Souldigs — Curated Soul, Funk, Disco, Jazz & Rare Groove
A curated discovery platform for soul, funk, disco, jazz, city pop and rare groove records from around the world. 74 essential records with editorial stories, Did You Know facts, and music trivia. Enable JavaScript to explore the full interactive experience.
Marvin Gaye — What's Going On (1971)
Album: What's Going On | Label: Motown | Region: Detroit, MI, North America
Marvin Gaye wrote What's Going On after his friend Obie Benson described witnessing police beat protesters in Berkeley. Motown president Berry Gordy initially refused to release it — he thought it was uncommercial. Gaye told him: release it or I'll never recor…
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Isaac Hayes — Walk On By (1969)
Album: Hot Buttered Soul | Label: Enterprise/Stax | Region: Memphis, TN, North America
Hot Buttered Soul contained only four songs across an entire album — the shortest running just under five minutes, the longest over eighteen. Isaac Hayes stretched Burt Bacharach's Walk On By from two and a half minutes to twelve by improvising spoken monologu…
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Bill Withers — Lean On Me (1972)
Album: Still Bill | Label: Sussex | Region: Watts, CA, North America
Bill Withers didn't start recording music until he was thirty-two, after a decade working on the factory floor assembling aircraft toilets for Hughes Aircraft. He recorded Still Bill between shifts. The album contains Lean On Me, Use Me, and Who Is He — three…
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Curtis Mayfield — Move On Up (1970)
Album: Curtis | Label: Curtom | Region: Chicago, IL, North America
Curtis Mayfield left the Impressions to release his debut solo album on his own Curtom label. Curtis addressed the Black Power movement, Vietnam, and street life in Chicago directly — a year before Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. Move On Up was too long for rad…
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Al Green — Let's Stay Together (1971)
Album: Let's Stay Together | Label: Hi Records | Region: Memphis, TN, North America
Al Green and producer Willie Mitchell made every Hi Records album in the same building — a converted movie theatre in Memphis called Royal Recording. Mitchell's approach was to layer live string sections over deliberately lo-fi drums, creating a sound that fel…
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Aretha Franklin — Think (1968)
Album: Aretha Now | Label: Atlantic | Region: New York, NY, North America
Aretha Franklin recorded Think in a single session at Atlantic Studios in 1968, weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She'd just finished performing at his funeral in Atlanta. The song was originally written as a relationship argument — but a…
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Syl Johnson — Is It Because I'm Black (1970)
Album: Is It Because I'm Black | Label: Twinight | Region: Chicago, IL, North America
Syl Johnson recorded this album in 1970, a year before Marvin Gaye's What's Going On is usually credited with inventing the conscious soul album. Johnson grew up on Chicago's South Side and the album addresses Black identity, poverty, and the aftermath of the…
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Lee Fields — Faithful Man (2012)
Album: Faithful Man | Label: Truth & Soul | Region: Plainfield, NJ, North America
Lee Fields has been recording since 1969. Most of his career was spent playing club circuits in North Carolina and New Jersey, releasing records on tiny labels that never crossed over. He was 62 years old when he made Faithful Man, widely considered his master…
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Ahmad Jamal — Poinciana (1958)
Album: At The Pershing | Label: Argo/Wax Time | Region: Chicago, IL, North America
Ahmad Jamal recorded this live album at the Pershing Hotel's lounge bar in Chicago's South Side in 1958, to an audience of perhaps two hundred people. It became the best-selling jazz album of its time — outselling Kind of Blue for several years. Miles Davis ci…
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Bobbi Humphrey — Harlem River Drive (1973)
Album: Blacks and Blues | Label: Blue Note | Region: Marlin, TX, North America
Bobbi Humphrey was the first woman signed to Blue Note Records. Blacks and Blues was produced by the Mizell Brothers — the same team behind Donald Byrd's Black Byrd — who transformed her jazz flute technique into something that felt like summer in New York. Ha…
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Herbie Hancock — Chameleon (1973)
Album: Head Hunters | Label: Columbia | Region: New York, NY, North America
Herbie Hancock formed the Headhunters after years playing avant-garde jazz with Miles Davis and on his own Blue Note records. Head Hunters was his deliberate embrace of Sly Stone and James Brown — a jazz musician taking funk seriously. It became the best-selli…
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Funkadelic — Maggot Brain (1971)
Album: Maggot Brain | Label: Westbound | Region: Detroit, MI, North America
George Clinton told guitarist Eddie Hazel to play the title track as if he'd just been told his mother had died — then as if he found out she was still alive. The result is ten minutes of solo guitar that reduces people to tears. Clinton was reportedly on mult…
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Parliament — Give Up The Funk (1975)
Album: Mothership Connection | Label: Casablanca | Region: Detroit, MI, North America
George Clinton built Mothership Connection as a Black science fiction album before that was a recognizable genre. Parliament's touring show involved a working spaceship lowered onto the stage with a smoke machine. The funk was metaphysical — Clinton was preach…
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The Meters — Cissy Strut (1969)
Album: The Meters | Label: Josie | Region: New Orleans, LA, North America
The Meters were New Orleans' hardest working session band before anyone outside the city knew their name. Cissy Strut was their debut single, a groove so locked and minimal it sounded like a machine built by humans. The track contains almost nothing: a guitar…
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Marcos Valle — Crickets Sing For Anamaria (1968)
Album: Samba 68 | Label: Odeon | Region: Rio de Janeiro, South America
Marcos Valle was twenty-three years old when he made this album. The title was meant as a provocation — samba in 1968 was supposed to be acoustic and traditional, not electrified and American-influenced. Valle brought in electric bass, drums, and funky rhythm…
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Os Mutantes — A Minha Menina (1968)
Album: Os Mutantes | Label: Polydor | Region: São Paulo, South America
Os Mutantes were teenagers in São Paulo playing in a genre that didn't have a name yet: a fusion of Brazilian folk, psychedelic rock, bossa nova, and pure absurdist chaos. Their debut was produced by Tropicália architect Gilberto Gil and featured homemade inst…
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Getz/Gilberto — The Girl From Ipanema (1964)
Album: Getz/Gilberto | Label: Verve | Region: Rio de Janeiro, South America
João Gilberto and Stan Getz recorded this album in a single evening at Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey. Astrud Gilberto — João's wife, not a professional singer — was asked to sing the English verse of The Girl From Ipanema because no one else in the room spok…
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Fela Kuti — Zombie (1976)
Album: Zombie | Label: Kalakuta / Knitting Factory | Region: Lagos, West Africa
Zombie is Fela Kuti's most dangerous record — dangerous because he released it knowing exactly what it would cost him. The title track is a twelve-minute instruction manual for mocking Nigerian soldiers, calling them brainless automatons who kill when told to…
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William Onyeabor — Atomic Bomb (1978)
Album: Atomic Bomb | Label: Luaka Bop | Region: Enugu, West Africa
William Onyeabor pressed every record himself in Enugu, Nigeria — no label, no distributor. He drove them to market in his own car. He taught himself synthesizer programming from imported technical manuals. Then, after converting to Christianity in the 1980s,…
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Miriam Makeba — Pata Pata (1967)
Album: Pata Pata | Label: Strut | Region: Johannesburg, Southern Africa
Miriam Makeba recorded the original Pata Pata in Johannesburg in 1956 before she was exiled from South Africa. She re-recorded it in New York in 1967 for Reprise Records, where Harry Belafonte mentored her, and it reached the US Top 20 — the first South Africa…
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Cymande — Bra (1972)
Album: Cymande | Label: Janus | Region: London, Europe
Cymande formed in London in the early 70s, a collective of musicians from Guyana, Jamaica, and the Caribbean diaspora. Their sound was something no one had named yet: Afro-funk played with the space and patience of reggae. They toured the US and became a cult…
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Orchestra Baobab — Utrus Horas (1982)
Album: Pirates Choice | Label: Stern's African Records | Region: Dakar, West Africa
Orchestra Baobab were the house band at the Club Baobab in Dakar in the early 1970s, playing a mixture of Cuban son, Wolof griot music, and Afro-funk that became known as mbalax. Pirates Choice was recorded for radio broadcast — they never expected it to be re…
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Mulatu Astatke — Mulatu (1972)
Album: Mulatu of Ethiopia | Label: Worthy Records / Strut | Region: Addis Ababa, East Africa
Mulatu Astatke studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston — the first African student admitted. He brought jazz harmony, Latin percussion, and Western arrangements back to Addis Ababa and fused them with Ethiopian pentatonic scales and traditional rhythms t…
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Anri — Shyness Boy (1983)
Album: Timely!! | Label: For Life Records | Region: Osaka, East Asia
Anri was produced by Toshiki Kadomatsu, whose approach to J-funk borrowed heavily from American session musicians and LA studio culture without trying to imitate it. Timely!! captures a moment when Japan's bubble economy meant that musicians could afford full…
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Stereolab — French Disko (1995)
Album: Refried Ectoplasm | Label: Duophonic | Region: London, Europe
Stereolab formed in London in 1990, led by Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier. Their sound was an absurdist meeting point between Can's motorik rhythms, French 60s yé-yé pop, and Marxist political philosophy delivered in Sadier's detached French accent. Refried Ectop…
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Khruangbin — María También (2018)
Album: Con Todo El Mundo | Label: Night Time Stories / Dead Oceans | Region: Houston, TX, North America
Con Todo El Mundo — ‘with all the world’ — is Khruangbin’s second album, recorded in their barn in rural Texas. Where their debut mined 1960s Thai cassette funk, this record travels west: Persian pop, Mediterranean soul, and Gulf funk heard on long drives thro…
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Donny Hathaway — The Ghetto (1972)
Album: Live | Label: Atlantic | Region: Hollywood, CA, North America
Donny Hathaway's Live is widely considered the greatest live soul album ever recorded, captured across two nights in 1971 at the Troubadour in Hollywood and the Bitter End in New York. Hathaway transforms every song he touches — Marvin Gaye, John Lennon's Jeal…
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Gil Scott-Heron — The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (1971)
Album: Pieces of a Man | Label: Flying Dutchman | Region: New York, NY, North America
Gil Scott-Heron's debut album was recorded in two days in April 1971 at RCA Studios in New York, produced by Bob Thiele. It arrived as the prototype for everything that would follow — spoken word over jazz-soul arrangements, political rage delivered with a poe…
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Lyn Collins — Think (About It) (1972)
Album: Think (About It) | Label: People Records | Region: Abilene, TX, North America
James Brown produced Lyn Collins' debut album in 1972 on his own People Records imprint. Collins had a voice that could out-shout Brown himself — raw, percussive, fully committed to the pocket. The title track Think (About It) contains what may be the single m…
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Minnie Riperton — Les Fleur (1970)
Album: Come To My Garden | Label: Cadet Concept | Region: Chicago, IL, North America
Come To My Garden was produced by Charles Stepney in 1970 and sold almost nothing on release. It is now considered one of the most extraordinary albums in soul history. Stepney built orchestral architecture around Riperton's five-octave voice — strings, woodwi…
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Roy Ayers Ubiquity — Everybody Loves The Sunshine (1976)
Album: Everybody Loves The Sunshine | Label: Polydor | Region: Los Angeles, CA, North America
Roy Ayers recorded Everybody Loves The Sunshine past midnight at Electric Lady Studios in New York — built by Jimi Hendrix — in 1976. The title track was almost an afterthought, built on a single chord, a bass pattern, and a chanted refrain. It became the most…
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Lonnie Liston Smith — Expansions (1975)
Album: Expansions | Label: Flying Dutchman | Region: New York, NY, North America
Lonnie Liston Smith recorded Expansions in November 1974 with The Cosmic Echoes, releasing it in 1975 on Flying Dutchman. The album sits at the intersection of spiritual jazz and club music; the title track's phased drums and cascading keyboard runs were later…
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James Brown — Get Up Sex Machine (1970)
Album: Sex Machine | Label: King Records | Region: Augusta, GA, North America
Sex Machine captured the moment James Brown hired Bootsy Collins and his brother Catfish as the new JB's rhythm section. Bootsy was 18. The nearly eleven-minute Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine rides a single bass riff that Bootsy had come up with hours…
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Azymuth — Jazz Carnival (1979)
Album: Light As a Feather | Label: Milestone | Region: Rio de Janeiro, South America
Azymuth were three Rio studio musicians who had spent the early 1970s as session players for everyone from Jorge Ben to Elis Regina. When they recorded as a trio, they invented samba-jazz — acoustic bossa nova rhythms colliding with funk bass and electric keyb…
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Cortex — Huit Octobre 1971 (1975)
Album: Troupeau Bleu | Label: Saravah | Region: Paris, Europe
Cortex was a Parisian jazz quartet that in 1975 recorded one of the most sampled albums in hip-hop history without anyone in hip-hop knowing their names for twenty years. Troupeau Bleu was released on Saravah — Pierre Barouh's label — and sold almost nothing.…
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Leon Ware — Inside Your Love (1979)
Album: Inside Is Love | Label: Gordy | Region: Los Angeles, CA, North America
Leon Ware wrote the entirety of Marvin Gaye's I Want You album before deciding he wanted to keep Musical Massage for himself. He brought the songs to Gaye as a gift, re-recorded them with his own voice, and released them a year later on Gordy. The result is on…
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Celia Cruz — Bemba Colorá (1966)
Album: Son Con Guaguanco | Label: Tico Records | Region: Havana, South America
Celia Cruz left Cuba in 1960, the year after Castro's revolution, and spent the rest of her life in exile — never returning, even to bury her mother. Son Con Guaguanco was recorded in New York in 1966 with the Sonora Matancera, the band she had led through Cub…
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Seu Jorge — Tive Razão (2005)
Album: Cru | Label: Wrasse Records | Region: Rio de Janeiro, South America
Seu Jorge recorded Cru — the word means raw — entirely alone, with just his acoustic guitar and his voice, in a single room in Rio. No overdubs, no band, no production layer. He had just finished filming The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou for Wes Anderson, in…
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Salif Keita — Moussolou (2002)
Album: Moffou | Label: Universal | Region: Bamako, West Africa
Moffou was the album Salif Keita made when he had nothing left to prove. After Soro, after the electric guitars and European production, he returned to something quieter — acoustic instruments, stripped arrangements, the sound of Bamako at night. He recorded i…
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Caetano Veloso — Alegria, Alegria (1968)
Album: Caetano Veloso | Label: Philips | Region: Salvador, South America
Tropicália was a Brazilian cultural movement that lasted roughly two years before the military government banned it and imprisoned its leaders. Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were jailed then exiled to London. Alegria, Alegria was Veloso's opening salvo: elec…
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Pharoah Sanders — The Creator Has a Master Plan (1969)
Album: Karma | Label: Impulse! | Region: New York, NY, North America
Karma was Pharoah Sanders' most accessible record and most radical statement simultaneously. The Creator Has a Master Plan runs over thirty minutes across both sides of the original vinyl — a slow ascent from percussion and bass toward something that sounds li…
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Tatsuro Yamashita — Sparkle (1982)
Album: For You | Label: Moon Records | Region: Tokyo, East Asia
Tatsuro Yamashita is known as the King of City Pop, and For You is the record that earned the title. Recorded in 1982 at the height of Japan's bubble economy, it synthesised American soul, AOR, and studio perfectionism into something that sounded expensive in…
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Celia Cruz — La Vida Es Un Carnaval (1998)
Album: Azúcar & Salsa | Label: Universal | Region: Miami, FL, South America
La Vida Es Un Carnaval was Celia Cruz's biggest international hit — a song about resilience, about refusing to be broken by loss or exile. She recorded it in Miami in 1998, by which point she had been living in the United States for 38 years without returning…
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Tony Allen & The Afrika 70 — Progress (1977)
Album: Progress | Label: Afrodisia | Region: Lagos, West Africa
Tony Allen was Fela Kuti's drummer for fifteen years — the man who invented Afrobeat's rhythmic language, the engine behind every record Fela made in the 1970s. Progress was Allen's first solo album without Fela, recorded in 1977 while still playing with the A…
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Earth Wind & Fire — Shining Star (1975)
Album: That's The Way of the World | Label: Columbia | Region: Chicago, IL, North America
Maurice White assembled Earth Wind & Fire around a cosmology — Afrocentric imagery, astrology, horn sections stacked on top of horn sections, and a belief that music could elevate consciousness. That's The Way of the World was a film soundtrack that vastly out…
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D'Angelo — Untitled (How Does It Feel) (2000)
Album: Voodoo | Label: Virgin | Region: Richmond, VA, North America
D'Angelo spent five years making Voodoo, recording to tape with drummer Questlove to capture the human imprecision of classic soul — the drag and push of live performance, the way a great groove sits slightly behind the beat. Untitled (How Does It Feel) is bar…
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Jorge Ben — País Tropical (1969)
Album: Jorge Ben | Label: Philips | Region: Rio de Janeiro, South America
Jorge Ben's 1969 self-titled album was his psychedelic peak — samba-rock, tropicália, and soul colliding in arrangements that felt simultaneously ancient and futuristic. País Tropical became one of Brazil's most beloved songs, an irrepressibly joyful hymn to t…
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Jorge Ben — Taj Mahal (1972)
Album: Ben | Label: Philips | Region: Rio de Janeiro, South America
Ben is the album Jorge Ben made in 1972, the one that contains Taj Mahal — the track Rod Stewart would later borrow for Da Ya Think I'm Sexy. Ben also contains Fio Maravilha, a love song to Fluminense striker Fio Maravilha that became one of the most enduring…
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Funkadelic — One Nation Under a Groove (1978)
Album: One Nation Under a Groove | Label: Warner Bros. | Region: Detroit, MI, North America
One Nation Under a Groove was the moment George Clinton made his most direct, most physical record. Where Maggot Brain had been a psychedelic manifesto, One Nation was a party invitation. The title track runs eight minutes and was designed to be impossible to…
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Chaka Khan — I'm Every Woman (1978)
Album: Chaka | Label: Warner Bros. | Region: Chicago, IL, North America
Chaka Khan recorded her debut solo album after leaving Rufus, the band that had made her famous. I'm Every Woman was written for her by Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson — the songwriting team behind Ain't No Mountain High Enough — and became one of the def…
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Omar El Shariyi — Ana We Habieby (1976)
Album: Oriental Music | Label: Wewantsounds | Region: Cairo, Middle East
Ammar El Sherei lost his sight in early childhood but went on to become one of Egypt's most inventive musicians — later consulting with Yamaha to develop keyboards that could handle the quarter-tone intervals essential to Arabic music. On Oriental Music, recor…
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Sinn Sisamouth — Rom A Go-Go (1965)
Album: Groove Club Vol. 4 | Label: Lion Productions | Region: Phnom Penh, South East Asia
Before the Khmer Rouge erased an entire culture, Phnom Penh in the 1960s was one of Southeast Asia's most electric music cities — and Sinn Sisamouth was its king. He absorbed American rock and roll, bossa nova, cha-cha, and Afro-Latin rhythms and ran them thro…
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Donna Summer — Bad Girls (1979)
Album: Bad Girls | Label: Casablanca | Region: Los Angeles, North America
Donna Summer recorded Bad Girls in 1979 as a double album across four sides of vinyl — fifteen tracks produced by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte in Los Angeles. Hot Stuff, the lead single, was unlike anything she had recorded before: a rock guitar riff from…
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Chic — Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah) (1977)
Album: Chic | Label: Atlantic | Region: New York, North America
Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards formed Chic after years as session musicians and failed band experiments, convinced that the rhythm guitar and bass could be as melodically expressive as any horn section. Their debut album in 1977 proved it. Dance, Dance, Danc…
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Sylvester — You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) (1978)
Album: Step II | Label: Fantasy | Region: San Francisco, North America
Sylvester James grew up singing in Pentecostal churches in Watts, Los Angeles, left home as a teenager, and eventually found his people in San Francisco’s gay community in the early 1970s. By 1978 he had built a local following and signed to Fantasy Records. Y…
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Grace Jones — Pull Up To The Bumper (1981)
Album: Nightclubbing | Label: Island | Region: Nassau, North America
Grace Jones recorded Nightclubbing at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas with Sly and Robbie’s rhythm section and producer Chris Blackwell. The album fuses reggae, new wave, dub, and post-disco into something that had no genre name in 1981 and still resi…
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Sade — Smooth Operator (1984)
Album: Diamond Life | Label: Epic | Region: London, Europe
Sade recorded Diamond Life in London in 1983 with producer Robin Millar and a band built around guitarist Stuart Matthewman, keyboardist Andrew Hale, and bassist Paul Denman. Sade Adu had been singing with a funk band called Pride before the group reconstitute…
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Luther Vandross — Never Too Much (1981)
Album: Never Too Much | Label: Epic | Region: New York, North America
Before Never Too Much, Luther Vandross was the most in-demand session singer in New York — he sang backup for David Bowie on Young Americans, voiced the jingle for the Change Your Life campaign, and appeared on dozens of records without his name on the cover.…
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Loose Ends — Choose Me (Rescue Me) (1984)
Album: A Little Spice | Label: Virgin | Region: London, Europe
Loose Ends were Carl McIntosh, Jane Eugene, and Steve Nichol — three Black British musicians from London who became the first British act to reach number one on the US Billboard R&B chart when Hangin’ On a String crossed over in 1985. A Little Spice, their deb…
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D'Angelo — Brown Sugar (1995)
Album: Brown Sugar | Label: EMI | Region: Richmond, Virginia, North America
D’Angelo recorded Brown Sugar in New York in 1994 and 1995 with Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, producer Bob Power, and Raphael Saadiq. He was 21 years old. The title track came together by accident during a session with Muhammad in a New Jersey…
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The Brand New Heavies — Dream On Dreamer (1994)
Album: Brother Sister | Label: Delicious Vinyl | Region: London, Europe
The Brand New Heavies formed in Ealing, West London in 1985 and became the anchor act of the acid jazz scene that emerged around Gilles Peterson’s Talkin’ Loud label and the Acid Jazz Records shop on Greek Street. Brother Sister, their third album, arrived in…
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Tony Allen — Secret Agent (2009)
Album: Secret Agent | Label: World Circuit | Region: Lagos, West Africa
Tony Allen was Fela Kuti’s drummer for twelve years and is widely credited as the co-creator of Afrobeat — building the polyrhythmic, jazz-inflected drum patterns that gave the genre its spine. After leaving Fela’s band in 1978, Allen pursued a solo career spa…
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El Michels Affair — 24 Hr Sports (2025)
Album: 24 Hr Sports | Label: Big Crown Records | Region: New York, North America
Leon Michels has spent years as one of music’s most sought-after producers, shaping Grammy-winning records for Norah Jones, Clairo, and Kali Uchis. For 24 Hr Sports — his sixth album as El Michels Affair — he returned to his own world, drawing inspiration from…
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Sparklmami — In This Body (2026)
Album: In This Body | Label: Verve Records | Region: Chicago, North America
Texas-raised, Chicago-based Sparklmami is of Mexican and Indian heritage, and her debut album lives at the intersection of all those worlds. Nine songs recorded largely live and in single takes, improvised directly from the subconscious. Brazilian jazz shimmer…
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Lee "Scratch" Perry & Mouse on Mars — Spatial, No Problem (2026)
Album: Spatial, No Problem | Label: Domino | Region: Berlin, Europe
In December 2019, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry flew to Berlin and spent three days recording with experimental electronic duo Mouse on Mars at their Paraverse Studio. He had one request: no reggae. What emerged from those sessions was dub logic collapsing into Krautroc…
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Fatoumata Diawara — Massa (2026)
Album: Massa | Label: Nø Førmat! | Region: Bamako, West Africa
Massa is Fatoumata Diawara’s most personal album yet — a record that stops reaching and simply waits. Where her previous work chased crossover moments through collaborations with Disclosure and Gorillaz, Massa turns inward. Co-produced with French artist Matth…
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Lakecia Benjamin — We Dream (2026)
Album: We Dream | Label: Artwork Records | Region: New York, North America
Lakecia Benjamin has described her album as looking for ‘a bright light in a dark space’, and she assembled a cast of Avengers to help find it. Hiromi, Chris Potter, Bilal, Terence Blanchard, Christian Scott, Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts, Sean Jones, Kassa Overall — the…
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Outer Worlds Jazz Ensemble feat. Chip Wickham — The Karman Line (2026)
Album: The Karman Line | Label: ATA Records | Region: Leeds, Europe
The Kármán Line — the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space — sits 100 kilometres above ground. This album began in a very earthly place: a Japanese jazz kissa in Tokyo, where woodwind maestro Chip Wickham and ATA Records’ bassist Neil Innes fell…
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Jasmine Myra — Where Light Settles (2026)
Album: Where Light Settles | Label: Gondwana Records | Region: Leeds, Europe
Jasmine Myra recorded Where Light Settles in five days with her long-standing ensemble at The Nave studios in Leeds — a 13-piece band gathered in one room, all captured live. Her third album is built around duality: the growth that only comes through difficult…
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Work Money Death — A Portal To Here (2026)
Album: A Portal To Here | Label: ATA Records | Region: Leeds, Europe
A Portal To Here is Work Money Death’s fourth album and their first since the death of guitarist Chris ‘Earl’ Dawkins, who had been the house guitarist for ATA Records. Four side-long improvisations trace a collective journey through grief and honour — the inf…
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Various Artists — Kaiso Power (2026)
Album: Kaiso Power: Sound Revolution in Trinidad 1970–1980 | Label: Soundway Records | Region: Port of Spain, South America
In the early 1970s, Port of Spain thronged with Black Power marches, trade union demonstrations, and Carnival protest bands. When the meetings ended, the revolution moved to cramped secret dance halls, steelband yards, and Carnival fetes. The musicians who sou…
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Fairfield Ethio-Jazz Project — Bath Ketema (2026)
Album: Bath Ketema | Label: Severn Songs | Region: Bath, Europe
Between 1936 and 1941, Emperor Haile Selassie I lived in exile at Fairfield House in Bath, having fled Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia. Decades later, a vibrant Ethio-Jazz scene flourished in Addis Ababa under musicians like Mulatu Astatke and Hailu Mergia. B…
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Opek — Trafo (2026)
Album: Trafo | Label: Schallplatten Firma Records | Region: Cologne, Europe
Trafo — German for transformer — is Opek’s fourth album and his most cohesive yet. Recorded live in his Cologne studio by a five-piece band — double bass, Fender Rhodes, alto saxophone, trombone, and Opek on drums — the album transforms personal memories into…
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Jalen Ngonda — Doctrine of Love (2026)
Album: Doctrine of Love | Label: Daptone Records | Region: London, North America
Jalen Ngonda was born in Wheaton, Maryland, studied in Liverpool, and made London home. His debut album Come Around and Love Me (2023) arrived on Daptone Records and was described by Elton John as proof its maker ‘is going to be a huge star.’ For his sophomore…
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