Is there anyone on here who listens to R&B/soul at all? I don't listen to it often, but it's good to hear when you're in the right mood. What artists in those genres do you listen to? Also, I'm wondering if anyone has any good neo soul reccomendations, stuff that's not considered mainstream.

I don't listen to it much, but Marvin Gaye's What's Going On is pretty good. Mainly because it has a real band behind it and not just synths and programmed drums. I'd be open to hearing more soul and R&B if so much of it didn't have that. Oh, and Nina Simone and Van Morrison - very cool.

D'Angelo, for my money, is one of the best contemporary R&B artists. Haven't even heard his newest one but Voodoo is just a front-to-back, not-one-bum-note album. But if we're gonna discuss classics too, nobody tops Al Green for my money. His early to mid period stuff is pure class. Call Me is probably my favorite album of his - another one playable from front to back.

Nothing past like 85 or so, but that old stuff is pretty cool. I honestly can't stand post 80's stuff - it's so plastic and over-processed. I enjoy putting on some James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, old motown stuff in general.

One interesting intersection with this stuff was the Hell Interface project. This was Boards of Canada remixing old soul tunes - it's pretty great actually:





I dabble a little bit in "Northern Soul" - ie kinda heavy Soul cuts from the north of England between the early 60's and mid 70's after which point it kinda dissolves into the wider Mod and Ska/proto-skinhead scenes. I think my interest in that started with this band from the late 80's which I'm just old enough to remember coming out when I was 10 or so. Turned out they were just recycling all those old Northern Soul tropes but I think they were pretty good. Stuck in my mind as I was discussing them at work today:

Great to see a thread on here about Soul/R&B,

Scorntyrant - Northern Soul is US soul music that didn't make it big and came to be treasured by DJS and club goers in the North of England. It's not actually from the north of England. They made a kinda kvlt thing out of obscure soul records and formed a scene around it, centring on all night dances.

All the old music on Tamla Motown and Atlantic records from the 1960s is just beautiful. Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Marvin Gaye the list is just endless. There are some great Motown and Atlantic box sets that you can get really cheap or streaming. They're pretty comprehensive form those labels and contain real classics of the genre. I'd recommend these two in particular for Motown and Atlantic:

Tamla Motown Gold: The Sound of Young America
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamla_Moto ... ng_America

Atlantic Gold
http://www.allmusic.com/album/atlantic- ... 0002096548

A lot of the artists people have already mentioned are amazing. Al Green, D'Angelo (esp Voodoo!!!).

Over such a wide span of years, there's so many different eras and styles. The Philly sound for example, then the more electronic centred R&B of the Eighties onwards. There are some gems in there too, look at Let's Get it On by Marvin Gaye with the drum machines.

Not to mention old R&B from the states and then all the UK bands from the 1960s that went on to make it. I'd recommend the Peter Green era of Fleetwood Mac for an amazing British R&B band.

I feel a bit overwhelmed trying to all about this as it's such an expansive genre over 50+years. The terms soul and r&b can mean different things to different people because of all these different eras and styles.

I'll shut up now.

I don't know if they count, but about 12 years ago I went through a phase where I listened to a lot of Sugababes - their first two albums, that is. Then I lost interest. Still, their debut album "One Touch" is amazing if you're really into the genre.

Haha, yeah Sugababes had some nice tunes!

The new Rihanna LP has some good moments. She does a note for note cover of Tame Impala's New Person, Same Old Mistakes. Its good to hear contemporary artists covering each other. It was big in the 1960s and a lot of the acts on Motown did it with each other, aswell as pop and rock acts of the day.

The same can't be said for random bedroom BM acts dropping in the obligatory Burzum Cover! In saying that, I like Xasthur's version of Black Spell of Destruction.

Most of it, quite honestly, sounds plastic, generic, and over-processed to me. Either that or sugary goopy plastic over-processed which is even worse. So it remains one of my least favorate genres outside of country-western. Of course there are exceptions- some of the "classics" from the 60s/70s (Who doesn't like James Brown!) and I gotta admit, I liked OutKast (you could consider them part hip-hop part soul I guess.)

The newest D'Angelo is fantastic.

I listen to a lot of R&M, even newer stuff. There's gold everywhere and more and more keeps turning up in pressings of local acts that never had a chance at breaking nationally for any number of reasons. Rather than get into listing a billion artists that you can wikipedia for song suggestions, something different: get into the OG Ron C F-Action mixtape series. Chopped and screwed R&B sounds like a potentially terrible idea but works so well. His C&S version of Frank Ocean's record is sublime.

I need to go back to the new D'Angelo. I had such high expectations after listening to Voodoo for years and my first listen didn't hit home as much as I'd like. Mind you, I was a bit out of the loop with that kind of music, was on a bit of a BM binge for a while. I'm back listening to other records again so will give Black Messiah another few spins.

I accidentally bought a chopped and screwed album with no context. I was buying a digital version of The Diary by Scarface as I only had it on cassette. I thought there was something wrong with the file, then I checked out the cover more carefully and looked into what C&S actually was. It's pretty mental!

For me, The Weeknd's Trilogy (although oddly not the so-called "remastered" version) is the pinnacle of the entire genre. The most perfect trio of albums that have ever graced my ears, no hyperbole. I thought his follow-up, Kissland was really good too.

And then he recorded a song for the 50 Shades soundtrack and his popularity skyrocketed and expectedly his music turned to absolute shit. His latest album sucked. RIP.

Psychedelic Soul is a great genre. Funkadelic, Free Your Mind, and Maggot Brain from Funkadelic are excellent. Those album were before Clinton really got into the "Funk" genre.

Mr. Greenbaum! He was like the Sid Barrett of the group LMAO.

Sunn 0)))??? (NOPE ITS GOOD)

Wow, nice thread. I had no idea other people on here cared about R&B/Soul music. I had Oh Girl by The Chi-Lites on repeat the other day, such a lovely and "honest" sounding song.
That new D'angelo is great.
Prince is still dropping very good music. I listened to Art Official Age recently and it far exceeded my expectations. I'll check out his HITnRUN albums too, as I've heard nice things about them.

I am huge fan of R&B myself. Mostly old stuff from the 70's/early 80's. Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the O'Jays, the Ohio Players just to name a few. I have some black people in my family. The first time my parents divorced I moved in with them. For that entire time all I listened to was old R&B. It brings such happiness to me and people like Marvin Gaye have such amazing voices. To this day his voice still sends chills down my spine. Such an amazing talent and its a shame he died so young.

Yeah, I really dig Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and James Brown.
Found a great LP by this Allen Toussaint guy yesterday - Southern Nights. Nifty!
Ah, yes. Also tried Dr. John's Gris-Gris. Not my cup of tea, as far as I can tell.

I've never really got into much older R&B and soul, other than the classics, but some of my favourite new music coming out is in the R&B/altR&B and Neo-Soul realm. Anderson Paak's Malibu is one that I've really been digging lately.

I'm a fan of most 70's and 80's r&b because, unlike most of today's singers, the singer from that time period sounded like adults and not children. I recommend "Love Ballad" by L.T.D. I feel like Jeffrey Osbourne is such an underrated singer and in this song you can see why. I also like Teddy Pendergrass, Keni Burke (listen to "Risin' To The Top"), Marvin Gaye, Minnie Ripperton (fun fact: her daughter is SNL alumni Maya Rudolph), The Gap Band, Bloodstone (listen to "This Must Be Heaven" and especially "Natural High"), Renee and Angela and Smokey Robinson.

For modern day r&b I'm actually a big fan of Robin Thicke. If you only know him for "Blurred Lines" please listen to his albums The Revolution of Robin Thicke and Love After War. Regardless of whether or not he ripped off Marvin Gaye (I don't think he did, he's way too talented for that), there is no denying that how informed by old school r&b his music is. Listen to the track "All Tied Up" and tell me the piano track doesn't sound like something Michael McDonald would have written during his time in the Doobie Brothers. He's really a fantastic songwriter with a great knowledge of the r&b genre.

Tyrese's Black Rose and I Wanna Go There are truly solid albums. I would also recommend Jaheim's Still Ghetto. He has a really deep and soulful voice and the production is always tastefully minimal. Both Tyrese and Jaheim have hip hop leanings but so does D'Angelo. And yes, D'Angelo is top of the heap. Brown Sugar and Voodoo are thoroughly memorable and Black Messiah is subtler than them both yet more lyrically mature and quite vivid in its own dense way.


Erykah Badu is a maverick. Mama's Gun is the female answer to Voodoo. Very personal but still strangely involving with such intricate patterns and tapestries of sound and delivery. The oft-overlooked Worldwide Underground (mostly because it precedes two of her finest works, the New Amerykah albums) is a gem. It is utterly loose and funky and with severe old school touches yet never sounding derivative.


Bilal is also another artist worth looking into. He draws from the same sources as D'Angelo but there's a bluesier approach and a sort of unconventional format and delivery, Radiohead influences in his style are hard to ignore for one. Cody Chestnutt is also worth checking out. Here's a Cody Chestnutt jam with The Roots you might like;

as for Bilal;