Essentials

By 1998 Public Enemy were history if not, in the words of “Brothers Gonna Work It Out,” his-story, especially in the year when Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliott were writing and producing their own hits. No less than reading The Devil Finds Work, my listening to Fear of a Black Planet gained from a culture’s sense of its canonicity and from the manner in which it distinguished itself from the Puff Daddy and RZA era of hip hop multiplatinum.Too black, too strong, Public Enemy’s work through 1994 mashed bewildering verbal dexterity and an ever-permutating instrumental bed that chopped up two decades’ worth of R&B and scored it to the symphony of tea kettle whistles. They’re exhausting records; listening to Public Enemy is difficult. Their albums don’t work as background music. I’m grateful to Chris Weingarten’s entry in the 33 1/3 series, a book devoted to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, for the reasons mentioned above an album too abrasive and, well, historical to reach younger ears, as I’ve learned in recent years. Thanks to an ethos that prizes brothers working it out, the core of Chuck D, Flavor Flav, and intermittent collaborator Professor Griff don’t give much cop to women (“She Watch Channel Zero?!” misunderstands women and TV; deserves appreciation anyway) and sneer at faggots (“Pollywanacraka”). But “Pollywanacracka” unfurls as a polyphony: spoken-word cross-gender arguments over James Brown, Rufus Thomas, and Diana Ross samples that take at least a half dozen plays to suss out — and recontexualize. “All the associations that a listener may have with an existing piece of music are handed down to the new creation,” Weingarten wrote.I’m sorry to say that after He Got Game my concentration waned until 2007’s spare, contained How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?, which I admired long before “Harder Than You Think” became the highest charting single in England as a result of 2012 Summer Olympics exposure. I’ll take any early Bush II era recommendations.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

There were two things we were looking forward to in 2018: Robert Mueller indicting Donald Trump, and Migos releasing Culture II. After all, Migos has been at the forefront of pop music for the better part of this decade. If we’re being 100% honest, we’ll admit that we dismissed them as one-hit wonders when “Versace” first dropped in 2013, even if we kept it in rotation for a long minute. But they’ve proven much more resilient, creative, and influential than we ever imagined. “Bad and Boujie” and “T-Shirt” helped get us through the past year-and-a-half of this orange-stained apocalyptic shitshow, and the first Culture felt like a coronation not only of Migos as the kings of hip-hop, but also of a new generation of hip-hop stars. So we just assumed Culture II would be like Easter with triplet flows, pinging trap beats, and wealth-porn punchlines.We can’t blame Migos for taking a victory lap, but, at 24 songs stretching nearly two hours, Culture II feels like a victory slog. There’s some hot tracks——“Stir Fry,” “BBO,” and “MotorSport” are all career highlights——but there’s a lot of bloat. Whether they did this because they lacked any sense of quality control (sorry), or because they were trying to game the streaming system, doesn’t really matter to us. The fact is, it gets tedious.So we’re asking you, our loyal readers and keen discerners of good taste, to help us make Culture II great again. Please, EQ the speakers, stake out the X-Actos, and carve out the amazing, taut album that we feel is lurking in there somewhere. You can see how we’d cut this up in the playlist above, but we want to hear your version, too. So, visit our Facebook post here, post your tracklist and Spotify playlist link in the comments, and/or give the thumbs up to the other version you like the best. We’ll feature the winning version of Culture II on our homepage and in our social feeds, attributed to you. Playlist away.

Even if you take Soundgarden off his résumé, the late Chris Cornell was one of the most dynamic and adventurous rock singers to emerge in the 90s. He explored lush psychedelia and folk-informed songwriting on solo albums like Euphoria Morning and Higher Truth, and was a must-have soundtrack guest, whether crafting sprawling acoustic gems like "Seasons" for Cameron Crowes Singles or teaming up with Joy Williams for 12 Years A Slave. He created funk-informed arena rock with Audioslave and an a Generation X-defining duet with Eddie Vedder on Temple of the Dogs "Hunger Strike." Just to prove there was no genre he feared, hes the only rock singer to have worked with both Timbaland and the Zac Brown Band, while always sounding unmistakably like himself.

The sound of Run the Jewels is crafted from El-Ps beats. But Killer Mikes singular balance of brash confidence and vulnerability—not to mention his love of 80s and 90s rap from all regions—has vaulted the duo to a level of popularity that would’ve seemed improbable back when mutual friend Jason DeMarco of Adult Swim initiated their unlikely union five years ago. Listening now to Mikes Pledge Allegiance to the Grind series a decade later or El-Ps Fantastic Damage 15 years after it detonated this month back in 2002, there isnt a straight line to draw between the two. How do you blend Alec Empire and T.I., Trent Rzeznor and Sleepy Brown, Mars Volta and Young Jeezy? Obscure yet joyous moments—like 2002 El-P rapping over Missy Elliots "Gossip Folks" and 2011 Mike floating on Flying Lotus "Swimming"—predicted how they could inhabit each others worlds. But many left-field rap collaborations are one-time novelties, not dynasties.Now that Run The Jewels has become a staple of festivals, Marvel comic book covers, and soundtracks for TV shows and video games, its worth noting how much Mike and Els work ethic hasnt changed in the combined 38 years theyve worked in the music industry. Mikes discography pre-RTJ was 10 deep (counting studio albums and mixtapes) while El-P was at nine (if you include the two Company Flow albums). Their unifying love of Ice Cube, EPMD, Public Enemy, Wu-Tang, and Run-DMC has crystallized into subwoofer H-bombs as a duo, while their individual catalogs are snapshots of young rappers proving themselves. El-Ps biggest single in the Def Jux days featured a video of him being flanked by shotguns and hand cannons in post 9/11 New York during a neighborhood trek for smokes. Killer Mike was shoehorned onto hits by Outkast, Bone Crusher, and JAY-Z, but his biggest single was about the urban myth of Adidas namesake.El-P stated his intention early, back in 1997 on the inner artwork of Company Flows debut album Funcrusher Plus: "Independent as fuck." Killer Mike concurred, starting in the mid 2000s with his eyeopening mixtape series after stalling out with major labels. El-P came up during the great indie rap boom of the late 90s/early 00s: Stones Throw, Anticon, Def Jux, Rawkus, Fondle Em, etc. while Mike was slangin CDs hand to hand, everywhere from strip clubs to barber shops to mom and pop record stores, in the vein of Atlanta success stories like Ludacris, DJ Drama, Lil Jon, and Lil Flip. The models of independence varied wildly between New York and Atlanta, but the idea was the same: Your career has to be earned.Now that theyre playing Made In America Festival this year, its interesting to look back at their best work (compiled in the YouTube playlist below) and hear a redheaded maverick from Brooklyn holding his nuts while making Philip K. Dick and Vangelis into viable hip-hop ingredients, and the son of a Southern police officer running through brick walls with a Bible and a blunt in his hands.https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEAFD97JV-MKrgVHuWwn991Vc4r2fzKjj

Up until quite recently putting together a Complete Fleetwood Mac playlist wasn’t even possible. If you had explored the band’s catalog across all streaming services, you would’ve encountered the same problem: While every record from the Stevie Nicks-Lindsey Buckingham era was available (including expanded editions of Rumours, Tusk, and the crazy underrated Tango in the Night), and the Peter Green-era titles, while hobbled by a few nit-picky omissions, were largely intact, the stretch of albums linking these two periods was totally MIA.Of course, the fact that Kiln House (1970), Future Games (1971), Bare Trees (1972), Penguin (1973), Mystery to Me (1973), and Heroes Are Hard to Find (1974) have been added to the group’s streaming catalog shouldn’t register the same level of excitement as, say, AC/DC or Bob Seger opening up their discographies to Spotify and Apple Music for the very first time. Nevertheless, they are vital titles that deserve love from serious classic-rock fans. Not only are they key to understanding Fleetwood Mac’s gradual (and frequently bumpy) journey from British blues and hard rock to sun-drenched California pop, they boast some of the best tunes of the band’s long and winding career. Bare Trees is particularly sublime. A favorite for more than a few longtime Mac obsessives, it’s a hazy, zoned-out, comedown album showcasing a trio of gifted songwriters in Christine McVie, Danny Kirwan, and Bob Welch.When encountering these albums, the uninitiated will immediately notice they’re all over the stylistic map. After all, they document a band searching for an identity after the hasty departure of founding member Green, whose moody vision and six-string genius dominated the group (despite him splitting lead vocal duties with ’50s-rock fetishist Jeremy Spencer). Where McVie’s “Spare Me a Little of Your Love” is a moving slice of singer/songwriter fare infused with gospel’s ecstatic longing, Kirwan’s “Sometimes” is rambling, countrified folk-rock that sounds as if it could’ve been recorded in a remote English cottage. The American-born Welch—who, along with McVie, was the outfit’s most dependable songwriter during this time—complicates things further, penning both hyper-lush pop ballads (“Sentimental Lady”) and post-psychedelic jams drawing in touches of fusion and The Grateful Dead (“Coming Home”).But despite their deliciously messy nature, these records also show how Mac began moving towards tightly crafted pop-rock before Buckingham and Nicks’ entrance at the tail end of 1974. The most obvious instances are the McVie cuts “Prove Your Love” and “Remember Me,” which find her deep, enigmatic voice and genius for melancholic balladry already locked in place. But there’s also odd stuff like “Forever,” from Mystery to Me: Benefitting from Mick Fleetwood’s interest in African music and percussion, the rhythmic ditty totally hints at the quirky shuffles that Buckingham had the drummer work into both Tusk and Tango in the Night.At this point, fans adamant that Fleetwood Mac peaked during the Buckingham and Nicks years (something I won’t argue against) might be wondering why I haven’t delved into those records as much. Well, they’ve been picked apart and examined so intensely I decided to devote more words to the group’s lesser-known recordings in hopes of exposing folks to music they possibly haven’t heard. That said, I do want to touch on the otherworldly and exotic Tango in the Night—which everybody reading this needs to add to their library ASAP—because it’s a goddamn great record: kind of like Tusk in how it packs a lot of eccentric sounds and ideas into songs that are insanely catchy, only this time around Buckingham decides to be a ruthless editor. A perfect example is the title track, which pushes his fascination with rhythm as a compositional element to new extremes, sounding like some kind of classic-rock interpretation of 4AD-style dream pop. Just brilliant—so much so, in fact, that my playlist has more tracks from it than Buckingham and Nicks’ 1975 debut with the band. Risky, but I think you won’t be disappointed

Anthony Gonzalez is a singular force in French electronic music. Since 2001, operating primarily as M83, he has created everything from nostalgic shoegaze rock and pulsing electronic dream pop to film soundtracks, asserting his meticulousness both as a composer and performer. 2003’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts explored the intersection of sampled sound, electronic synths, and post-rock, evoking both Mogwai and My Bloody Valentine, while the melancholy and ecstatic Saturdays = Youth stands strong as 2008’s best ‘80s album. Employing battalions of excellent vocalists, mixers, engineers, and more, Gonzalez always manages to push his perfect rhythms into crystalline atmospheres of sound. His expansive music is equally perfect for midnight cruises with friends and packed music festival fields, insisting that feeling sad can feel good, as long as you are dancing through it.

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Virginia native Shelley Marshaun Massenburg-Smith always seems to have a huge grin on his face, and makes the kind of infectiously whimsical anthems that put a smile on everyone else’s faces. The 2015 EPs #1Epic and Gahdamn! established his unique sound and irrepressible personality with the Super Mario Bros.-sampling hit “Cha Cha.” A wide array of features followed, with kindred spirits like Chance The Rapper and Donnie Trumpet as well as surprising collaborators like Chairlift and E-40. The full-length debut Big Baby D.R.A.M. arrived on the heels of the smash Lil Yachty collaboration “Broccoli,” showcasing D.R.A.M.’s witty rhymes as well as his earworm melodies.

With each new Gorillaz album, more attention is paid to the number of guest collaborators invited to perform than to the group’s only consistent musical member: Damon Albarn. Humanz, which arrives this week, is no different. The songs released so far center around performances from Benjamin Clementine, Popcaan, Vince Staples, Jehnny Beth, D.R.A.M., Pusha T, and Mavis Staples, with Albarn happily orchestrating things from behind the curtain. But he’s a strong performer and highly sought-after collaborator in his own right, one completely worthy of the spotlight he avoids. His selfless attitude, which foregrounds other performers in his own work, makes him such a great songwriting partner.Taking cues from The Kinks and XTC, Albarn’s early work in Britpop act Blur focused on couching his biting social commentary in character studies, a theme that continued even after the band’s influences drifted further and further beyond the white cliffs of Dover. As the band began to pull apart in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Albarn walked away, melodica in hand, and started the horror film-loving, The Specials-aping, cartoon outfit Gorillaz, beginning a lifetime of long-standing—and very fruitful—collaborations with the eclectic and diverse likes of Bobby Womack, De La Soul, and Tony Allen, among many others.He’s had countless other projects, including Mali Music, Rocket Juice & The Moon, and DRC Music, as well as his Honest Jon’s label, all of which show the songwriter using his visibility in pop music to give credit where credit is due, and to highlight the work of incredible musicians who have inspired him.This playlist goes deep into Albarn’s discography, putting his songwriting talents front and center and focusing on the not-so-guest-heavy songs that form the bedrock of Gorillaz’s nearly 20-year career. It also contextualizes his work with Blur, the band that put him on the map, and any and every collaboration he’s been involved with in between.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

There’s a tragic feeling of incompleteness to Sharon Jones’ career, and it’s best be summed up with the phrase "discovered too late and gone way too soon." The soul and funk vocalist’s story is a well-told one: a criminally overlooked session powerhouse—who clearly possessed the chops and sheer life-force to be a star when she first turned professional in the ’70s—finally achieves fame in her late-’40s only to have pancreatic cancer claim her life in 2016 at the age of 60. Fortunately for the world, the Grammy-nominated Jones and her band, the Dap-Kings, made the most of her all-too-brief stardom, dropping seven stellar studio albums, including the posthumously released Soul of a Woman, recorded as the singer underwent debilitating chemotherapy treatments.What makes the group so unique is their ability to feel unapologetically old-school, yet without any residue of weepy nostalgia. Anchored not just by Jones’ attention-seizing voice, but the group’s agilely stabbing horns and preternaturally metronomic rhythm section as well, their music pops, sizzles, and jumps with a sweaty, determined modernism. (Especially relevant in this context is their funk-spiked reworking of Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately?”) It’s a sound that has exerted a huge impact on 21st-century pop, pushing retro-soul into the mainstream while also making the Dap-Kings, as well as their sister outfit the Dap Kings Horn Section, in-demand session musicians in the same vein as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section or the Wrecking Crew.Arguably the first artist to take notice was the late Amy Winehouse, who employed the Dap-Kings when crafting her own fusion of retro and contemporary R&B for 2006’s game-changing Back to Black. The album’s co-producer, Mark Ronson, then used the ensemble’s crack horn section on his massive retro-pop hit “Uptown Funk,” featuring dynamo singer Bruno Mars. More recently, the digitally minded Kesha used those soul-piercing horns on her crushing, feminist anthem “Woman,” from her emotional tour de force Rainbow.But not every session/appearance fits snugly between the poles of R&B and pop—there’s a slew of leftfield examples, too. On her self-titled full-length from 2014, avant-garde singer-songwriter St. Vincent leans heavily on the unswerving pulse of Dap-Kings drummer Homer Steinweiss (who also plays skins for the Dan Auerbach-led Arcs), while her collaborative effort with David Byrne, Love This Giant, weaves their horns into the duo’s art-rock pointillism. Other standouts include The Black Lips, whose garage-punk rave-up Underneath the Rainbow utilizes the services of baritone guitarist Thomas Brenneck and trumpeter David Guy, and country outlaw Sturgill Simpson, who worked with the the Dap-Kings horns on A Sailor’s Guide to Earth and then brought them onstage for his 2017 Grammy performance.On top of featuring cuts from each of the artists already mentioned, our playlists dips into the Dap-Kings many related projects (including The Budos Band and Menahan Street Band), as well as veteran soul and funk singers Charles Bradley, Lee Fields, and Rickey Calloway who, like Jones, found a welcoming home on Daptone, easily retro-soul’s most important record label. Of course, the absence left by Jones’ death will forever be felt; she was, after all, a once-in a-generation talent. But it becomes all too clear when exploring this diverse array of songs that her vision and style will continue to echo throughout modern music for a long time to come.

This is part of a series where we create playlists for friends or colleagues. The following text is a transcript of an e-mail that accompanied the playlist. Hey Eric,Here is the Silver Jews playlist I promised you. I know you said that you’re interested in them, but hadn’t been able to dig into them, in large part because they are not on any streaming services. So I made you a Youtube playlist. You can find it here.I’m curious to see what you think of them. It’s difficult for me to separate myself from my personal attachment to their music to form an objective critical appraisal. To me, they represent both a certain time in my life (my early twenties) and a place: the South, or, more specifically, Virginia, where I lived on and off during that period in my life. I don’t think most people think of them as a Southern band. The opening sentence of their Wikipedia bio declares that they’re an “an indie rock band from New York City, formed in 1989 by David Berman along with Pavements Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich.” But that is bullshit. The Silver Jews are David Berman (the other guys just show up sometimes), and David Berman is Southern.But they/he embody a part of the South that most of us don’t know exist (or at least don’t think about). It’s steeped in history (in civil war battlefields and antebellum plantations and all that shit), but is very consciously burdened (and not ennobled) by it, and tries to navigate through these shadows with a fatalistic wit and soft-lit irony.In that way subverts the notion central to Americana that nostalgia equals purity. Memories -- personal and collective -- are conjured and batted away, or used as punchlines. On the song “Slow Education,” which opens this playlist, the narrator recalls “a screen door banging in the wind” and that “you wanted to be like George Washington back then,” all of which sounds like Richard Manual writing a Lana Del Rey song, before adding that “everybody going down on themselves/ No pardon mes or fair thee wells in the end.” Which is a jokingly formal and pretty funny way of describing a certain type of asshole.And that’s the thing about the Silver Jews. It’s incredibly, consistently sad music -- the title of the song “Death of An Heir of Sorrows” could double as the name of Berman’s biography; Berman quit music due (in part) to the (self) revelation that his father was an arms dealer or some such -- but he’s also funny. Exhibit #1 is the oft-quoted opening line on “Random Rules”: “In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection/ slowly screwing my way across Europe, they had to make a correction.”The guy has duende, or at least a southern surburban version of it. Wikipedia defines duende as “having soul, a heightened state of emotion, expression and authenticity,” but they’re wrong (Wikipedia is wrong about so much today). I prefer to think of it as having an acute awareness of death -- both one’s own mortality and a larger, communal death -- and the ability to laugh and fuck and play music anyway. “Pretty Eyes” is a perfect sad song -- more perfect than any sad song Dylan or L. Cohen ever wrote, at least. It begins with the line “Everybody wants perspective from a hill/but everybodys wants cant make it past the window sill,” and has the completely obvious but totally devastating line in the middle that “one of these days, these days will end,” before nailing the landing on the last stanza with this couplet: “I believe that stars are the headlights of angels/ driving from heaven to save us to save us." But theres also this amazing (and hilarious) image at its core: “The elephants are so ashamed of their size/ hosing them down, I tell ‘em ‘you got pretty eyes’.” If you’re only going to listen to one song from this mix, listen to that one.I know this is a bit rambling. I also know that I haven’t discussed the music. It sounds kinda like really shambolic Americana, I guess. Um, members of Pavement do some of it! Members of Pavement do the best of it, actually, which can be found on the album American Water. Outside of that, it’s often rambling, amelodic and lo-fi. It occasionally fits the lyrics’ themes, I guess. It’s the achilles heel, but it doesn’t get in the way.But I don’t want to end on a down note, because I really love Silver Jews. I’ve listened to them for 20 years. The connect me with the place that I’m from like few other bands (Outkast also do this, fwiw). They’ve gotten me out of tough spots. They’ve gotten a lot of my friends out of tough spots. You’re my friend, so maybe it’ll get you out of a tough spot some day. Or, at the very least, I hope you enjoy this playlist.Sam