Eighteen tracks from an album about therapy, generational trauma and the impossibility of being anybody's saviour. This is not an easy record and it was not meant to be. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, 2022 Kendrick Lamar had not released an album in five years when this arrived in May 2022, and it is the most difficult thing he has made. Where To Pimp a Butterfly was a public reckoning with race and fame, Mr. Morale turns almost entirely inward: infidelity, therapy, his father, his mother's trauma, his own inherited damage, and an explicit refusal of the role his audience had assigned him. The framing device is a therapy session, and Whitney Alford — his partner — and the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle both appear as voices. It is structured as a double album, and it is genuinely uncomfortable in places, on purpose. It won the Grammy for Best Rap Album and divided his audience more than anything he has done. What to listen for "United In Grie...

Twenty-five tracks from a singer, pianist, arranger and multi-instrumentalist who was, at his peak, the most musically accomplished man in R&B. Brian McKnight Brian McKnight is from Buffalo, New York, and grew up in a Seventh-day Adventist household singing in church — his older brother Claude McKnight founded the a cappella group Take 6 , which tells you a great deal about the harmonic standards in that family. What separates him from his peers is musicianship. McKnight writes, arranges, produces and plays multiple instruments, and his records are built on genuinely sophisticated harmony — the chord movement in his ballads owes more to jazz than to anything on R&B radio. He has sixteen Grammy nominations and no wins, which is its own kind of career. What to listen for "Back At One" is the signature record and a small marvel of construction — a counting song that never feels like a gimmick, with a bridge that lifts exactly where it...

Eight tracks, and every one of them is a monument. This is the Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes catalogue at the moment Teddy Pendergrass was the greatest singer in America. Philadelphia International, at full power Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes had been working since the 1950s without much success when they signed to Gamble and Huff's Philadelphia International in 1972. Two things then happened at once: they got the best writing and production team in American music, and their drummer, Teddy Pendergrass , moved to the front of the stage. Pendergrass had a voice like nothing else — a huge, rough, gospel-scarred baritone that could sound utterly desolate one moment and physically overwhelming the next. Melvin remained the group's leader and namesake, which became a source of tension, and Pendergrass left in 1976 for a solo career that made him the biggest male soul star of the late 1970s. A 1982 car accident left Pendergrass paralysed from the chest down...

Eleven tracks for a rapper who spent a decade turning independence into a business model and was murdered outside the shop he built. We miss you, bro. Ermias Asghedom, 1985–2019 Nipsey Hussle was from South Central Los Angeles, of Eritrean and African American descent, and affiliated with the Rollin' 60s Crips from his teens. What he built out of that starting point is the reason he is remembered as more than a rapper. He spent roughly a decade releasing mixtapes independently and refusing the major-label deals available to him. In 2013 he sold Crenshaw for one hundred dollars a copy — a deliberate provocation about the value of music that Jay-Z answered by buying a hundred of them. He opened The Marathon Clothing store on Slauson Avenue, invested in the neighbourhood, funded a STEM centre, and worked on programmes to reduce gang violence. His debut studio album Victory Lap arrived in 2018 and was nominated for a Grammy. He was shot dead outside his own stor...

Forty-one tracks that treat the African continent and its dance floors as one continuous conversation. Volume seven, and the ear has not slipped. The chill end, seventh time out What keeps this series worth following is the refusal to chase the biggest record. The selections are made on mood — melodic, mid-tempo, built to run for hours — which means South African deep house sits comfortably next to Nigerian pop and neither has to shout. This volume in particular catches a specific moment: the point at which amapiano's log drum had become a continental default and Nigerian artists were beginning to reach for South African producers rather than the other way round. What to listen for Rema appears four times, which is the right call for this period. "Calm Down" became one of the most-streamed African records ever made, but "Peace Of Mind" and "Runaway" are the better songs. Tems gets two — "Damages" and ...

Six tracks from a band of Los Angeles session musicians who decided to become a band and accidentally made one of the most-streamed songs of all time. The best players in the room Toto formed in 1976 out of the Los Angeles session scene — Jeff Porcaro and his brothers, Steve Lukather , David Paich , Steve Porcaro , David Hungate and singer Bobby Kimball . These were the musicians other artists hired: between them they played on Steely Dan records, Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees , and, most famously, most of Michael Jackson's Thriller . That pedigree is the reason critics disliked them. A band of professionals with no scene, no scruffiness and no ideology looked like the opposite of rock authenticity, and they were treated accordingly despite selling enormously and winning six Grammys in one night for Toto IV . The reassessment has been complete and slightly absurd — "Africa" became an internet phenomenon in the 2010s and is now among the most-streamed ...

Eleven slow jams from a singer who was accepted by Black radio in a way very few white artists ever have been, and who earned it. Jon B. Jonathan David Buck grew up in Rhode Island and Southern California in a musical family — both parents were classically trained musicians and teachers. He was signed to Tracey Edmonds' Yab Yum label, an imprint of Babyface's Epic-distributed operation, which put him inside the most successful R&B machine of the decade from the start. The Babyface connection was formative. Jon B. wrote and produced much of his own material, plays multiple instruments, and his records sit squarely in the 1990s quiet storm tradition rather than attempting anything crossover. That he was fully accepted by an audience with every reason to be sceptical is worth stating plainly. It happened because the records were good and because he never positioned himself as anything other than a student of the form. What to listen for "They Don'...

Thirteen tracks from a Nigerian-American DJ and producer who has been one of the connective figures between Lagos, New York and the wider Afrobeats world. DJ Tunez Michael Babatunde Adeyinka was born in Nigeria and raised largely in the United States, and built his reputation as a DJ before moving into production. His most consequential relationship is with Wizkid , for whom he has served as tour DJ and frequent collaborator, and that association has placed him at the centre of Afrobeats' international expansion. What he does well is assembly. A DJ Tunez record is typically a collision of people who might not otherwise be in a room together — a Nigerian singer, a South African vocalist, an American R&B artist — over a groove built to work in a club anywhere. What to listen for "PAMI" is the biggest and the best demonstration of the method: Wizkid , Adekunle Gold and Omah Lay on one record, each doing something different, and the whole thing...

Thirty-seven tracks from a British-Ghanaian producer whose warm, unhurried records helped define the whole Afro-fusion sound. Juls is a curator as much as a beatmaker. Juls Julian Nicco-Annan was born in London to Ghanaian parents, spent formative years in Ghana, and has built a career that moves fluidly between Accra, Lagos and London. He is one of the small number of producers genuinely responsible for the sound that took over British and West African radio in the 2010s. His signature is space and warmth. A Juls track typically has fewer elements than its peers — a highlife-derived guitar figure, a soft percussion bed, a bassline with real melodic movement — and it trusts the singer to fill the rest. That restraint is why his records sound less dated than a lot of what surrounded them. He is also a genuine connector. The guest list across his catalogue reads like a map of the entire Afro-diaspora. What to listen for "Your Number" with King Promi...

Twenty-four tracks from an artist who was a teenager when he signed and is now responsible for one of the most-streamed African songs ever recorded. Rema Divine Ikubor is from Benin City, Nigeria, and was discovered by D'Prince — brother of the producer Don Jazzy — after posting a freestyle over a Mavin Records instrumental. He was signed to Jonzing World under Mavin at seventeen. What he brought was a genuinely new hybrid. Rema's melodies draw on Indian and Arabic scales as much as on West African ones — he has spoken about growing up on Bollywood soundtracks — and he calls the result Afrorave . Whether or not the label sticks, the melodic sensibility is unmistakably his. "Calm Down," particularly in its Selena Gomez remix, became a global phenomenon and one of the most-streamed songs of its era, making him the most internationally visible Nigerian artist of his generation. What to listen for "Dumebi" is the record that...

Twenty-one tracks from a Swedish-Iranian singer who makes the most luxuriously sad records in modern R&B. Snoh Aalegra is a specialist in longing. Snoh Aalegra Shahrzad Fooladi was born in Uppsala, Sweden, to Iranian parents who had left Iran after the revolution. She was signed to a major label at fourteen under a different name, spent years being shaped into something she did not want to be, and eventually walked away to start again. What she rebuilt is unusually coherent. Her records are built on lush, live-sounding production — strings, real bass, a lot of reverb — and a voice that stays deliberately restrained even at emotional peaks. The obvious comparison is Sade , and it holds: both make music about wanting something at a temperature just above cool. Her father died when she was young, and grief runs through the catalogue as a constant. What to listen for "I Want You Around" is the signature record, built on a Little Dragon sample and...

Eighteen tracks from a British producer who started in dubstep, became a singer-songwriter, and ended up as the most in-demand collaborator in American rap. James Blake James Blake emerged from the London post-dubstep scene around 2009 making instrumental tracks defined by enormous sub-bass and long silences. Then he started singing, and his self-titled 2011 album turned out to be something else entirely: a piano-and-voice record with electronic architecture, and one of the most influential British albums of its decade. His 2013 album Overgrown won the Mercury Prize. Since then he has become an unlikely fixture in American hip-hop — working with Kendrick Lamar , Beyoncé , Jay-Z , Frank Ocean , Travis Scott and André 3000 — largely because his sense of space is unlike anyone else's. He has also spoken publicly and usefully about depression and about the "sad boy" framing applied to men who write about emotion. What to listen for ...

Thirteen tracks and roughly twenty-five guests. Black Radio III closes a trilogy that spent a decade arguing jazz and Black popular music were never separate things. Black Radio III, 2022 Robert Glasper's Black Radio arrived in 2012 and won the Grammy for Best R&B Album — a jazz pianist's record, in an R&B category, which was the entire point. The premise was simple and radical: put a jazz trio behind singers and rappers, treat both traditions as equals, and see what happens. The third volume, released in 2022, is the most explicitly political of the three. It opens with a spoken-word piece by Amir Sulaiman and returns repeatedly to questions of Black life, faith and survival, without ever becoming a lecture. It won Best R&B Album at the Grammys, ten years after the first one did. What to listen for "Black Superhero" is the statement track — Killer Mike , BJ The Chicago Kid and Big K.R.I.T. on one record, and a genuinely thrilling...

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Twenty-nine tracks from a Philadelphia keyboard player who went from a band's touring musician to the most in-demand producer in hip-hop, twice. (Not just some white boy from South Florida….Don’t get it twisted!) Scott Storch Scott Storch is the rare producer whose career has two entirely separate first acts. He came up as the keyboard player in The Roots — that is him on "You Got Me" — which means his grounding is live band musicianship rather than sampling. He then left Philadelphia, went to Los Angeles, and played on Dr. Dre's 2001 , where his keyboard work on "Still D.R.E." produced one of the most recognisable piano figures in the music. From there he built a production catalogue that dominated radio in the mid-2000s. His signature is specific: real keyboards rather than samples, an obvious taste for Middle Eastern and Mediterranean scales, and an unusually clean, dry mix that leaves the drums exposed. What to lis...

Twelve tracks from the Bristol trip-hop band who were always the warmest of the bunch. Morcheeba made unease sound like a Sunday afternoon. Morcheeba Morcheeba formed in the mid-1990s around brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey and singer Skye Edwards , and arrived into the middle of the trip-hop wave alongside Portishead, Massive Attack and Tricky. What distinguished them was temperature. Where Portishead was genuinely bleak and Massive Attack genuinely menacing, Morcheeba brought blues guitar, country-ish slide and a singer with a warm, unhurried voice. The result was more accessible and, for a long time, less critically respected — which now looks like a category error. Skye left in 2003, released solo work, and rejoined in 2010. The band has continued in various configurations since. What to listen for "Over and Over" and "Big Calm" are the essentials from their strongest period — Big Calm (1998) is the album most people name. "S...

Nine tracks from the 1980 album where Al Jarreau worked out how to be a pop star without giving up a single thing that made him extraordinary. This Time, 1980 By 1980 Al Jarreau had made four albums and built a devoted following, particularly in Europe, on the strength of a vocal technique with no real precedent — percussive, elastic, capable of imitating instruments, and rooted in serious jazz training. This Time , produced by Jay Graydon , was the commercial breakthrough. Graydon was a Los Angeles session guitarist and producer at the centre of the West Coast studio world — he played the solo on Steely Dan's "Peg" and co-wrote "After the Love Has Gone" for Earth, Wind & Fire — and he gave Jarreau a polished, radio-ready setting without smoothing out the vocal invention. The album went gold, won a Grammy, and set up Breakin' Away the following year, which made him a star. What to listen for "Spain (I Can Recall)" is...

Seventeen tracks from a mixtape made in lockdown by an artist who had spent a decade making some of the most demanding music in pop. CAPRISONGS is FKA twigs having fun, which is its own kind of statement. CAPRISONGS, 2022 Tahliah Barnett grew up in Gloucestershire, worked as a backing dancer in London, and emerged with LP1 in 2014 as one of the most singular artists in British music — a producer, choreographer and director whose work sits somewhere between avant-garde electronic music and pop. MAGDALENE (2019) was made in the aftermath of surgery for uterine fibroids and the end of a relationship, and it is a genuinely harrowing record. CAPRISONGS , released as a mixtape in January 2022, is the deliberate opposite: loose, social, full of voice notes from friends, and built around club rhythms rather than art-song structures. She has described it as a record made for going out with your friends, and the framing device — a Capricorn birthday, astrology chat, f...

Eighteen tracks from three men who started as Anthony Hamilton's backing singers and turned out to have one of the most powerful things in music: a real blend. The HamilTones The HamilTones — 2E (Anthony Eastin), J. Vito and Tony Lelo — began as the backing vocal trio for Anthony Hamilton , which is where the name comes from. They became known in their own right through viral videos: three men in a car or a hotel room, harmonising, frequently taking material nobody would expect and turning it into church. What they have is genuinely rare. All three are gospel-trained, all three can lead, and the blend between them is tight enough that they can perform with no instruments at all and hold a room. Their later work has become substantially more political, and that turn is the most interesting thing about them. What to listen for The a cappella arrangements are the whole event. "Never Gonna Let You Go" and "Best Friend" show what three vo...