featured r&b; albums
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- Ike Turner
- Real Gone Rocket: Session…
- This collection gathers obscure sides from Turner's salad days as a session player and songwriter in the R&B; sector of early rock & roll.
- Willis Earl Beal
- Acousmatic Sorcery
- Chicago outsider offers an incredibly raw selection of genre-hopping basement jams, and a sometimes uncomfortably honest look into a very personal world.
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- The Sugarman 3
- What the World Needs Now
- After a decade, Daptone's Sugarman 3 are back with their soulful funk and groove on What the World Needs Now.
- Dr. John
- Locked Down
- On Locked Down, Dr. John and producer Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, get gritty, funky, spacey, and steamy.
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- Various Artists
- Personal Space: Electronic…
- Enjoyable oddness from obscure outsiders, equipped with drum machines and synthesizers, whose contemporaries included Timmy Thomas, Shuggie Otis, and Motown…
- Various Artists
- Soul Cal: Disco &…
- Painstakingly researched for over a decade, this collection showcases artists navigating a transitional time between deep funk and disco.
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- Luther Vandross
- Hidden Gems
- Most of these tracks are taken from platinum in-print albums, so the title is misleading, but this certainly goes deeper than the singer's single-disc anthologies.
- SWV
- I Missed Us
- The trio's first album in 15 years sounds like it was made with no expectations beyond delivering a high-quality 2012 R&B; album.
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- Melanie Fiona
- The MF Life
- Though it's led by the wholly contemporary ballad "4 AM," Fiona's second album refines the throwback approach of the promising 2009 debut.
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- Etta James
- I Just Want to Make Love…
- This set includes sides the late and great Etta James cut with Chess Records in 1960 and 1961, including the entire At Last LP
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- Usher
- Looking 4 Myself
- The occasionally thrilling "revolutionary pop" of Looking 4 Myself sounds a whole lot like contemporary R&B;, or dance-pop, or a combination of the two.
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- The O'Jays
- We'll Never Forget You:…
- Containing 28 tracks released while they were still finding an identity, this includes a number 12 R&B; hit, Eddie Levert's "Stand in for Love."
- Azealia Banks
- 1991
- Featuring the massive "212," the Harlem rapper/singer combines fierce rhymes and sweaty house music on this sharp EP.
significant music
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about r&b;
Evolving out of jump blues in the late '40s, R&B; laid the groundwork for rock & roll. R&B; kept the tempo and the drive of jump blues, but its instrumentation was sparer and the emphasis was on the song, not improvisation. It was blues chord changes played with an insistent backbeat. During the '50s, R&B; was dominated by vocalists like Ray Charles and Ruth Brown, as well as vocal groups like the Drifters and the Coasters. Eventually, R&B; metamorphosed into soul, which was funkier and looser than the pile-driving rhythms of R&B.; Soul came to describe a number of R&B-based; music styles. From the bouncy, catchy acts at Motown to the horn-driven, gritty soul of Stax/Volt, there was an immense amount of diversity within soul. During the first part of the '60s, soul music remained close to its R&B; roots. However, musicians pushed the music in different directions; usually, different regions of America produced different kinds of soul. In urban centers like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, the music concentrated on vocal interplay and smooth productions. In Detroit, Motown concentrated on creating a pop-oriented sound that was informed equally by gospel, R&B;, and rock & roll. In the South, the music became harder and tougher, relying on syncopated rhythms, raw vocals, and blaring horns. All of these styles formed soul, which ruled the black music charts throughout the '60s and also frequently crossed over into the pop charts. During the '60s and '70s, soul began to splinter apart -- artists like James Brown and Sly Stone developed funk; Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff initiated Philly soul with the O'Jays and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes; and later in the decade, danceable R&B; became a mass phenomenon with the brief disco fad. During the '80s and '90s, the polished, less earthy sound of urban and quiet storm ruled the airwaves, but even then, R&B; began adding stylistic components of hip-hop until -- by the end of the millennium -- there were hundreds of artists who featured both rapping and singing on their records.