Soul/R&B

Vinyl LP repressing of this classic album by George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and the gang packaged in a limited 3D cover. Mothership Connection was the fourth album by funk band Parliament. Mothership Connection became Parliament's first album to be certified gold and later platinum. The Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry in 2011, declaring "The album has had an enormous influence on Jazz, Rock and Dance music." Continuing with it's Respect The Classics campaign UMe are reissuing this classic back on vinyl with a limited edition 3D cover that's mind blowing! Includes 'Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)' and more.

• 1 P?Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)
• 2 Mothership Connection (Star Child)
• 3 Unfunky Ufo
• 4 Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication (The Bumps Bump)
• 5 Handcuffs
• 6 Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)
• 7 Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples

RAY CHARLES / Now Playing (SYEOR24) [Blue Vinyl] A music legend beyond compare, who almost single-handedly laid the groundwork for soul music, American artist Ray Charles proved his mastery with countless jazz, country, R&B, and pop masterpieces during a career that spanned seven decades. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Ray number 10 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time" and was voted number 2 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time" in November 2008.

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Mess Around
• 2 I've Got a Woman (2005 Remaster)
• 3 Drown in My Own Tears (2005 Remaster)
• 4 Hallelujah I Love Her So (2005 Remaster)
• 5 Lonely Avenue (2005 Remaster)
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 The Right Time (2005 Remaster)
• 2 What'd I Say, Pt. 1 & 2 (2005 Mono Remaster)
• 3 I Believe to My Soul (2005 Remaster)
• 4 Let the Good Times Roll (2005 Remaster)
• 5 Hard Times (No One Knows Better Than I)

Curtis Mayfield recorded a string of hits with The Impressions before leaving the influential soul-gospel group to embark upon a solo career that produced some of his finest work. Known as the "Gentle Genius," Mayfield has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice - first as a member of The Impressions and later as a solo artist. Mayfield managed to combine some of the greatest soul ever recorded with thought provoking lyrics tackling the key social political issues of the time. Rhino Records presents the definitive collection of Mayfield's reflective, soul moving, evocative hits with the 16-track vinyl 2LP-set, The Very Best of Curtis Mayfield. Includes everything from the political to the romantic, from cuts from his genre-defining Superfly ("Freddie's Dead") to statement makers like "(Don't Worry) If There Is a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go."

Tracks

LP1

1. (Don't Worry) If There Is A Hell Below, We're All Going To Go
2. The Makings Of You
3. Move On Up (Extended Version)
4. Get Down
5. We Got To Have Peace
6. Freddie's Dead (Theme From 'Superfly')
7. Superfly (Recorded Live by WTTW-TV Chicago)
8. Pusherman

LP2

1. Future Shock
2. Can't Say Nothin'
3. Kung Fu
4. So In Love
5. Only You Babe
6. Do Do Wap Is Strong In Here
7. Between You Baby And Me (with Linda Clifford)
8. Do Be Down (with Linda Clifford)

Double vinyl LP pressing. New Edition's career-spanning collection showcases 17 essential R&B hits. This latest compilation includes all their major hits from their MCA era, such as "Can You Stand the Rain," "Mr. Telephone Man," "If It Isn't Love," and "Cool It Now."

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Spoken Word
• 2 Cool It Now
• 3 Mr. Telephone Man
• 4 Lost in Love
• 5 Count Me Out
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 A Little Bit of Love (Is All It Takes)
• 2 With You All the Way
• 3 Earth Angel
• 4 Once in a Lifetime Groove
• 5 Helplessly in Love
• - Disc 3 -
• 1 If It Isn't Love
• 2 You're Not My Kind of Girl
• 3 Can You Stand the Rain
• 4 Crucial
• - Disc 4 -
• 1 N.E. Heart Break
• 2 Hit Me Off
• 3 I'm Still in Love with You
• 4 You Don't Have to Worry

Good Girl Gone Bad is the third studio album by Barbadian recording artist Rihanna. It was released on May 31, 2007, by Def Jam Recordings and SRP Records. Rihanna worked with various producers on the album, including Christopher "Tricky" Stewart, Terius "Dream" Nash, Neo da Matrix, Timbaland, Carl Sturken, Evan Rogers and StarGate. Inspired by Brandy Norwood's fourth studio album Afrodisiac (2004), Good Girl Gone Bad is a dance-pop, pop and R&B album with 1980s music influences. Described as a turning point in Rihanna's career, it represents a departure from the Caribbean sound of her previous releases, Music of the Sun (2005) and A Girl like Me (2006). Apart from the sound, she also endorsed a new image for the release going from an innocent girl to an edgier and more sexual look. Critics gave generally positive reviews of the album, praising it's composition and Rihanna's new musical direction, though some criticized the record's lyrics and inconsistency. The album received seven Grammy Award nominations and one win in the Best Rap/Sung Collaboration category for "Umbrella" at the 2008 ceremony. The album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart and sold 162, 000 copies in it's first week. Certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), it sold more than 2.8 million copies in the United States. The album reached number one in Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and according to Mediatraffic it has sold 8.5 million copies worldwide, being so the best-selling album of her career. Good Girl Gone Bad spawned five singles, including the international hits "Umbrella" and "Don't Stop the Music"; Rolling Stone placed the former at number 412 on the magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. In support of the album, Rihanna embarked on her first worldwide concert tour, the Good Girl Gone Bad Tour. The album was reissued as Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded in June 2008 with three new songs, including the Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits "Take a Bow" and "Disturbia". It was followed by Rihanna's first remix album, Good Girl Gone Bad: The Remixes, in January 2009, which featured remixes from Moto Blanco, Tony Moran, the Soul Seekerz and the Wideboys.

• 1 Umbrella - Jay-Z, Rihanna
• 2 Push Up on Me
• 3 Don't Stop the Music
• 4 Breakin' Dishes
• 5 Shut Up and Drive
• 6 Hate That I Love You - Ne-Yo, Rihanna
• 7 Say It
• 8 Sell Me Candy
• 9 Lemme Get That
• 10 Rehab
• 11 Question Existing
• 12 Good Girl Gone Bad

50th Anniversary Vinyl LP Reissue with Lacquers Cut from the Original Master Tapes by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound

2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Al Green's Call Me, and to celebrate, Hi Records/Fat Possum will reissue the 1973 R&B classic on vinyl with lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound. A combination of 'sweet' and 'funky' is certainly the secret to Al Green's gloriously sentimental and sensual pop songs. Green's subtly controlled falsetto, which he tones right to the threshold of audibility, swings along gently always anchoring the proceedings. However, this sublime set also belts out some fiery sounds right from the very first number. The sinuous, swinging request in the brilliant hit single "Call Me," the relaxed and groovy "Stand Up" with its sharp wind interjections which demand one's unerring attention, are typical of Green's style, just as is his almost disturbing capability to gain comfort from loneliness ("I'm So Lonesome, I Could Cry"). This rhythmically powered music can best be described as light, intensive, dynamic but never flashy ("Your Love Is Like The Morning Sun") and it finds its earthly culmination in soul ("Jesus Is Waiting") and spiritual depth.

1. Call Me
2. Have You Been Making Out Okay
3. Stand Up
4. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
5. Your Love Is Like The Morning Sun
6. Here I Am (Come and Take Me)
7. Funny How Time Slips Away
8. You Ought To Be With Me
9. Jesus Is Waiting

Music on Vinyl press. 180 gram audiophile vinyl. Includes insert. Featuring the number 1 hit "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" duet with George Michael, produced by Narada Michael Walden. Sleeve artwork by Andy Warhol. Black vinyl. The 1986 self-titled Aretha Franklin album was a successful one, notable for containing five R&B hits, including the number 1 hit "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" and "If You Need My Love Tonight". Aretha herself says on the liner notes that this is one of her favorite albums, and it's easy to see why.

Tracks

• 1 Jimmy Lee
• 2 I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me) Duet with George Michael
• 3 Do You Still Remember
• 4 Jumpin' Jack Flash
• 5 Rock-A-Lott
• 6 An Angel Cries
• 7 He'll Come Along
• 8 If You Need My Love Tonight Duet with Larry Graham
• 9 Look to the Rainbow

Split in two volumes, here is the sum of James Brown's early five-year period 1956-1960, when JB (and his Famous Flames) was obsessively searching for his own sound. Selected from a bunch of 19 two-sided singles, and including super hits such as "Please, Please, Please", "Try Me", and "I'll Go Crazy", this collection represents James Brown's fundamental groundwork for the coming soul music revolution.

Tracklist

• Pain in My Heart
• The Dog
• Stand by Me
• Hey Hey Baby
• You Send Me
• I Need Your Lovin'
• These Arms of Mine
• Louie Louie
• Something Is Worrying Me
• Security
• That's What My Heart Needs
• Lucille

Hot Buttered Soul sounds exactly as Isaac Hayes named it. The lush arrangements featuring strings and horns were recorded at United Sound Studios in Detroit, home of Motown Records, and had been arranged by Johnny Allen, who had arranged music for The Temptations, Stevie Wonder and The Supremes, and who would later do the arrangements on the soundtrack to Shaft, for which he won a Grammy. The album's opening track, a cover of the Burt Bacharach and Hal David classic "Walk on By," was like nothing that had ever been heard before in popular music. Hayes' vocals take more than two minutes to appear. Craft Recordings’ 180g vinyl LP makes the wait even more worthwhile and sounds and looks incredible. Remastered from the original analog tapes by engineer Dave Cooley, it also features a replica old-school style tip-on jacket for exquisite packaging. 

Hayes, along with keyboardist Marvell Thomas and The Bar-Keys (Willie Hall, drums; James Alexander, bass; Michael Toles, guitar), recorded the basic tracks for the 1969 set at Ardent Studios in Memphis. Together, they produced the ultimate funk and soul stew to mix with the Detroit strings and horns. "Walk On By" alone runs for 12-minutes, and when it's over there's a sense of having been overwhelmed, but in the nicest way possible. It is so different from Dionne Warwick's original that it stands alone as a definitive reading of this classic number. 

The chart-topping album's other standout track is the 18-minute, LP-side-filling "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," a song that had originally been a hit for Glen Campbell. Hayes speaks the intro, which runs for nearly nine minutes, and when he starts to sing, the song develops into an amazing musical experience. He at once strips it bare and rebuilds it into something that defies definition. The coda on "Phoenix" is just awesome as its intro and the album is worth the price of admission for this track alone. The other two numbers on the record are slightly more traditional, with "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" being a funkyfied track that owes something to the kind of step-change music that was beginning to come from Blue Note Records while "One Woman" is the kind of Southern soul ballad that could only have come from Memphis.

1. Walk On By
2. Hyberbolicsyllabicsequedalymistic
3. One Woman
4. By The Time I Get To Phoenix

Alicia Keys As I Am on 2x Vinyl LP! 

Alicia Key's most innovative album to date is a collection of music with no boundaries. Influenced by everything from hip-hop to soul to rock to classical music, As I Am is every bit a sense of rebellion and empowerment. The new album features collaborations with some of the biggest hit makers in music and includes the smash hit single "No One."

Alicia Keys As I Am Track Listing

As I Am (Intro)
Go Ahead
Superwoman
No One (Main)
Like You'll Never See Me Again
Lesson Learned
Wreckless Love
The Thing About Love
Teenage Love Affair
I Need You
Where Do We Go From Here
Prelude To A Kiss
Tell You Something (Nana's Reprise)
Sure Looks Good To Me

UK only vinyl pressing! Recorded at United Sound Studios, Audio Graphic Services, and G-M Recording Studios, Detroit, Michigan. Funkadelic's self-titled debut may have touched upon drug-induced acid rock, but on their 1970 follow-up, Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow, the band blows the door off it's hinges. Look no further than the album-opening ten-minute title track-perhaps the most spaced out composition witnessed by rock & roll since the Rolling Stones' late-'60s psychedelic-phase. Westbound. 2006.

Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. In the liner notes to this grooving 1969 album (featuring a big band led by drummer Louis Bellson and arranged by Impulse! Star Oliver Nelson), the Godfather of Soul explains that he is a "jazz man at heart." Brown's soul consigliere, saxophonist Maceo Parker, helps make this a swinging, spirited and satisfying set of standards and James Brown hits. Verve By Request Series features transfers from the analog tapes.

1. That's My Desire
2. Your Cheatin Heart
3. What Kind Of Fool Am I
4. It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World
5. The Man In The Glass
6. It's Magic
7. September Song
8. For Once In My Life
9. Every Day I Have The Blues
10. I Need Your Key
11. Papa's Got A Brand New Bag

The queen of hip-hop soul is back with a hot new record! Good Morning Gorgeous serves as Mary J. Blige's long-awaited follow-up to her 2017 album Strength of a Woman and is introduced by the pair of powerful singles "Good Morning Gorgeous" and "Amazing." Blige wrote "Good Morning Gorgeous" with D'Mile, H.E.R., Lucky Daye, and Tiara Thomas. H.E.R. also produced the single with D'Mile and contributes guitar and background vocals. "Amazing," featuring DJ Khaled, was written by Blige, Denisia Andrews, Brittany Coney, Khaled, Streetrunner, Tarik Azzouz, Willie Cobbs, and Ellas McDaniels. In addition, Khaled produced the song with Streetrunner and Azzouz. "Working on this new album has been so much fun," Blige says. "I'm excited for my fans to hear these first two songs to give them a taste of what's to come. I'm grateful to all my collaborators and partners who have walked with me through this process and even more grateful to my fans who I hope have a blast with this new music."

1. No Idea
2. Love Will Never
3. Here With Me featuring Anderson .Paak
4. Rent Money featuring Dave East
5. Amazing featuring DJ Khaled
6. GMG Interlude
7. Good Morning Gorgeous
8. Come See About Me
9. On Top featuring Fivio Foreign
10. Love Without The Heartbreak
11. Falling In Love
12. Enough
13. Need Love featuring Usher