RnB

A hopeless list, especially if you lived in South Florida. Using crossover hits as guides for drawing hard, bold, lines, it’s difficult to distinguish hi-NRG (Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round”) and Italo disco (Baltimora’s “Tarzan Boy”) from fellow travelers like Stacey Q, early Taylor Dayne, and Lisa Lisa + Cult Jam, not to mention Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait” and “Point of No Return.” Matters got more complicated went house hit American clubs; its pop crossover coincided with freestyle’s, therefore listeners had to deal with a bunch of Black Box singles and The Adventures of Stevie V, and CeCe Peniston’s “Finally” sharing space with Lisette Melendez’s “Together Forever” and Corina’s “Temptation” at the same time that Stevie B, Timmy T, and the Cover Girls followed the Lisa Lisa (“All Cried Out”) and Expose (“Seasons Change”) template by scoring their biggest hits with slush. To add to the confusion, on WPOW 96.5 I’d hear what in 1987 and 1988 we called bass, which wedded orchestral blasts and the Roland TB-303 to Triassic Era declamatory rap: Dimples T’s “Jealous Fellas,” JJ Fad’s “Supersonic,” early Six Mix-a-lot (“Rippin”), and anything — anything — by 2 Live Crew. Meanwhile the Stock-Aiken-Waterman remix of Debbie Harry’s “In Love with Love” and Samantha Fox’s “Touch Me (I Want Your Body)” insisted on airplay.“You can listen to this record as many times as you want and still not have any strong impressions that human beings actually made it. In other words, it’s the perfect disco record,” the great John Leland rhapsodized about Nu Shooz in SPIN. The perspicacity of this insight, however, doesn’t include most of the tracks below, sung by amateurs who could no more suppress their humanity than they could the swelling of their hair (assume this phenomenon was limited to the women and please goggle at Google Images’ supply of Stevie B photos circa 1988). There’s a reason why “Let the Music Play,” the urtext of freestyle and eighties disco, tops this list: the fluidity with which Shannon ducks from hysteria to detachment. I’ve written about dance floors as spaces where desire and fantasy call a delighted truce — until the next hunk of hotness ponies up at the bar.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

Disco has proven to be one of the more malleable and durable genres, certainly more so than punk or many other genres that sprung up during the 70s. Tim Finney -- who’s written for Pitchfork, Complex and nearly everywhere between those poles -- offers this “woke as fuck” playlist on Spotify. And though there’s no written context for this, and the tracks span decades, they seem to all be from the more proggy and experimental end of the disco spectrum. They’re also consistently jaw-dropping amazing.

There was nothing like Hot Buttered Soul, the luxuriant, expansive, exploratory soul album by Isaac Hayes, when it was released in 1969. Given complete creative control, the Stax producer and songwriter stretched out figuratively and literally, two of its four tracks stretching past the 10-minute mark, exploding with strings and horns. It turned Hayes from songwriter to sensation to icon. His style—soulful, cinematic, assured, lush, deeply arranged—would win him an Academy Award for his theme song to 1971’s Shaft and earn him a headlining spot soon after at the historic Wattstax concert.

In the ’80s and ’90s, Hayes found most of his success as a film and TV star, but hip-hop musicians were keeping his music alive. Some of rap’s most defining songs between 1988 and 1992—Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” The Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” DJ Quik’s “Born and Raised in Compton”—were built off the baroque samples of Hayes tunes. New York producers like RZA, Pete Rock, MF Doom, and Evil Dee used his palettes to make boom bap. And drawn to the cinematic, ’90s British trip-hop artists like Portishead and Massive Attack used Hayes to cull their nocturnal moods. To celebrate 50 years of Hot Buttered Soul, here’s Hayes refracted through hip-hop’s prism.

Prince was nothing if not prolific, but turning out material at a breakneck pace didn’t necessarily gel with the marketing agenda of a major label. Prioritizing creativity over commerciality, he began warring with said label over its refusal to release as much material as he wanted. That’s when he began rebelling by adopting his famously unpronounceable symbol, with the world consequently calling him The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. But beginning with 1996’s aptly titled Emancipation, Prince (who eventually reverted to his given name) was freed from his contract. Releasing records through his own NPG imprint—sometimes distributed through other labels—he opened the floodgates and a startling torrent of music flowed through.

Even in his earlier days, Prince had always put out records at a pretty constant pace, but it was only after he entered his indie phase that it really became apparent just how much material he was producing. It wasn’t merely the amount of music that was overwhelming; it was the broad range of styles. He worked in a multiplicity of formats, sometimes on his own and sometimes backed by groups ranging from the rocking 3RDEYEGIRL to the funkier New Power Generation, and occasionally joined by guests including Sheryl Crow, Kate Bush, and Maceo Parker. In these settings, Prince slipped into R&B, rock, hip-hop, funk, jazz, electronics, and more.

The trouble is—and this is where Prince’s former label’s concerns were not entirely unfounded—wading through that much music can be a daunting, even confusing process. A lot of people had trouble keeping up with the emancipated Prince’s output. To this day, it can be a challenge, so here’s a handy guide hitting plenty of the highlights, from the steamy funk of “Black Sweat” to the smooth soul of the Stylistics cover “Betcha By Golly Wow,” the blistering rock of "PLECTRUMELECTRUM," the supple jazz of "Xemplify" and beyond.