Forty tracks from the two men who built Philadelphia into a city that could compete with Motown, and who put a political conscience inside a dance record. Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff met in a Philadelphia elevator in the early 1960s. By 1971 they had founded Philadelphia International Records , and over the following decade they wrote and produced a body of work that rivals anything in American popular music. The sound — lush strings, a full horn section, immaculate arrangements by Thom Bell and Bobby Martin , and the house band MFSB — became known as the Philly sound, and it is the direct bridge between 1960s soul and disco. What distinguished them from their competitors was content. Gamble in particular insisted on records about work, family, racism and collective responsibility, delivered inside music designed for the radio and the dancefloor. "Wake Up Everybody" and "Love Train" are protest songs you can d...

Fifty-two tracks catching the exact moment when African pop stopped needing to be introduced to anybody. Volume six. The crossover years What this volume documents is a transition. Earlier editions of a series like this were doing discovery work; by this point the artists involved were charting internationally, appearing on American records, and being sought out rather than sought. The mix holds the chill-out brief while taking in Nigerian pop, South African house, amapiano, and the British Afro-fusion scene, which by this stage were effectively one industry with several postcodes. What to listen for Lojay and Sarz appear twice — "LV N ATTN" with Wizkid and "Monalisa" — and the LV N ATTN EP is one of the best Nigerian projects of its year. Sarz's production is the sparsest thing on this list and the most distinctive. Jorja Smith and GuiltyBeatz's "All of This" is the clearest illustration of the London–Accra connectio...

One hundred tracks with a single brief: funk, loud, no apologies. This is the deep end of the record collection. What funk actually is Funk is a rhythmic argument. It moved the emphasis in American popular music from the second and fourth beats to the first — the One, as James Brown insisted on calling it — and it made the bass and drums the lead instruments rather than the accompaniment. Everything else in the arrangement serves that. What a hundred-track set like this can do is show the idea developing: from Brown's 1970s band through Parliament-Funkadelic's cosmology, the boogie era's synth bass, Minneapolis, and into the modern revival. What to listen for James Brown's "The Payback" and "Get On The Good Foot" are the source. Everything else here is downstream, and "The Payback" in particular — nearly eight minutes built on a single vamp — is the whole philosophy in one record. George Clinton's "Atomic Dog...

Thirty-one more covers, and this volume leans toward the reinterpretations that reveal something the original was hiding. The second volume Where a first covers collection tends to gather the obvious triumphs, a second has to dig. What this one finds is a set of readings that mostly succeed by reduction — taking a busy record and removing things until whatever was underneath becomes audible. There is also a strand here worth noticing: several tracks come from television talent shows, which is a format usually treated as beneath serious consideration and which occasionally produces something real. What to listen for Amber Mark's "Love Is Stronger Than Pride" is the best thing here. Taking on Sade requires a specific kind of nerve, and Mark's version finds a percussive, unresolved quality the original keeps smooth. Daniel Caesar's "Made to Fall in Love" and Anthony David's "Amber" are the smoothest, and Tank's "I ...

Twenty-five tracks from three men in an Atlanta basement who invented Southern hip-hop and then quietly wrote one of the biggest pop records of the 1990s. Organized Noize Rico Wade , Ray Murray and Sleepy Brown worked out of a basement studio in Wade's mother's house in East Point, Atlanta — The Dungeon . What came out of it reshaped American music. Their method was the opposite of the prevailing one. Where New York producers built from samples, Organized Noize used live musicians — real bass, live guitar, horns, Sleepy Brown singing hooks — and applied a Southern rhythmic sensibility rooted in funk and gospel. That decision is why OutKast and Goodie Mob sounded like nothing else when they arrived. The Dungeon Family that grew around them — OutKast, Goodie Mob, Society of Soul, Big Rube, and later Janelle Monáe and Killer Mike — is one of the most productive collectives in the history of the genre. Rico Wade died in April 2024. W...

One hundred tracks mixing music, speeches and spoken word into a single argument. This is a political education disguised as a playlist, and it is not neutral.   A playlist as a position What makes this set unusual is that it does not separate the music from the talking. Songs sit next to excerpts from Malcolm X , commentary from Mumia Abu-Jamal , and analysis from writers including Tim Wise and Christian Parenti — a structure that treats the whole thing as one continuous argument about American history and power. That is a genuine tradition rather than an innovation. Recorded speech has sat alongside music in Black American political culture for decades, from the Last Poets through Gil Scott-Heron to the spoken interludes on hip-hop albums. Some of the voices here are contested figures, and it is worth knowing that going in. Mumia Abu-Jamal's 1982 conviction for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner remains the subject of sustained legal challen...

Sixteen tracks from a band that launched one of soul's great voices and kept going after he left. L.T.D. deserve more than a footnote. Love, Togetherness and Devotion L.T.D. — the initials stand for Love, Togetherness and Devotion — formed in Greensboro, North Carolina and became one of the significant funk-soul bands of the 1970s. Ten members at their peak, with a full horn section, which was expensive and increasingly unusual by the end of the decade. Their lead singer for the key years was Jeffrey Osborne , who also played drums. Osborne has one of the warmest, most immediately recognisable voices in soul music — a big, slightly grainy baritone with enormous range — and he left in 1980 for a solo career that made him a star. The band's own catalogue has been somewhat overshadowed by that departure, which is a shame, because the ensemble playing is superb. What to listen for "Love Ballad" is the essential record. Written by Skip Scar...

Thirty-nine tracks where soul and jazz stop being separate things. Volume twenty-seven leans toward the piano, the standard and the late hour. A jazzy affair The jazz end of a soul series is where curation gets hardest, because the two audiences have different tolerances — soul listeners want a groove, jazz listeners want harmonic movement, and a mix that satisfies both has to find records doing both at once. This one solves it largely through singers. Most of the selections here are vocal, and the jazz content sits in the arrangements and the chord choices rather than in extended soloing. What to listen for Ahmad Jamal's "Dolphin Dance" is the most serious jazz on the list. Jamal is one of the most influential pianists in the music's history — Miles Davis reorganised his own quintet partly around Jamal's use of space — and hearing him play Herbie Hancock's composition is a genuine treat. Melody Gardot's "Over The Rainbow" and Dia...

Ten tracks from a band that has been together for over forty years and has never made a lazy record. Like a River is the one with the Brazilian heart. Yellowjackets Yellowjackets formed in Los Angeles in 1977 out of guitarist Robben Ford's band and have been recording continuously ever since, with keyboardist Russell Ferrante as the constant. They have won multiple Grammys and something like thirty nominations. They get filed as fusion or contemporary jazz, and both labels undersell them. This is a band with serious compositional ambition — the writing is dense, the metres shift, and the arrangements reward close attention in a way that the smooth-jazz shelf does not prepare you for. Like a River (1993) features bassist Jimmy Haslip , saxophonist Bob Mintzer and drummer William Kennedy , and is among their most atmospheric records. What to listen for "Man Facing North" is the standout and the most unusual thing here. It features Naná Vasconce...

Fifteen tracks from an artist who spent a decade being underestimated and then made the best mainstream pop album of its year. Dua Lipa Dua Lipa was born in London to Kosovar Albanian parents, moved to Pristina as a teenager, and returned to London alone at fifteen to pursue music. That detail is worth knowing — the self-possession in her public presentation is not manufactured. Her early career drew a persistent and slightly unfair criticism about live performance and stage presence, which she addressed by getting considerably better at both. Future Nostalgia (2020) then changed the conversation entirely: a disco and nu-disco record released in the first weeks of the pandemic, meticulously constructed, and genuinely fun in a year with very little of it. She has since become one of the few current pop stars with an identifiable aesthetic rather than a rotating one. What to listen for "New Rules" is the record that made her, and it is a smarter song tha...

Twenty-nine tracks from a west London songwriter who was twenty when her debut won the Mercury Prize. Arlo Parks writes like a novelist. Arlo Parks Anais Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho is from Hammersmith, west London, of Nigerian, Chadian and French heritage. She began publishing poetry before she released music, and that is the key to everything — her songs are built around observed detail rather than sentiment, with named characters and specific scenes. Collapsed in Sunbeams (2021) won the Mercury Prize and the BRIT for Breakthrough Artist. She was twenty, and the album deals directly with depression, queerness, and watching friends struggle — without ever tipping into either despair or self-help. Her delivery is almost conversational, half-sung, and deliberately understated. It is the opposite of a big vocal performance and considerably harder to sustain. What to listen for "Black Dog" is the essential track and one of the most honest songs anyo...

Twenty tracks from one of the most successful songwriting partnerships in history. Elton John wrote the music; Bernie Taupin wrote the words; they mostly did it apart. Elton John and Bernie Taupin The partnership is the story. Elton John and Bernie Taupin answered the same 1967 advertisement in a music paper and have written together for nearly sixty years using a method that should not work: Taupin writes complete lyrics and hands them over; John sets them to music, often in under an hour, frequently without asking what they mean. What that produced, particularly between 1970 and 1976, is one of the great runs in popular music — seven consecutive number one albums in America, and a body of songs that has proved almost indestructible. John is also a considerable pianist with a gospel and boogie-woogie foundation, and his commitment to AIDS research and to championing other artists — he has been an unusually generous public advocate for younger musicians ...

Fifty-three tracks built for a specific purpose: a long drive, windows down, nobody in a hurry. Volume twelve. Music for the interstate A driving mix has requirements a listening mix does not. It has to hold attention without demanding it, sustain energy across hours, and survive being interrupted. That means mid-tempo, strong grooves, and very few records that only work at full volume or full concentration. What is assembled here is a snapshot of the Afro-diaspora at a particular moment — heavy on Nigerian pop, British soul and the places where the two meet. What to listen for Wizkid and Tems' "Essence" is the centre of gravity. It was the first Nigerian song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 and effectively opened American radio to Afrobeats, and it remains a genuinely lovely record. Tems appears three times in total, which reflects exactly where she was at this point — the most sought-after voice on the continent. "Too Bad" with Sho...

Forty-two tracks, volume five, and this one catches South African house and Nigerian pop in the middle of merging. The year the two scenes met What makes this volume a useful document is its timing. The amapiano wave was breaking out of South Africa, Nigerian artists were beginning to record over it, and the British diaspora was connecting the two — and this set has all three happening at once. The chill-out framing keeps it listenable across the full length, but there is considerably more range here than the title suggests. What to listen for "Izolo" is the amapiano landmark: DJ Maphorisa , Tyler ICU , Visca , Madumane , Mpura and Daliwonga on one record. It carries extra weight now — Mpura died in a car crash in 2021, shortly after this period, and he was one of the genre's most distinctive voices. Sha Sha's "Woza" is the other essential South African entry. Zimbabwean-born and often called the queen of amapiano, she won a BET award ...

Four movements, thirty-three minutes, recorded in a single day in December 1964. This is not background music and it was never meant to be. A Love Supreme John Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme on 9 December 1964 at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, with the quartet that had been together for three years: McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. It is a devotional work. Coltrane had overcome heroin addiction in 1957 and described the experience as a spiritual awakening; this album is the offering he made in response. The liner notes, which he wrote himself, open with the words "Dear Listener: All Praise Be To God To Whom All Praise Is Due," and the fourth movement is a wordless setting of a poem he included in the sleeve — Coltrane plays the syllables of the text on the saxophone. It sold in numbers almost no jazz record of its ambition has matched, and it has become a genuine sacred text; an African...

Seventy-four tracks making a case that does not need making. British soul has been world-class for forty years and remains almost entirely undocumented. Brits got soul The history runs deeper than most listeners realise. Britain's Black communities — Caribbean, West African, and their descendants — built a parallel music economy from the 1960s onward: sound systems, pirate radio, soul weekenders, rare groove nights and specialist record shops, largely ignored by the mainstream press and enormously influential on everything that followed. What came out of it is a distinct tradition. British soul tends to be cooler in temperature than American, more indebted to reggae and jazz, and less concerned with vocal display. Seventy-four tracks is about the minimum needed to show the range. What to listen for Omar's "There's Nothing Like This" is the essential record. Released independently in 1990, it is the founding document of modern British soul, and Om...

Ninety tracks from the label that brought Jamaican music to the world by the simple method of never stopping. VP Records is a family business that became an institution. Vincent and Patricia VP Records takes its name from Vincent and Patricia Chin , who ran Randy's Record Mart and Studio 17 in Kingston — one of the most important recording spaces in Jamaican history — before emigrating to New York in the late 1970s and founding VP in Queens. What they built is the largest independent reggae and dancehall label in the world, and the primary route by which Jamaican music reaches international audiences. The Strictly the Best compilation series, running since 1990, is effectively the genre's annual report. This selection concentrates on the late-1980s and 1990s dancehall era — the period when digital riddims replaced live bands and the music became faster, harder and enormously influential on hip-hop. What to listen for Ini Kamoze's "Hot Stepper...

Fifty-five tracks assembled around a quality rather than a genre. The title is a thesis, and the music mostly supports it. A dedication, and a premise worth examining The framing here — the feminine voice as an energy that is soft, yielding, nurturing and nourishing — comes out of a familiar way of thinking about gender as complementary energies, with roots in Taoist yin and yang and in various strands of contemporary spiritual practice. It is worth saying plainly that this is a contested framework. Associating softness and nurture specifically with femininity has a long history of being used to narrow what women are permitted to be, and a number of the artists on this playlist have spent their careers refusing exactly that association. Solange , H.E.R. and Amber Mark are not soft or yielding in any useful sense; they are precise, controlled and frequently furious. What the selection actually demonstrates is something more interesting than its title: that r...

Sixteen tracks from a Tony and Grammy winner with two Oscar nominations, who also happens to be a genuinely excellent soul singer. Leslie Odom Jr. Leslie Odom Jr. grew up in Philadelphia, trained at Carnegie Mellon, and became internationally known as Aaron Burr in Hamilton — a performance that won him the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical and, with the cast recording, a Grammy. What is less widely known is that he was a recording artist before and has continued since, working largely in the Great American Songbook and in soul. He is a genuine jazz-literate singer with excellent time and an unusually clear sense of what a lyric means — which is the actor's contribution. His portrayal of Sam Cooke in One Night in Miami earned Academy Award nominations for both acting and for the song "Speak Now," which he co-wrote. What to listen for "Wait for It" is the Hamilton track and one of the best things in that show — Burr's entire...