola. Sha Sha's "Tender Love" with DJ Maphor...