Baby Rose‘s easy evasion of being classified as simply an R&B throwback continued after the release of her second album, Through and Through. Slow Burn, the distinctive contralto’s subsequent EP with BadBadNotGood, contained a stellar folk-soul collaboration with Mereba. Covers of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” and the Velvet Underground and Nico’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” — the latter of which was recorded for Materialists, in which Rose made her film debut as a wedding singer — further demonstrated a natural flexibility. While Yearnalism is another tradition-rooted R&B record more than anything else, it sees Rose subtly expanding her sound in a way that makes her even more suited for adult album alternative radio than urban contemporary stations.
Category: R&B
Having ceded creative control to numerous collaborators on 2022’s Spell 31 (veteran pop songwriter Eg White; rappers Pa Salieu and Berwyn), Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz return to first principles for their fourth album.
Written mainly by the sisters themselves, Offering recentres Ibeyi in their own sonic universe: fusing the influences of their Cuban percussionist father and Parisian upbringing, the twins sing in multiple languages, summoning ancient lore over intricate beats, transcendent harmonies and brooding distortion.
Self-sufficiency crops up as a lyrical theme, too: “One thing is for sure, I’m who I was looking for,” goes the refrain of Baba, which matches incantatory vocals with an irresistibly grimy…
Jacklyn records is famed among soul record collectors as the home of three great Darrow Fletcher 45s issued on the label in the mid-60s. The imprint was owned and run by his father, Johnny Haygood, and though it served as a stepping stone in Fletcher’s extensive career, it was launched for a different artist and provided Chicago soul fans with several great discs over its seven-year existence.
A teenage shop assistant who worked in Haygood’s record store called Paul Smith launched the label, following in the footsteps of the young Fletcher who had begun his career a couple of years previously. Though Smith only had two 45 releases, the three sides on them revealed a great voice and writing talent worthy of a much bigger stage.
Adam Kyriakou’s Department is a one-man band in the style of Neil Hannon’s Divine Comedy and Matt Johnson’s The The; others may pass in and out, but Kyriakou steers the ship.
Audacity Files proves to be the maiden voyage for what should be an interesting and impressive career in sonic development. “Shadow Play” embodies the freneticism of the Lennon-McCartney opus “A Day in the Life”: brass, loops, and percussion lunging at the unsuspecting listener. Incidentally, “Shadow Play” is the longest tune on the record: despite pushing the boundaries of pop, Department wisely keeps the runtime to a palatable two-minute average.
Purportedly inspired by a voyage to his ancestral Macedonia, Department incorporates…
Michael: Songs from the Motion Picture is the official companion album to the brand-new biopic, Michael. This album highlights 13 songs showcased in the film, spanning from The Jackson 5 to The Jacksons to Michael’s chart-topping solo success with “Off the Wall” and “Thriller.”
…Filling the superstar’s shoes is his nephew (and son of brother Jermaine) Jaafar Jackson, who reportedly will do some of his own singing in the film. Despite that, the soundtrack features only Michael’s original vocals. The movie’s screenplay has been penned by Academy Award nominee and Tony winner John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator on film; Red, Moulin Rouge! on stage) and also stars Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson, Nia Long as Katherine Jackson, Kendrick Sampson…
Contains all the single recordings of the group from 1966–1969 plus a non-LP B-side released posthumously in 1972.
In the 1960s, the American music landscape was powered by a vibrant network of independent record labels. Many—like Motown, Stax/Volt, and Elektra—began as small regional ventures before their success propelled them into national prominence and, ultimately, partnerships with major labels.
Baltimore, Maryland was one of the era’s creative hotbeds. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, the city nurtured a distinctive musical identity, and local imprints such as Ru-Jac, Soultrain, and Pulse delivered radio favorites that defined the “Sound of Baltimore”—a gritty…
As listeners began to connect with her 2025 album Do It Afraid, Yaya Bey fell into a state of distress. She contemplated the commodification of Black grief, hers included, as well as the shorter lifespans of Black artists and the way their work receives overdue recognition after death. Her mind also remained freighted with anger and frustration over losses to Black communality, whether caused by gentrification or exacerbated by online infighting, aka diaspora wars (with white-owned social media platforms as the battlefields). While Bey might have been spiraling, her creative upswing continues with this close companion to Do It Afraid. Every bit as sure-footed and stimulating, the purposefully titled Fidelity is another invigorating modern synthesis of Black musical innovations.
Six years to the date of his last LP, Thundercat release his fifth studio album, Distracted, coming out via Brainfeeder. The new album features contributions from A$AP Rocky, WILLOW, Tame Impala, Channel Tres, Lil Yachty and a previously unreleased collaboration with the dearly departed Mac Miller.
Distracted was primarily created in close collaboration with a new creative partner for Thundercat – the superproducer Greg Kurstin, known for his work with some of the biggest names in pop like Adele, Paul McCartney, Sia, Beyoncé, Beck and more – with additional production turns on the record from Flying Lotus, Kenny Beats (Kenneth Blume), and The Lemon Twigs. Distracted vividly captures…
Hopes and Dreams is the title of the brand new compilation series from Tramp Records. This new series draws on the music selection of ‘Praise Poems’, not only in terms of obscurity, but also in terms of genius. Similar, but anything but a poor copy, the focus is on rare grooves from the 1970s. The album contains genuine rarities that definitely deserve more attention. Take, for example, the opener by Guamanian Frankie & the Karter’s Peanut Organization. The protagonist comes from Guam, a tiny island in the western Pacific, a good 5000km north of Australia. The previously unreleased ‘Back In Time’ comes from an acetate pressing. As far as we know, it is the only existing copy. Easy and Carrie Chaplin & Mark Perron delight us with light folk soul, and fans of Terry Callier will…
Loose collaborations can go in two directions – some sort of loose jams that just might go nowhere, or innovative chipping of ideas that result in some interesting musical results. In the latter case, there is usually a core set of musicians that bring in a sort of semblance to a possible chaos, leading the way to something that is tangible and ultimately listenable.
For At Your Pace, their second album offering, Modha, a core Berlin-based duo of Dhanya Langer and Max Scholl operate as a sort of collective bringing in outside talents of the likes of Shanice Ruby Bennett (bass), Käthe Johanning (Rhodes), Fabiano Lima (percussion), Konstantin Döben (horns), and Tim Sensbach (guitar), as well as a set of guest vocalists/rappers like…
As AI becomes an increasing threat to humans trying to make a living from creative activities, Nubiyan Twist’s latest album is a defiant riposte. It is a celebration of the joyful energy and chaos that comes from musicians getting together in a room to play. While that could imply a scrappy sound, it would be a wildly inaccurate description of the ensemble. Chasing Shadows represents a skilful interception of jazz, afrobeat, R&B and electronics, fused with a mastery that reflects the nine-piece band’s background having formed in 2011 while studying at the Leeds College of Music.
Their fifth album resists the temptation of indulging in extended jams, all eleven tracks timing around the four-minute mark. New vocalist, Eniola Idowu, brings an extra soulful touch…
James Blake sometimes feels like pop music’s arch, ultra-serious older brother, floating above the scene with warbly torch songs that never quite come down to earth. He’s left his ghostly prints on artists ranging from Beyoncé to Rosalía to Lil Yachty, and it’s a testament to his influence how widespread his once novel, weightless style of production has become.
There was a time when it wasn’t common for mainstream artists to sing over instrumentals that sound like they would crumble against a gentle caress, or pitch vocals up and down to inhuman extremes. All of that experimentation, coupled with his heart-on-sleeve, midtempo songwriting, has lent Blake a somewhat dowdy image, like a Tory councillor who liked dubstep before…
Throughout his career, Chicago-based trumpeter Marquis Hill has traced and celebrated Black life, while reflecting a hard-spun hope in everyday life. Further, the Black Church has remained influential on his art and spirituality. (Beautifulism) Sweet Surrender is a ten track EP, that focuses its sound and creative gaze on spirituality and transcendence with an audacious cast. The core players include guitarist Emmanuel Michel, bassist Junius Paul, saxophonist Josh Johnson, drummer Marcus Gilmore, percussionist Juan Pastor, and a slew of guests including Makaya McCraven, vocalists Amyna Love, Zacchae’us Paul, and Manessah, and rappers Cisco Swank and Kumbayaaa. The music on this 34-minute set dances a loose line between contemporary jazz, neo-soul…
When Stockholm-based musician Kendra Egerbladh started sharing her music under the handle waterbaby in the early to mid-2020s, she was noted for a sophisticated alt-pop that combined light touches of jazz, hip-hop, downtempo, and atmospheric bedroom pop on songs with highly personal lyrics.
Her full-length and Sub Pop label debut, Memory Be a Blade, reveals a surprising evolution in sound that retains the influence of jazz and broader alternative inspirations while relying less on gloss and aura and more heavily on acoustic instruments like strings. The result is something physically closer, more delicate, and more diaristic while at the same time more intricate. The album was produced by Marcus White, her main…
In 1971 several dozen African American soul, jazz, and gospel artists embarked on a journey that would change the lives of everyone involved. They traveled from New York City to Ghana, West Africa to take part in a 13-hour concert entitled Soul to Soul. The concert was a celebration of 14 years of Ghana’s independence from British rule. For most of these artists it was their first trip to Africa. For the African American musicians, this was a journey about personal roots, the ancestral homeland, history, discovery, loss, pain and joy.
Directed by Academy AwardⓇ winner Denis Sanders and produced by Tom Mosk & Richard Bock, the concert film/documentary had a limited theatrical run in 1971. It now returns restored with the original edit reconstructing each scene…
Justin Hicks‘ vast body of work as a vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and sound artist extends beyond recording studios to galleries, museums, theaters, and other spaces. A keen collaborator with connections to myriad artists across disciplines, Hicks earned a Drama Desk Award nomination with his music for the Lynn Nottage play Mlima’s Tale, and he is an integral part of Meshell Ndegeocello’s band. He’s all over The Omnichord Real Book and No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, winners of the first two Grammys for Best Alternative Jazz Album. One standout from the latter is “Love,” featuring co-writer Hicks in harmony with the voices of wife Kenita Miller-Hicks, drummer Abe Rounds, and bassist/leader Ndegeocello,…
Almost four years separate Waves from Starfruit, the Grammy-nominated fifth record that brought Moonchild’s first round of guest features and gave the trio wider footing without altering the music’s center of gravity. Starfruit was recorded remotely during lockdown, populated by collaborators like Lalah Hathaway, Rapsody, Alex Isley, and Tank and the Bangas who slotted into the band’s pocket without disrupting it. Amber Navran has said the new project grew from a difficult stretch of personal reckoning, and the love songs that filled every prior Moonchild release have mostly vanished. In their place are songs about cutting people off, surviving hurt without pretending it ends, and telling yourself the truth when you’d rather not. Waves continues the collaborative instinct, but the subject…
It’s all blurring together. Ambient is emo now. Rap sounds like harsh noise. Drum’n’bass is basically bedroom pop. And Ben Bondy, who until now has primarily dealt in disorientingly dubby ambient music, has emerged with something resembling a singer/songwriter album, but not quite. Bondy, a New York/Berlin-based producer who’s made a name as part of the latter’s cozy Kwia collective, has built a sprawling body of work across a number of labels representing the bleary haze of the left-field electronic underground. West Mineral Ltd., 3XL, Motion Ward, Quiet Time — if they deal in grainy, dissociative soundscapes, Bondy has probably released something for them. Across his scattered releases and DJ sets, Bondy’s demonstrated a voracious, shapeshifting…