Music » Quiet Storm Music

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: ONE WAY
Title: BEST OF ONE WAY
Street Release Date: 04/23/1996
Domestic
Genre: SOUL/R & B

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: ISLEY BROTHERS
Title: LOVE SONGS
Street Release Date: 01/09/2001
Domestic
Genre: SOUL/R & B

Now that it's become mainstream, there's a lot of quality R&B around, but it's not until you go back and listen to veterans like the Gap Band that you realize what modern soul is often missing: raw funk. This collection includes some of the funkiest and smoothest tracks you'll ever hear. In fact, even if you've never heard old-school soul, you'll be familiar with the riffs and bass lines: they're the type of classics today's producers reference in almost every great party jam. Tracks like "Early in the Morning" and "Outstanding" are just ripe for sampling, and "Shake" and "Burn Rubber" throw you back in time, grooving on a dance floor and bobbin' your head. The adrenaline only slows for superslick ballads like "Yearning for Your Love." A blueprint for today's R&B. --Rebecca Wallwork

Marvin Gaye's 1973 album, Let's Get It On, is a marvel of sexual blandishment every bit the artistic equal of, say, John Donne's best seduction poems. The difference, though, is that the poetry here isn't in the verse--which gets a trifle clich?d--but in the supple pulse of the grooves and in the aching need of Gaye's sensual voice. The marvelous title track, a No. 1 hit, riffs on the earlier hook of Gaye's "What's Going On" to reach a more primal climax, and everything else here--a steamy swirl of sax, strings, and backing voices--is sexy, beautiful, and simply sublime. --David Cantwell

Although similar in musical content and creative vocal approach to his previous solo outings, Gerald Levert's Love & Consequences finds the artist in a more mature space lyrically. Absent is the familiar bump-and-grind rhetoric, replaced with more thoughtful love-and-relationship themes. "No Man's Land" is a sobering track that deals with the headier problems of the world, while "Humble Me" is an apologetic cut in which Levert explores the age-old adage that what goes around, comes around--but with a father-son twist. "Thinkin' About It" rings with a contemporary, radio-friendly sheen but digs deeper lyrically than most on-air offerings. Finally, "That's the Way I Feel About You" is a romantic ode featuring guest vocalist Mary J. Blige, offering a youthful interpretation of Bobby Womack's 1971 hit. --J.R. Reynolds

Release Date: 2001-07-24, Audio CD, Sony

Sly & The Family Stone might have psychedelicized soul music, but Marvin Gaye personalized it. Although the powers-that-were Motown didn't even want to release the record, the unexpected success of What's Going On, issued in 1971, inspired Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, and just about every other black artist on the planet to take greater responsibility for their music and its meaning. Gaye co-wrote the songs and produced the album, flavoring it with layer upon layer of his own multi-tracked vocals, oceans of hand percussion, strings, flutes, and jazzy horn solos. Spacey and loose as a spliff-fueled Sunday afternoon jam in the park, the nine songs all played like a hit single. The title track--inspired by his brother's return from the Vietnam War--and the obvious social commentary of "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" actually were hit singles. Two other tracks ("Wholly Holy" and "Save the Children") would inspire hit covers by Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross, respectively. Nevertheless, What's Going On sounds as fresh today as it did the week that it came out. Recommended reading: Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz (McGraw-Hill, 1985). --Don Waller

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: BLUE MAGIC
Title: GREATEST HITS
Street Release Date: 07/07/1987
Domestic
Genre: SOUL/R & B

Aretha Franklin, Aretha's Best

Release Date: 1999-08-03, Audio CD, Sony