Diggin’ You, Like An Old Soul Record

Back in the day, albums by Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, the Isley Brothers or Marvin Gaye were more than just 40 minutes of musical distraction.  They were incantations producing altered states of joy and pain.  This was the pinnacle of R&B – free from the church and the constraints of radio air play.  The best products of this era (think Wonder’s Fulfillingness First Finale) had the sweep and ambition of the White Album.  

Shangri-La, gone forever, right? No way. Here are four old school classics -- all made in the last dozen or so years -- that deliver on that R&B promise. Listen up. 

Jill Scott, Who Is Jill Scott, Words & Sounds, Vol. 1

This millennial release was Scott’s debut and it established her as R&B royalty with a debt to Gil Scott Heron and spoken word artists like The Last Poets.  This is the sound of “Neo-Soul” before it got swept up in the tidal wave of hip-hop, but it’s gritty all the same.  “Getting’ In The Way” has this classic refrain: “You better back down before you get smacked down; you better chill.”  Don’t mess with Jill.

Angie Stone, Black Diamond 

Black Diamond dropped a year before Scott’s debut and while it is steeped in hip-hop (think TLC’s Waterfalls from the same era), there’s not a rapper in sight.  Ironic, since Stone broke out first as a rapper, but here she’s a damn soul queen singing her way through this set of tightly produced R&B gems and a brilliant cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man.” You’ll get the idea from “No More Rain In This Cloud,” which would have been at home on Ann Peebles’ 1974 classic I Can’t Stand the Rain.

Betty Wright & The Roots, Betty Wright – The Movie

Fast forward to 2011 and the album that Betty Wright, the “Clean Up Woman,” made with The Roots.  Ignore the title; there’s no movie, just “grow folks’ music” (as she calls it) to luxuriate in.  But what music!  By now the rappers are ubiquitous (Lil Wayne and Snoop drop by here), but Betty more than holds her own with tracks that have the deep groove of her original Miami hits.  Check out "In the Middle of the Game." There’s no “neo” about this soul.

Robert Glasper Experiment, Black Radio

 I saved the best, most adventurous, for last. Glasper is a jazz pianist with an impeccable pedigree (outings with Blanchard, Hargrove and McBride) and a conviction that “jazz needs a big ass-slap,” to re-energize it.  And in 2013, this Grammy winning disc did some of the same ass-slapping that Herbie Hancock and Donald Byrd did with Headhunters and Black Byrd. Start with “Afro Blue” with Eryka Badu sitting in.  But don’t stop there; stream the whole ass-slapping thing.