Essentials

Since rising to fame with a scene-stealing guest spot on YC’s 2011 hit “Racks,” Future has established himself as one of Atlanta’s most consistent hitmakers. Capable of both crooning bittersweet melodies in AutoTune and shouting himself hoarse on hedonistic club bangers, his range has helped make him a hook factory who can write a tender ballad for Rihanna as well as anchor an Ace Hood anthem. But as much as he shines on collaborations, including frequent team ups with Drake, Future’s increasingly prolific output of solo albums and mixtapes have found him plunging into his own dark world of heartbreak, intoxication, and surviving the trap. Establishing a rapport with a circle of talented producers including Metro Boomin, Zaytoven, Mike WiLL Made It, and Southside, Future toys with increasingly inventive cadences and flows to match his gift for choruses, pushing him to new creative and commercial heights.

Clad in a T-shirt and basketball jersey, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott looked like no other MTV fixture in the late Clinton era. Whether she’s gay is of no account: her clattering aluminum beats, declaration of appetites, camp ethos, and fascination with banality denotes a queer sensibility regardless. Every one of her albums released between 1997 and 2005 — an era that encompassed boom times and end times — is essential; This is Not a Test! has the most bangers and good album tracks, Da Real World still curiously forgotten, but Supa Dupa Fly still sounds like strange voices from another star, for which she deserves more credit than Timbaland. Souping up guys like won-ton, swaying on dosie-do like you loco, making you hot like Las Vegas weather, she reminded artists that before hip hop developed a social consciousness and was known as rap, it was an excuse to fling fly rhymes over dope beats. “‘Look, it’s very simple,” John Lennon once said to David Bowie in a fictional conversation. “‘Say what you mean, make it rhyme, and put a backbeat to it.’” What else is there?Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary and more.

Producer Xavier “Zaytoven” Dotson has been instrumental in shaping the sound of Atlanta trap music as an early ally of Gucci Mane and Migos. But perhaps his most revered work is Future’s 2015 mixtape Beast Mode. At the time, Future’s friend DJ Esco was locked up abroad with the hard drive containing all of the rapper’s unreleased music. So Future entered the studio with Zaytoven, and in three days recorded what became Beast Mode, one of a trio of acclaimed mixtapes the MC released in the space of a few months. And in 2018, it’s rumored that Future and Zaytoven will reunite for the long-promised sequel, Beast Mode 2.Future and Zaytoven first crossed paths on Free Bricks, the 2011 collaborative mixtape by Gucci Mane and Future. And the chemistry between Future’s throaty melodies and Zay’s lush piano and flute loops was cemented on 2012’s Astronaut Status, one of the mixtapes that built Future’s buzz before he began releasing major-label albums. Since then, Zaytoven has been a frequent presence on Future records, contributing a warmly melodic and relaxed sound that contrasts with the more aggressive textures of producers like Metro Boomin on chart-topping albums like 2015’s DS2 and 2017’s FUTURE.Future and Zaytoven’s biggest hits together include the tawdry Beast Mode highlight “Real Sisters,” the celebratory Drake collaboration “Used To This,” and “Too Much Sauce,” the Lil Uzi Vert-featuring single from DJ Esco’s 2016 mixtape Project E.T. The familiar sound of Future over a Zaytoven beat even opened “3500,” the epic lead single from Travis Scott’s debut album, Rodeo. But the duo’s dozens of collaborations include mixtape favorites of any Future aficionado, including “Just Like Bruddas,” “Space Cadets,” and the ominous, paranoid masterpiece “Feds Did A Sweep.”

Future’s career reached new heights in 2015 thanks to his prolific mixtape output, and he continued the pace in 2016. January brought the mixtape Purple Reign, which spun off one of his biggest solo hits, “Wicked,” and February brought the chart-topping album EVOL, with brooding favorites like “Low Life” featuring The Weeknd. He linked up with Lil Uzi Vert and Rich Homie Quan on the Future-dominated DJ Esco mixtape Esco Terrestrial, guested on hits by 21 Savage and A$AP Ferg, and continued his partnership with Drake beyond What A Time To Be Alive. But perhaps the biggest surprise of the year was that even Jay-Z wanted Future on the hook, for the DJ Khaled single “I Got The Keys.”

Marvel’s Luke Cage is a black superhero from New York with a conscience. And the creators of the hit Netflix series about him chose to name his adventures after after an appropriate musical inspiration. Each of the 13 episodes of the show’s first season are named after classic tracks by Gang Starr, the group that paired one of hip-hop’s greatest producers, DJ Premier, with Guru, the erudite and soulful MC who passed away in 2010. The Luke Cage episodes draw on song titles from the group’s first five albums, with a particular emphasis on their 1994 classic Hard To Earn, which featured tough guy anthems like “Code of the Streets” and “Suckas Need Bodyguards.”

To say Grant Hart lived a hard life is a gross understatement. With 80s noise-pop pioneers Husker Dü, he played the misfit McCartney to Bob Moulds lacerating Lennon, providing the honey chaser to his partners hoarse-throat howls. But just when the band seemed on the verge of following R.E.M. out of the college-radio fringes and into the mainstream, Hart was waylaid by a heroin addiction, not to mention an HIV diagnosis (which ultimately proved to be false). Following the bands extremely acrimonious break-up, Hart gradually faded into obscurity, releasing a small handful of under-the-radar records while Mould enjoyed a steady, successful career as an alt-rock elder statesman. Recent years had been especially trying: Hart lost both parents in quick succession, and he was injured in a fire that destroyed his longtime family home in South St. Paul. And then 2017 brought the diagnosis of the kidney cancer that ultimately claimed him on September 14 at the age of 56.But throughout Harts many trials and tribulations, he never lost the gifts for swooning melody and psychedelized experimentation that made Hüsker Dü the most adventurous band in 80s indie rock. Just when you had counted him out—or even completely forgotten about him—hed blindside you with the dizzying fuzz-pop of 1999s Good News for the Modern Man, the frayed-nerve garage-rock of 2009s Hot Wax (recorded with members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor), or the cinematic grandeur of 2013s Milton-inspired concept album, The Argument, a record that deserves to go down as his career-capping masterpiece.With this playlist, we pay tribute to the man who forged the Dave Grohl prototype of the shit-hot drummer who also a tender tunesmith, beginning with Harts greatest Hüsker Dü hits (including the peak-era duet with Mould on "Flip Your Wig"), and then on through his short-lived early 90s combo Nova Mob*, and his increasingly sporadic, exceedingly underrated solo work.* Note: Nova Mobs 1994 self-titled second album isnt available on Spotify.

This past July, NPR released their list of the 150 greatest albums made by women. On first glance, the list appears to be wide-reaching in its scope. Meshell Ndegeocello, Sleater-Kinney, and Egyptian superstar Umm Kulthum all make appearances, with iconic figures like Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell nabbing the top spots. However, renowned metal critic Kim Kelly quickly noted on Twitter that the the “definitive” countdown failed to include any albums metal albums by women—so she Tweeted out a list of her own.Given that metal often embraces envelope-pushing shock value as a statement of apolitical art, its omission from NPR’s list reveals a common misconception about the music: that it is dominated by men. Kelly’s comprehensive breakdown tells another story, and the majority of her list comprises catharsis-inducing extreme metal that seeks to both agonize and empower through its sheer heft.Her expert selection spans traditional early ’80s heavy-metal bands like Chastain and Bitch all the way to the sludge-fueled prowess of Windhand and Trish Kolstad’s screeching one-woman experimental project, DödsÄngel. Also making the cut are already canonical standouts by newcomers like False, Dakhma, King Woman, and Cloud Rat.Kelly’s list serves an additional function of dispelling the assumption the women who do make metal music fall into a specific category: white, straight, and cisgendered. The Chilean speed-metal group Demona, the Japanese black-metal outfit Gallhammer (pictured), and the acclaimed Santa Cruz grindcore band Cretin (whose frontwoman, Marissa Martinez-Hoadley, came out as transgender in 2008) serve up some of the most memorable moments on the list. Kelly’s crash course does more than simply construct a history of women in metal; she highlights the diversity in female and non-binary artists who have transgressed the genre itself.

It is said that all contemporary American music derives from Black music. Folk, rock ‘n’ roll, blues, jazz, and country music have roots in African American spirituals, and the early guitar music of slaves and poor Black musicians who created songs that addressed their work, their love lives, and their community.Black folk music can be traced back to the early 1900s through the guitar-based music of Elizabeth Cotten, whose self-taught finger-picking style provided an equally complex and tender backdrop for her soft vocals. It’s since become so steeped in the American artistic lexicon that you many not even notice how prevalent it is in modern music.Today, Black folk music is commonly associated with the artists who broke into the mainstream in the ’80s and ’90s, like Tracy Chapman and Ben Harper. But there is so much music that came before and after. A folksinger since the ‘50s, Alabama native Odetta was a huge influence on artists like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. (In fact, Odetta was a guest on Cash’s variety show in 1969, and one of his final singles, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” was a cover of a song Odetta recorded back in 1956.) Now, artists like Valerie June and Rhiannon Giddens are continuing the tradition of Black folk music, incorporating acoustic guitar, banjo, and mandolin on their recent albums. This mixtape spans 1910 to 2017—it was a pleasure to make and I hope you’ll find it’s a pleasure to listen to.

The band has always displayed such an appetite for its own self-destruction, it’s incredible that Guns N’ Roses ever made it in the first place. Even the question of what to put on the cover of Appetite for Destruction—the debut album that turns 30 this summer—threatened to put them outta the race before they’d even gotten out of the gate. Axl Rose initially wanted a picture of the Challenger explosion on the cover, but Geffen 86’d that as fast as possible. Then the band wanted (and got) a lurid cartoon image—based on the same 1979 painting by cult comix and hot-rod art great Robert Williams that was the source for the album’s name—of a robot rapist menaced by a multi-armed contraption as a female victim lies slumped against a fence. When retailers said there was no effing way they’d rack that, Geffen hastily revised it, shifting the image to the inner sleeve, where it would mess with the minds of impressionable teens forever more. They replaced it with a cross-and-skulls image by Billy White Jr. representing each of the band members (hence the black top hat for the Slash skull on the bottom).Despite the label’s efforts and the band’s sweat and toil in the two years since its membership had coalesced out of some of L.A.’s scrappiest hard-rock acts, Appetite for Destruction debuted at No. 182 in its first week on the Billboard charts in August 29, 1987. A year later, however, the story was very different. Driven by the band’s relentless touring and the ubiquitous radio and video airplay for “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Paradise City,” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” Appetite for Destruction would eventually rack up over 18 million in sales and become the all-time best-selling debut album.Thirty years later, it’s easy to hear how the music was more than just what they needed to surf past their troubles and penchant for self-sabotage (at least for a while). Part of what made GNR so thrilling was how they took a disc sander to all the glam and pop elements that prevailed in the hair-metal era of the ‘80s. Their sound was so much gnarlier, drawing from hardcore punk heroes like the Misfits, the primo biker metal of Motörhead, and—first and foremost—the bluesy, boozy rock of Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones. Just as crucial was the ability of producer Mike Clink to present it all with a minimum of clutter and maximum force.Yet at the same time, GNR were unafraid to provide some hooks or show off a more vulnerable side. Indeed, Rose had way more ballads ready to go after “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” but they decided to stick with only one for the debut. “November Rain,” the singer’s first full-bore expression of his love for Elton John-sized grandeur, was one of several early songs that had to wait for release on Use Your Illusion I and II, the 1991 double set whose bloat was a far cry from GNR’s ruthlessly action-packed debut.The live tracks that would surface on the stop-gap album Lies—which was the first time most folks heard Live… ?!*Q Like a Suicide, the demi-legendary self-released EP that came out the year before Appetite—and the unabashedly ragged ’87-’93 compilation served as further proof of just how exhilarating GNR were in their late-‘80s prime. The best of them are here along with early tracks by the proto-GNR band Hollywood Rose and songs by other bands whose impact on Rose and Slash was obvious even without the regrettable existence of The Spaghetti Incident? And at the heart of this playlist is Appetite for Destruction, still one of the most ferocious, most bad-ass, and most unabashedly rock ‘n’ roll rock ‘n’ roll albums ever made. So wake up, sleepyheads… it’s time to diiiieeeeee.

Jim James’ angelic falsetto floats above his soulful jams like that of a mezzo-soprano in an operatic aria, flowing to and fro through the grooves and harmonies. A heavy sense of chill exudes from nearly every track, from the hard-hitting bangers to the tender ballads. It isn’t just his voice, but his whole attitude that makes his songs great. He rides the slow build of My Morning Jacket’s “Smokin’ from Shootin’” like a focused surfer, while “Golden” sees him glide over its percussive shuffle like a leaf in the wind. Singing and guitar are far from his only strengths—the Monsters of Folk album featured his work on guitar, bass, keyboard, drums, percussion, and electronics. All these talents come together cohesively and effectively in his solo work, such as 2013’s celestial Regions of Light and Sound of God, whose tracks saw him moving into more vulnerable thematic territory (“A New Life”) while still maintaining his trademark chill vibes and occasional funkiness (“Know Til Now”). Eternally Even’s “Here in Spirit” continues the trajectory, acting as a masterclass in James’ eternally solid vibes. Whether shredding on guitar, vocals, or other, the man is in a class of his own when it comes to contemporary jam theory.