Song of the Day: “The Prayer”
Black Messiah is an apt title for the long-awaited follow-up to contemporary soul master D’Angelo’s 2000 record, Voodoo. Fourteen years allows for plenty of anticipation. At times, the news from...
View ArticleSong of the Day: “Try Me”
The resilient R&B singer Esther Mae Jones adopted the stage name of Little Esther Philips at the age of 14, allegedly taking it from a gas station sign in Los Angeles. She had a rough-and-tumble...
View ArticleThis Week in Posivibes: FKA twigs
FKA twigs has released a self-directed video to accompany her new EP M3LL155X, and the result is wonderfully troubling: the four-part video accompaniment to her five-song EP delivers an explicit and...
View ArticleNew Album for Lauryn Hill?
In a recent article about Ms. Lauryn Hill’s career, the artist’s producer Phil Nicolo told The Fader that he’s been working with her in the studio toward the completion of a long-awaited new album....
View ArticleThis Week in Posivibes: Gloria Ann Taylor
Ubiquity’s Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing reissue collects some incredible soulful, experimental R&B from Gloria Ann Taylor’s early years, rare tracks that were released during her time with the small...
View ArticleSong of the Day: “Come On Back”
From 1962 to 1987, producer Bobby Robinson headed the independent record publisher Enjoy Music. Robinson nurtured and and supported heavy-hitting early R&B, blues, and soul artists of the latter...
View ArticleSong of the Day: “Clean Up Woman”
Sometimes the energy in a song is so palpable that you can tell the musicians have hit gold. That’s the case with the 1971 single by Betty Wright, “Clean Up Woman,” a soul song whose popularity at the...
View ArticleFive Stages of Prince Fandom
Stage 1: You Got the LookPrince and you are the same height, so you both look good in cropped jackets. Because it is the mid ’80s, you have collected an unholy number of cropped jackets, enough to...
View ArticleAlicia Keys Returns with “In Common”
After a long wait since her last album, Alicia Keys released a new single this week titled “In Common,” okayplayer. reports. Listen to it after the jump.https://youtu.be/5YwHRTCyrEo&w=580Related...
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The Recipe to Decolonized Love is in Beyoncé’s Lemonade
At first glance, Beyoncé’s Lemonade is a stunning visual album that details a betrayed woman’s path to healing and forgiveness after her husband’s serial cheating.But if you peel back the skin—as...
View ArticleSong of the Day: “Party Down”
Soul guitarist Willie Hale is perhaps most widely-known for his head-bopping contribution to Betty Wright’s hit song, “Clean Up Woman,” and maybe just as widely recognized for his nickname, Little...
View ArticleFifteen Theories on Boys Don’t Cry
Between the mysterious live stream on Ocean’s website and the release date that came and went, no one is really sure what Frank Ocean has planned for his new album Boys Don’t Cry. But the good people...
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On Self-Reliance: Frank Ocean as Emersonian Hero
The Internet indulged in a collective swoon over Frank Ocean’s two releases, Blonde and Endless, last summer. And why not? His albums are undeniably beautiful and slippery and unexpected in all the...
View ArticleSong of the Day: “Gin House Blues”
Today, the so-called British Invasion of the ’60s is remembered primarily for its flagship band, The Beatles. Another English group called The Animals—widely known for their international hit version...
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Album of the Week: Sampha’s Process
After collaborating with the likes of Beyoncè, SBTRKT, Jessie Ware, Drake, Kanye West, Frank Ocean, and Solange, 28-year-old British singer, songwriter and producer Sampha has finally released his...
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Album of the Week: Tei Shi’s Crawl Space
Tei Shi is Valerie Teicher—born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, raised between Bogota, Colombia, and Vancouver, Canada, she now lives in New York after graduating from Boston’s Berklee College of Music....
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Tell Me Something Good
I am listening to R&B with my Aunt Mae upstairs in our house that was once a single family, then a duplex, then a single family again when we lived there. We’re just at the top of the stairs on the...
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Album of the Week: Bravado by Kirin J. Callinan
“With every decision I made, I picked the least-tasteful option,” Australian singer-songwriter Kirin J. Callinan told the FADER in discussing how his newest album, Bravado (Terrible Records) came to...
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Album of the Week: Something to Tell You by HAIM
Four years after releasing their impressive debut album Days Are Gone, HAIM are back with their long-awaited sophomore project, Something to Tell You, out now via Polydor. The three Angeleno sisters...
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Swinging Modern Sounds #83: On George
There really is not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t stop at some moment and think about George Harrison. With the rerelease of Sgt. Pepper, and the commencement of the Sirius/XM Beatles channel,...
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