PnM.MiX - 22 songs from FAVORITE BLUES ALBUMS of AllMusic 2019

PnM.MiX - 22 songs from FAVORITE BLUES ALBUMS of AllMusic 2019

North Mississippi Allstars

"Whether it came from Chicago, California, Mississippi, or a festival that took place in Michigan 50 years ago, these blues albums represented the genre at its best.

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Greasy, bluesy jam band led by brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson, sons of Memphis studio legend Jim Dickinson.
North Mississippi Allstars - Up and Rolling / Up and Rolling
The North Mississippi Allstars bring it all back home on Up and Rolling, the band's debut offering for New West. Cody and Luther Dickinson (scions of the late producer Jim Dickinson) may have taken their brand of roots rock, dirty-blues crunch, soul, and funk across the globe many times, but they’ve never forgotten their roots in Mississippi's Hill Country mud. In 1996, Texas photographer Wyatt McSpadden visited the Dickinsons and took pictures of local hill country musicians Otha Turner, Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, and others, along with their musical families. All the musicians and their kin played together at Kimbrough's juke joint...  Up and Rolling clears away decades of cobwebs, dust, and wisteria vines from the doorway to the past: It's a family reunion offering that looks to the Hill Country's history and mystery for both its inspiration from the past and guidance to its present.

Austin, Texas-based bluesman known for his sharply-crafted songwriting and T-Bone Walker-esque lead guitar playing.
Seth Walker - Are You Open? / Underdog
Seth Walker answers the question he poses with the title of his tenth studio album through its music. The one-time blues specialist has widened his palette so his fleet single-string leads are a mere coloring on a collection of well-crafted songs that draw upon a variety of roots sounds. Walker doesn't limit himself to Southern sounds... nice accents to a collection that is largely grounded in mellow, deeply felt soul and blues that owes much to the past but isn't attempting to re-create olden days. Instead, Walker is deft and elegant, weaving together sounds and stories in a way that has a quiet, lasting impact.

Blues musician out of Kansas City whose rock-edged guitar work has topped the blues chart.
Samantha Fish - Kill or Be Kind / You Got It Bad
After releasing two excellent -- but very different -- records in 2017, Samantha Fish spent the last year undergoing some changes. She moved to New Orleans and left her longtime label Ruf Records for Rounder. The guitar slinger has always stretched herself musically. For years she soaked up examples imparted by mentors in her twin pursuits as a guitarist and bandleader, transforming what worked in her own image -- she remade the blues that way too. On Kill or Be Kind it's the worthy ambition to become a better songwriter...

Born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia, this singer, songwriter, and virtuoso pianist revisions American music through her Balkan heritage.
Katarina Pejak - Roads That Cross / Turtle Blues
...Cut in Texas and produced by Mike Zito, Pejak wrote 9 of the 11 tunes for the date. The two covers are fine readings of Joni Mitchell's "Sex Kills" and Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company's "Turtle Blues." Her studio band includes the incomparable Laura Chavez on guitar, Jonnie Trevn, Jr. on bass, and Damien Llanes on drums. Pejak's singing voice sits at the treasure spot where Norah Jones, Victoria Spivey, and Bessie Smith all meet. Her songs here engage the wide range of American song forms, from blues and jazz to roots rock, loungey swing, and even Tex-Mex...

Soulful Irish singer/songwriter who combines folk, gospel, R&B, rock, and jazz, often with a mystical bent.
Van Morrison - Three Chords and the Truth / Dark Night Of The Soul
Over the past four years, Van Morrison has recorded no less than six albums. Most have been populated with excellent covers of blues, soul, and jazz standards with a smattering of original numbers woven in between. Three Chords and the Truth (titled after Harlan Howard's famous description of country music), is his first collection of all-new original material since 2016's Keep Me Singing. Morrison penned 14 of the 15 songs here. In addition to his road band, he recruited old friend, acoustic jazz guitarist Jay Berliner (who played on Astral Weeks) for some of the sessions. The album's sound is warm, punchy, and immediate, despite being cut in five studios...

Grammy-winning national treasure who has masterfully balanced gospel and secular music since her early years with the Staple Singers.
Mavis Staples - We Get By / One More Change
One of the most resonant songs Mavis Staples has been handed since her 2000s resurgence is "Love and Trust." Staples values the Ben Harper composition enough to have put it at the top of the set list for Live in London, and emphasized it even more by sharing the performance on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2019, ahead of the parent release. With Live in London only three months old, Staples returns with another studio LP, this one written and produced by Harper... Staples then alludes to inhumane forms of confinement, all relevant in 2019, in similarly deep despair. Whether the songs are designed to motivate, mourn, or comfort, they're all sustenance. The everlasting potency of Staples' voice is a marvel.

Veteran Chicago harmonica virtuoso keeping traditional Windy City blues alive since the late '60s.
Billy Branch & the Sons of Blues - Roots and Branches: The Songs of Little Walter / Hate To See You Go
Billy Branch earned the throne of king of Chicago Blues harp during the last quarter of the 20th Century, then held it during the first decades of the new millennium. One of the keys to his enduring success is how he didn't merely keep traditions alive, he made sure to blend in elements of funk and soul into Chicago blues, a trick that brought new audiences into the fold while helping the music breathe. In this light, the 2019 album Roots And Branches: The Songs Of Little Walter-recorded with the Sons Of Blues, as nearly all of his albums are-doesn't seem quite so obvious as it might initially appear...

A Midwestern-based blues band that keeps the sound of Chess and Sun Records alive.
The Cash Box Kings - Hail to the Kings! / Smoked Jowl Blues
It's hard not to see the title of Hail to the Kings! as the Cash Box Kings celebrating themselves, but this 2019 album -- the group's second for Alligator -- makes it plain that the quintet can occasionally plant their tongues firmly in cheek. Case in point: "Joe, You Ain't from Chicago," where the group's twin leaders vocalist Oscar Wilson and harmonicist Joe Nosek do their best Bo Diddley and Jerome Green routine, trading barbs all intended to show how Nosek is truly a native of Madison, Wisconsin, not the Windy City. It's funny and it's smart, revealing that all of the Cash Box Kings are not only in on the joke, but that their hearts belong to Chicago. Certainly, Hail to the Kings! is an enthusiastic celebration of Chicago blues in all of its electric forms...

Texas guitarist who combines blues roots with contemporary soul and hip-hop.
Gary Clark, Jr. - This Land / Dirty Dishes Blues
... This Land is his toughest and most ambitious work to date, a bold and often ferocious set of songs that serves as a polyglot of African-American musical idioms and sharply articulate thoughts about American life in the midst of the Trump era. As on his previous albums, Clark frequently demonstrates he's a gifted and forceful guitarist, but on This Land, the songs are ultimately more important than the solos, and the rich, densely packed production, the melodic diversity of material, and the undiluted passion of the lyrics (and the way Clark delivers them) is what truly makes this album succeed...

The king of the contemporary chitlin' circuit, known for his raucous and red-hot mix of soul, blues, and funk.
Bobby Rush - Sitting on Top of the Blues / Good Stuff
Bobby Rush cut his first single in 1964, when he was already 31 years old, and 55 years later, the man is not only still making music, but he still sounds like a credibly raunchy love man at a time when most folks his age can hardly be bothered to get up off the couch. The swampy funk that was a major part of Rush's musical personality in his salad days is in short supply on 2019's Sitting on Top of the Blues, but his gift for grafting together deep soul and barroom-ready blues is as strong as ever, and the rough insistence of his vocals connects when he wraps his voice around his various tales of women trying to get the better of him (at least when he's not busy trying to get the better of them)...

Acclaimed Mississippi bluesman and member of the Bentonia blues school who also operates America's oldest surviving juke joint.
Jimmy "Duck" Holmes - Cypress Grove / Little Red Rooster
Jimmy "Duck" Holmes is one of the last practitioners of old-fashioned Mississippi blues, playing a variation that belongs to the Yazoo county town of Bentonia. Holmes kept that sound alive at his own juke joint and on a series of records in the 2000s, but the 2019 album Cypress Grove is designed as a vehicle to introduce the bluesman to a wider audience. Dan Auerbach, the lead singer of the Black Keys and head of the Easy Eye Sound studio and label, shepherded the project, bringing Holmes up to Nashville to record with a bunch of his cohorts, including guitarist Marcus King. Undoubtedly, this crew is much larger than the roster that usually shows up on a Holmes album, but Auerbach doesn't overload the grooves of Cypress Grove...

An 11-piece band, fronted by the married guitar slingers, that plays a righteous meld of rock, blues, gospel, and New Orleans funk.
Tedeschi Trucks Band - Signs / I’m Gonna Be There
Signs, the fourth studio album by the Tedeschi Trucks Band, poignantly addresses some of the major changes this 12-piece group has been through over the last couple of years. That said, it's hardly steeped in sadness, but acknowledges reckoning and acceptance while leaning on hope. In November 2016, longtime friend Leon Russell died. In January, Derek's uncle Butch Trucks committed suicide. In May, mentor Col. Bruce Hampton (to whom Signs is dedicated) suffered a fatal coronary on-stage during his 70th birthday celebration (which Trucks and Tedeschi witnessed). The same month, Gregg Allman died after a years-long battle with liver cancer. And in June, keyboardist Kofi Burbridge suffered a heart attack that required emergency surgery.
These events had an obvious impact on Signs, but it results in their most musically diverse offering yet. Sonically it remains in the band's trademark stew of blues, soul, rock, gospel, and improv, but also showcases a new songwriting sophistication and arranging skills...

Mississippi-born blues guitarist boasts a full-bodied sound and worked with Buddy Guy and Eric Gales before he could buy beer.
Christone "Kingfish" Ingram - Kingfish / Love Ain't My Favorite Word
At the ripe old age of 20, Clarksdale, Mississippi guitar slinger Christone "Kingfish" Ingram has been anointed "the next explosion of the blues," by no less than Buddy Guy. The proclamation is accurate. Ingram is young, but he's spent most of life pursuing the blues across the Delta and Chicago traditions, with nods at '70s hard rock and soul along the way... His musical influences range from Robert Johnson -- who supposedly made his deal with the devil not far from Ingram's home at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 -- to Muddy Waters, Guy, and even Prince (he offers a hell of a cover of "Purple Rain" live). Kingfish was recorded in Nashville for Alligator Records and produced by Grammy-winning songwriter, bluesman, country singer, and drummer Tom Hambridge, who co-wrote most of these 12 songs with the guitarist...

Blues guitarist who matured from a rock & roll drummer into a master of the electric six-string.
Coco Montoya - Coming in Hot / Lights Are On But Nobody's Home
Two years after guitar slinger Coco Montoya returned to Chicago's Alligator label for Hard Truth, he follows with Coming in Hot. Montoya is one of the most prodigious and gifted electric bluesmen on the planet. He is a double threat as a deeply soulful singer and incendiary guitarist. Coming in Hot offers a kindred lineup to the one who knocked 2017's Hard Truth out of the park. Produced by drummer Tony Braunagel and engineered by Johnny Lee Schell (who helms the rhythm guitar chair on all but three tracks where Billy Watts guests), it also includes Mike Finnigan on keyboards, and bassist Bob Glaub on seven cuts (Mike Mennell sits in on the other four)...

The venerable Delbert McClinton is a legend among Texas roots music aficionados, not only for his amazing longevity, but for his ability to combine country, blues, soul, and rock & roll as if there were no distinctions between any of them in the best time-honored Texas tradition.
Delbert McClinton - Tall, Dark, And Handsome / Temporarily Insane
Retaining the Self-Made Men but adding saxophonist Dana Robbins, the jumping outfit he unveiled on the 2017 album Prick of the Litter, Delbert McClinton shakes things up for the swinging set Tall, Dark, And Handsome. Where Prick of the Litter settled into a mellow vibe, Tall, Dark, And Handsome is bold and restless, finding McClinton trying on all manner of blues for size... Such a casual switch in tone illustrates how Tall, Dark, And Handsome is the work of a master stylist, a musician who draws upon old, familiar sounds and creates something idiosyncratic and soulful in equal measure.

A gifted guitarist with an eclectic range of influences, Luther Dickinson has earned a reputation as an innovator in modern blues while also having a keen understanding and respect for its rich history. 
Luther Dickinson / Sisters of the Strawberry Moon feat. Amy Helm - Solstice / Sing to Me
Aside from co-leading the North Mississippi Allstars with his brother Cody, Luther Dickinson has spearheaded a number of solo projects drenched in American roots music since 2009. Solstice is a kind of companion to 2012's Go On Now, You Can't Stay Here by the Wandering -- Dickinson's first project with female vocalists. Longtime associates Amy LaVere and Sharde Thomas were part of the earlier group and contribute alongside gospel trio the Como Mamas, Amy Helm, and Birds of Chicago's Allison Russell...

Luther Dickinson, Amy Helm

A virtuoso on the pedal steel guitar, Robert Randolph jumped from spiritual to secular music and found an audience among blues fans, roots rock aficionados, and jam band followers with his fiery, passionate instrumental work and heartfelt music.
Robert Randolph & the Family Band - Brighter Days / Simple Man
...After first cutting his teeth in gospel music, Randolph has been storming stages across the country and around the world with his heavyweight fusion of blues, rock, and gospel influences, with the dirtied-up tone of his instrument wailing hard and crying with passion as he and his band draw sweat. With that in mind, it's hard to imagine why Randolph and his crew would want to go to Nashville and record with someone primarily associated with country music. But Dave Cobb, the hotshot producer who has been behind the controls for some outstanding released from Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, and Zac Brown, isn't a typical Nashville studio guy, and on 2019's Brighter Days he's clearly eager to help Randolph is his mission to redefine the boundaries of the pedal steel...

A fiery guitarist who kept the sound of classic Chicago blues alive in the 21st century. / Modern blues band anchored by leader Nick Moss, vocalist Michael Ledbetter, and drummer Patrick Seals.
Nick Moss Band - Lucky Guy! / Simple Minded
The first time the Nick Moss Band recorded a full album with harpist Dennis Gruenling went so well, the gang decided to reconvene for a second set just a year later. Like many sequels, 2019's Lucky Guy! doesn't offer surprises, but it could be argued that The High Cost of Low Living didn't exactly shock either. That was by design. Moss and Gruenling make it their mission to keep the greasy sound of Chicago blues alive, and while they're traditionalists, they're not stuck in the past...

Guitarist and co-founder of the Fabulous Thunderbirds and older brother of Stevie Ray Vaughan with his own take on Texas roadhouse blues.
Jimmie Vaughan - Baby, Please Come Home / No One to Talk to (But the Blues)
...Issued by the U.K.'s Last Music Co. Baby, Please Come Home is another set of less-than-obvious covers drawn from the dusty shelves of vintage jump blues and R&B shuffles, rockabilly, doo wop, and country music. All are reworked in his hard-swinging back-to-basics style, delivered with raw passion as well as economy, his razor-blade six-string acting as a guidepost rather than driving force. The set was cut in mono mostly at the Fire Station in San Marcos, Texas, except for a couple of tracks captured live in Austin. Vaughan's cast comprises alternating groups of veteran friends....

Mississippi guitarist with a hybrid style that adds the grit and moan of the blues to the urgent energy of call-and-response gospel.
Leo Welch - The Angels in Heaven Done Signed My Name / Don't Let the Devil Ride
While it wasn't unexpected given his advanced age and health, the death of gospel bluesman Leo "Bud" Welch in 2017 felt altogether too soon. The Delta bluesman from Sabougla, Mississippi had been performing for most of his life. He gigged in juke joints, opened for touring artists such as B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, and John Lee Hooker, and played in church, but he didn't release an album until he was 81...After his passing, Auerbach returned to the tapes, cut the selection to ten tunes, and added few overdubs. The end result is pure Welch, passionate and rootsy, from his percussive, jagged, sometimes spooky guitar playing to his elastic, gritty, vocal phrasing.

Contemporary guitarist from the Deep South who gained rare fame for a bluesman despite his interests, which vary from acoustic to rock.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd - The Traveler / Mr. Soul
Kenny Wayne Shepherd arrived on the scene as a blues guitar hero at 18 to an overload of media hoopla and pressure. At 40, he has evolved from the blues-guitar-slinger ghetto and become a mature musician whose wide-angle vision embraces American roots music -- blues, rock, country, and soul/R&B -- as an inseparable whole...  Neil Young's "Mr. Soul" is delivered with rowdy aplomb, a smoking update with horns pushing Shepherd's guitar into the red...  The Traveler continues Shepherd's trajectory of quality. The diversity in his musical approach, songwriting consistency, organic production, and passionate performances place it over and above anything else in his catalog to date.

Soulful singer/songwriter with a bent toward vintage-influenced R&B.
Eli "Paperboy" Reed - 99 Cent Dreams / In the End
Eli "Paperboy" Reed emphasized how his 2016 album My Way Home brought him back to his roots, underscoring the point with its very title. 99 Cent Dreams, its 2019 sequel, proves how true that assessment was. Working once again for Yep Roc, Reed stays focused on retro sounds and vintage vibes, drawing deeply from the Southern-fried sounds of Memphis but adding some sick uptown grooves reminiscent of both the Windy City and the Motor City. A former hotshot guitar slinger, Reed reins in his solos throughout 99 Cent Dreams, pushing song, and especially sound, to the forefront...

PnM.MiX - 22 H O T songs from FAVORITE R&B ALBUMS of AllMusic 2019

PnM.MiX - 22 hot songs from FAVORITE R&B ALBUMS of AllMusic 2019

Jamila Woods

"Lizzo stormed the world's hearts and playlists in 2019 with her breakthrough, 'Cuz I Love You,' while debuts from Steve Lacy, Los Coast, and Devin Morrison sat nicely alongside albums from established R&B figures like Raphael Saadiq, Lee Fields, and Rahsaan Patterson."

Singer and songwriter, as well as a poet and activist, who naturally applies the latter two outlets to her modern, soul-rooted R&B.
Jamila Woods - MUDDY from LEGACY! LEGACY!
Jamila Woods conceptualized her second solo album after an exercise she presented to her poetry class at Young Chicago Authors. The students were assigned to choose a poem and "cover" it, as Woods terms it, by putting their individual spin on it. Woods took part with Nikki Giovanni's "Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)," and was then asked by YCA artistic director Kevin Coval to do the same with a piece he wrote about Muddy Waters. This evolved into LEGACY! LEGACY!...

Veteran soul and funk vocalist and songwriter backed by the original house band of Truth & Soul Records. / A journeyman soul shouter who enjoyed his greatest success after more than three decades in show business, Lee Fields initially specialized in the taut, gritty funk that James Brown made famous. However, Fields' breakthrough came when he developed a more distinctive and personal style and found a new following in the retro-soul movement.
Lee Fields & the Expressions - Love Prisoner from It Rains Love
He first made his name as a James Brown-inspired soul shouter in the '70s, but since Lee Fields became one of the leading figures on the retro-soul scene in the 2000s, he's subtly been evolving into a more nuanced performer, one who can still sing with grit and force but also brings the heart and passion of a Bobby Womack or a Wilson Pickett to his material. 2019's It Rains Love shows just how good Fields has gotten at putting a thoughtful lover's heart behind the expressive fire of his delivery, and it ranks with his best work, a combination of great songs and sterling performances that bring out their best qualities... Producer and bandleader Leon Michaels has given this album a rich, natural sound that flatters Fields and his accompanists equally well (especially the peerless rhythm section of Nick Movshon on bass and Homer Steinweiss on drums). Not many artists who made their first record in 1969 can honestly be said to be working at the top of their game 50 years later, but Lee Fields is that rare example of a singer who has learned a lot about music over the course of his career while still having the vocal chops to put that knowledge to good use. It Rains Love is a master class in the art of modern soul music from an artist who only gets better and wiser as he matures.

Grammy-winning national treasure who has masterfully balanced gospel and secular music since her early years with the Staple Singers.
Mavis Staples - Slippery People (Taling Heads) from Live in London
Not counting I'll Take You There: An All-Star Concert Celebration, Live in London is Mavis Staples' first live album since 2008's Live: Hope at the Hideout. Since that Chicago date, Staples has made four remarkable studio LPs -- three with Jeff Tweedy, one with M. Ward -- that sensibly form the basis of this, drawn from a two-night stand at Islington's Union Chapel. Her cracking band features many of the players heard on the Chicago recording, and they still bear some likeness to either the spectral or approaching chooglin' modes of Creedence Clearwater Revival...

Witty, confident singer/rapper who blends hip-hop and soul as she tackles issues of race, sexuality, and body positivity.
Lizzo - Crybaby from Cuz I Love You
Since her indie days, Lizzo has been a distinctive and multi-talented artist capable of blending rap, soul, pop, and her classical training with positive messages and a sharp sense of humor. On her major-label debut Cuz I Love You, she takes all of these strengths to the next level, and the results are her most consistent, and consistently joyous, set of songs yet. Working with a creative team that includes producer Ricky Reed -- with whom Lizzo connected shortly after releasing her second album, Big Grrrl Small World -- she continues to embrace her gospel roots and the full power of her voice... Fueled by megawatt energy that never lets up, Cuz I Love You is a triumphant showcase for every part of Lizzo's talent, physicality, and sexuality.

"Hippie with soul" from the state of Washington who is inspired by classic soul and '70s singer/songwriters.
Allen Stone - Back to the Swing from Building Balance
... On 2019's aptly titled Building Balance, Stone splits the difference between his organic first two albums and the more sonically vibrant Radius, offering a set of hooky tracks that make the most of his charismatic vocal presence. Whereas last time he worked with Swedish producer Tingsek, here he primarily worked with Britain's Jamie Lidell, who brings his own neo-soul skills to bear, producing and co-writing a handful of songs. Also adding to the album's soulful production are Jeremy Most, Nasri Atweh, and Jeff Gitelman, who each earn co-writing and production credits...

Madcap singer, rapper, drummer, and producer who was central to Dr. Dre's Compton before he won a Grammy with his 2018 single "Bubblin."
Anderson .Paak - Twilight from Ventura
Still climbing in 2019, Anderson .Paak won a Best Rap Performance Grammy award for "Bubblin" and returned in April with Ventura, at which point his preceding Oxnard wasn't even six months old. Although Oxnard and Ventura were laid down during the same sessions, the latter is neither leftovers nor a patchwork of adequate material that didn't fit on the former. Rather remarkably, it's the self-termed rap singer's tightest and most concentrated album yet. There's no space allowed for interlude hijinks or wayward diversions. Moreover, R&B is favored to such an extent that Paak delivers what could be called host verses on only a couple tracks... It's unmistakably in the tradition of soul and funk older than the artist himself, but could not have been made any earlier than the late 2010s.

Carlton Jumel Smith is a singer, songwriter, producer, and actor whose nickname since the 1990s has been "Soul Brother Number New," thanks to his cinematic portrayal of James Brown in Barry Levinson's 1999 film Liberty Heights. With a smooth baritone that is alternately grainy and sweet with a distinctive falsetto, he has been bringing his revue-style shows to stages across the United States, Europe, and Asia since 2002, including several stints in Shanghai, Helsinki, Las Vegas, and London, England.
Carlton Jumel Smith - You Gonna Need Me from 1634 Lexington Avenue
...1634 Lexington Avenue is his debut long-player for Finland's premier indie soul label, Timmion, and his first full-length since 2008. The title reflects Smith's childhood address. He is backed by Helsinki's Cold Diamond & Mink, Timmion's production team and studio band led by guitarist/organist Seppo Salmi, bassist Sami Kantelinen, and drummer Jukka Sarapää. The horn section includes arranger/trumpeter Jukka Eskola, Pope Puolitaival on baritone sax, and global jazz-funk saxophonist Jimi Tenor, with Janne Auvinen on congas and Tuomo Prättälä on organ, piano, and background vocals filling... While Smith claims Brown as his biggest influence, it's obvious he also reveres the sounds of Memphis' Hi-Records and Stax, Detroit's Motown, and Chicago's Curtom... "You Gonna Need Me," is possessed by a Memphis vibe, drenched in Smith's sweet baritone that weds gospel, soul, and blues in its grain.

Orlando-born R&B singer/songwriter with a sophisticated '90s-influenced sound.
Devin Morrison feat. Joyce Wrice - With You from Bussin'
Bussin' is not a long-shelved project from the singer you swear you caught on the Rhythm of Love tour or maybe did that Shazam-stumping cut you heard between Horace Brown's "One for the Money" and Groove Theory's "Tell Me." Contrary to its look and sound, it's the debut of an Orlando outlier who somehow seems both out of time and of the moment in 2019. Devin Morrison writes, arranges, and produces all his material with a novel aptitude for refashioning late-'80s/'90s modes that pre-date Timbaland and Missy Elliott's twitch-and-jab dominance...

English alt-R&B/soul singer and songwriter who cites Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill as primary influences.
Mahalia - Karma from LOVE AND COMPROMISE
Mahalia's accounts of opposing and moving past unsuitable male behavior, seeing beyond her faults and persuasively bigging-up herself, are distinct and flow as freely as the hooks that embellish them. No matter how detailed the productions get, they don't obstruct the vocals, which are consistently dynamic without being showy. Going by the natural charm of the album and the fun Mahalia seemed to have in making it  she might only be getting started...

Violinist, singer, songwriter, and producer who combines R&B, hip-hop, folk, and experimental electronic music for the Stones Throw label.
Sudan Archives - Black Vivaldi Sonata from Athena
...The result is her freest, richest, most accomplished work. In a way, the naked image of the artist on the cover undersells her artistry; a mike, a pen, and a pad belong beside her just as much as her raised violin. Parks' strings do slice through and spring across the rhythms, and are sometimes plucked to hypnotic effect, in each method distinguishing the album from any other recording that can be loosely classified as alternative R&B (or the artist's own tag, fiddle funk)...

Austin, Texas-based combo who employ a rich and hip-shaking amalgam of pop, soul, R&B, funk, gospel, and psychedelic rock.
Los Coast - Shadow Work from Samsara
The debut long-player from the eclectic Austin-based combo, Samsara delivers a rich and hip-shaking amalgam of pop, soul, R&B, funk, gospel, and psychedelic rock. An assured effort, especially for an inaugural release, the 13-track set bristles with intent, yet plays with its quarry like a bored house cat...

English singer/songwriter who weaves his Ugandan heritage into an acoustic blues-folk style.
Michael Kiwanuka - Rolling from Kiwanuka
...Born to Ugandan parents who fled during Idi Amin's reign of terror and settled in Muswell Hill, Kiwanuka has had to fight to keep his identity at the forefront of the culture; numerous record execs tried to get him to dump his birth name for one easier to market, resulting in such a crisis of self-confidence that he shelved an earlier album called Night Songs, recorded as the initial follow-up to Home Again, so he could decide if he even wanted to continue pursuing a musical vocation. This third album wears its self-titling as a badge of honor, a statement of who Michael Kiwanuka as artist and individual is. Once more produced by Danger Mouse and Inflo, this 13-song set is a brave, colorful collection that provides an exceptionally well-rounded aural portrait of Kiwanuka's massive and diverse talent. If one had to choose a genre umbrella for this release, the term "21st century psychedelic soul" would fit better than anything else...

Songwriter/guitarist Nick Waterhouse's music is steeped in 1950s blues and R&B, but driven by 21st century energy.
Nick Waterhouse - Nick Waterhouse
...The singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer receives sympathetic co-production from Paul Butler, known most for work with Michael Kiwanuka and St. Paul & the Broken Bones, while his support comes from a mix of sure-handed musicians familiar and new to his sessions, plus vital longtime backing vocalists Roberta Freeman and Carol Hatchett. It's all true to the scholar's past work, remaining in that throwback mode connecting variants of '50s and '60s R&B with a little energy from garage rock -- as played in an orderly, climate-controlled garage with enough room to fit a band and a horn section, but a garage nonetheless. Waterhouse's approach here is as painstaking as ever, and the writing is on par with the best across his discography. What puts this set over the top is his performances, which are more spirited and less mannered, consequently less like those of an entertainer...

Traditional yet progressive R&B artist with a singular tenor voice and an unbroken streak of adventurous albums.
Rahsaan Patterson - Heroes & Gods from Heroes & Gods
There's never a bad time for a new Rahsaan Patterson album, but 2019 is uniquely appropriate, as it's the singer's 35th year in the entertainment industry. Moreover, the release of Patterson's last proper LP is creeping toward its eighth anniversary, consequently his longest period of silence by far. Patterson seemed to be touring for most of the break, however, and presumably spent a good amount of time sketching and sharpening the material that makes up Heroes & Gods. Like his two most recent albums, Bleuphoria and Wines & Spirits, it communicates many emotions relating to intimacy and continually switches up sounds, like a lovingly personalized 60-minute mixtape that prioritizes quality over flow. Working most frequently with Jamey Jaz and Derrick Walker, both of whom have been supporting him for over 20 years, Patterson references bygone eras crossing several decades while twisting contemporary sounds, grounded as ever in gospel and soul, and throws in a couple of stylistic curveballs...

Grammy-winning retro-contemporary R&B giant behind Tony! Toni! Toné!, hits for the likes of D'Angelo and Erykah Badu, and masterful solo LPs.
Raphael Saadiq - This World is Drunk from Jimmy Lee
Raphael Saadiq is known above all for the bounty of stirring love songs and lively jams he has made for himself and others since the late '80s. Less recognized are his tales of tragic figures struggling to make ends meet as their egos and vices respectively trip out and take hold, despite his breakthrough with one, Tony! Toni! Toné!'s "Little Walter," and a Grammy nomination for another, "Good Man." Saadiq's first LP since the latter hit takes the conflicted narratives to a higher level that is more concentrated and personal. Jimmy Lee is titled after an older brother he idolized -- one of four siblings he has lost to tragedy... From its inspiration to its supporting cast, this is a family affair; nephew Dylan Wiggins is among several additional keyboardists, and uncle Reverend E. Baker provides a joyous testimonial. The brothers and sisters in arms, longtime partners (Thomas McElroy, Taura Stinson) and new associates (Brook D'Leau, Daniel Crawford) alike, play in service to the vision of one eminent artist, helping him convert grief to artistic brilliance.

Sault are an R&B-rooted collective whose releases across 2019 orbit Adrian Younge's retro-modern psychedelic soul, Rip Rig + Panic's rambunctious post-punk funk, and genre-crossing Nigerian obscurities dredged up by specialist reissue labels such as Now-Again and Soundway.
Sault - Masterpiece from 5
This troop showed up anonymously and without notice in February 2019. First was "We Are the Sun," a sugared and easy-rocking declaration of pride and resolve from what sounded like a small instrumental combo and a multi-gender group of vocalists warming up at first light. They returned four weeks later with "Don't Waste My Time," suggesting they were buzzed on an eruptive mix of funk-loving post-punk bands such as Rip Rig + Panic and Maximum Joy, '70s Nigerian rock nuggets, and much indignation. Clues were in the songwriting and production metadata of these tracks, crediting Dean Josiah Cover, known as the Ivor Novello Award-winning Inflo, and Melisa Young, aka the BET Awards-nominated Kid Sister... and in "Masterpiece" craft a tear-jerking devotional ballad that's ghostlier than anything out of Adrian Younge's Linear Labs. Released on the independent label Forever Living Originals, presumably an Inflo undertaking, 5 comes off like the result of one supercharged marathon session unburdened by commercial pressure.

Singer, songwriter, and producer who debuted with pop-oriented R&B and grew into one of the more adventurous, expectation-defying artists of her era.
Solange - Down With the Clique from When I Get Home
Unfazed by having to follow a landmark album that crowned the Billboard 200, went gold, and yielded a hit that took a Grammy, Solange leisurely detours with When I Get Home. Made in spots as remote as Los Angeles and Jamaica, the follow-up to A Seat at the Table was also recorded in New Orleans and Solange's native Houston. Most pertinent is the last location, referenced repeatedly in expressions of nostalgia, pride, and tranquility, as well as in titular geographic markers. Moreover, the spirit of DJ Screw, Houstonian developer of the woozy and torpid sound perfectly termed "chopped and screwed," is often felt, even as a bountiful supply of synthesizer lines burble and wriggle like certain '70s moves made by George Duke, Stevie Wonder, and Space City's own Joe Sample...

Studio do-it-all and occasional headliner who joined the Internet as a high schooler, leading to work with the likes of Kendrick Lamar and Solange.
Steve Lacy - Love 2 Fast from Apollo XXI
The majority of the Internet's Grammy-nominated 2015 album Ego Death was produced by the band's newest addition, a high schooler named Steve Lacy. Word about the guitar-favoring instrumentalist quickly spread...  Apollo XXI, his first album, is a little more refined, advancing his lazing, heartfelt mix of soul and funk with minimal varnish and no evident fuss. The rhythms have a rudimentary, still-demo-like charm, ranging from a functional plod to a hyperactive twitch. Lacy's thin but ringing vocals, often in mid-wattage falsetto, are finely matched with his pleasingly reedy guitar tone, suggesting a lovestruck stupor and other vaguely altered states...

Fronted by Tarriona Ball, a powerful New Orleans-based R&B band who won NPR's 2017 Tiny Desk Contest and signed with Verve.
Tank and the Bangas - Smoke.Netflix.Chill. from Green Balloon
Two live EPs and a much larger studio recording budget later, the band truly arrive with Green Balloon. For Tank and the Bangas, the title symbolizes wealth, weed, inexperience, and celebration all at once. Ball indulges in some joyously materialistic wordplay but elsewhere alludes to money as a necessity for survival. She sings often of getting high while also feeling guilt about it. As she tries to keep it together, she feels overstimulated, loses track of time and belongings, and achieves blissful escape until a sense of inertia takes over...

Dream-like fusions of R&B, jazz, and electronic music from a self-taught composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist.
Taylor McFerrin feat. Anna Wise - Memory Digital from Love's Last Chance
With his 2014 full-length debut Early Riser three years in the past, Taylor McFerrin joined R+R=Now, a formidable group instigated by fellow keyboardist, composer, and producer Robert Glasper. The swift recording process that yielded the sextet's Collagically Speaking motivated McFerrin to check his perfectionism as he worked on his second album. The resulting Love's Last Chance does evince a more direct step on a surface level. Pacific rhythms with squiggling synthesizers and casually bobbing basslines course through it, with not one flashback to the wrought, jagged edges and stammering patterns of Early Riser. There's a nearly equal increase in the musician's stylistic agility, typified by the moment when a teasingly short interlude evoking progressive '70s MPB like Azymuth sharply pivots to the Anna Wise duet "Memory Digital," mellow modern boogie that can slide between Keni Burke and Dām-Funk...

With his kaleidoscopic jams and stark reveries, Velvet Negroni's Jeremy Nutzman explores the psychedelic side of R&B
Velvet Negroni - CONFETTI from Neon Brown
Before the release of his official debut album, Velvet Negroni's Jeremy Nutzman had already toured with Bon Iver and scored a writing credit on Kanye West and Kid Cudi's collaboration Kids See Ghosts. On Neon Brown, Nutzman lives up to the high expectations generated by these accomplishments while building on R&B at its moodiest and most experimental. Joined by co-producers Psymun and Tickle Torture -- who's also worked with Young Thug and Juice WRLD -- Nutzman creates a sonic space that's connected to, but distinct from, the spectral futurism of Tri Angle's roster of artists as well as the chart-topping R&B and hip-hop of the late 2010s... and switches things up again on "Confetti," a deep, saxophone-laden dive into the starkness of his 2017 mixtape T.C.O.D. that's one of the album's loveliest and loneliest moments.

Prolific R&B multi-instrumentalist and producer with numerous solo albums and musical direction for the Foreign Exchange.
Zo! feat. Eric Roberson, Carmen Rodgers - Love Up  from FourFront
Lorenzo Ferguson keeps to his triennial +FE Music release schedule with his fourth album for the label, issued after a documentary about the third one, other original music for film and television -- including pitch-perfect contributions to the satirical Sherman's Showcase -- and abundant collaborative work. From the title all the way down, FourFront has a composition like that of SunStorm, ManMade, and SkyBreak. Decked out with feel-good love and it-could-be-love songs tidily arranged over a sturdy post-disco/pre-new jack swing foundation, it similarly features a shifting cast of guest vocalists known and new to Zo! sessions. Among the familiar, most prominent is touring partner Carmen Rodgers on two highlights that sparkle...