RENAISSANCE is the highly anticipated new album from global icon Beyoncé. Packed with rousing anthems that resonate with everybody, RENAISSANCE is a culmination of freedom and escape that encourages unimaginable jubilation, agency, and movement with abandon. The singular intent of RENAISSANCE, a reinvention of four on the floor, is to showcase music that stirs you from the soul and encourages your dancing feet.  It is a celebration of a club era when anyone who felt like an outsider sought each other and formed a community of freedom-seekers to express themselves creatively through the rhythm, which we still celebrate today. 

When you think of R&B in the 21^st century, romance, sex, love, and Tank instantly come to mind. With vocal fireworks lit enough to heat up any bedroom and an instantly recognizable presence, the nine-time GRAMMY® Award-nominated multiplatinum singer, producer, actor, comedian, and R&B Money label founder has defined two decades of the genre with one seminal record after another. Along the way, he has gathered hundreds of millions of streams, picked up platinum plaques, and sold out shows around the world. However, he leaves the game with one more magnum opus, delivering his tenth and final full-length offering, R&B Money [R&B Money/Atlantic Records], in 2022.

 

“For me, I’ve adjusted and lived through the changes with R&B,” he explains. “R&B is back in an amazing place. There are so many R&B artists who have incredible careers. The title R&B Money speaks to how lucrative the R&B business is and how expensive the music is. However, relationships and love are expensive in terms of how much you have to emotionally and spiritually invest. The investment is worth it though. R&B is about relationships. Nothing gives you the blues like a relationship when it goes wrong. Nothing gets you more excited than a relationship when it goes right. It’s never changed for me. I’m still making R&B.”

 

Throughout 2021, he assembled what would become R&B Money as his most ambitious body of work yet. “I’ve got more songs than ever,” he says. “I wanted to give it all I’ve got. For the first half of the album, it’s a vibe. You’re either making up or making out. There’s a song for any groove you’re in. It’s a ride, so pack a lunch.”

Following a record-breaking debut, Ella Mai brings us her highly anticipated sophomore album, Heart On My Sleeve. With the physical available upon immediate release on May 6, 2022, fans can experience the thrill of running to the store to grab the CD and press play on their favorite R&B songstress.

The Ohio Players came into musical prominence in the 1970's as pioneers of street funk and underground R&B. After signing with Mercury Records in 1974 the Ohio Players landed three consecutive platinum albums with Skin Tight, Fire and Honey. Seen as their commercial breakthrough, Skin Tight boasts a fuller production and more prominent horns as exemplified on the hit title cut and fellow single "Jive Turkey." One of the finest albums from one of the greatest funk/R&B bands that ever was reissued here on gatefold colored 180g vinyl LP by Friday Music.

Robert Glasper’s highly anticipated third installment to the Black Radio album series. Black Radio III, much like both of its predecessors, is a cultural moment that celebrates black love and resilience, features an eclectic group of talented collaborators, and is composed by Glasper who the New York Times proclaims is “probably the most prominent jazz musician of his generation”. An innovative and essential addition to Glasper’s seminal Black Radio series. Limited Edition Indie Exclusive Chartreuse 2 LP.

A brand new album of brand-new songs from the No. 1 R&B Group of All Time, The Temptations. Features tracks written and produced by Narada Michael Walden, the young hip-hop producer K. Sparks, longtime group member Ron Tyson, founding member Otis Williams, and the equally legendary Smokey Robinson, whose classic songs launched the group’s original hit streak. The new album release will coincide with Otis Williams’s 80^thbirthday, and the Broadway return (and road show edition) of the hit musical, Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations.

180 gram audiophile vinyl. Fifth studio album by the Queen of Soul. Recorded at New York's Columbia Studios and produced by Robert Mersey. Featuring "What a Diff'rence a Day Made", "Unforgettable", "This Bitter Earth" & "Cold, Cold Heart". Limited edition of 2000 individually numbered copies on crystal clear vinyl. Dinah Washington has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the 1950s". The jazz vocalist passed away in December 1963 at the age of 39. Just a few months after, in February 1964, Aretha Franklin released her fifth studio album Unforgettable - A Tribute to Dinah Washington.

In 1972, the renknowned and singular folk musician Roscoe Holcomb left his home in rural Daisy, Kentucky and embarked on a west coast tour with Mike Seeger in 1972, which included a performance at The Old Church in Portland, Oregon - a beautiful Carpenter Gothic church built in 1882. Decades later, two particular reels were discovered deep within a pile of 1/4" tape in a shadowy corner of the KBOO Community Radio archives in Portland. Incredibly, those tapes contained the sole surviving evidenceof a strikingly intimate and raw performance by Roscoe Holcomb, whose cascading and haunting banjo, guitar and voice echoed and saturated the room and hushed audience.In contrast to Roscoe's rarely documented (and at times restrained) live performances at folk festivals and television programs, Roscoe seems to have felt more familiar and spiritually moved in the old church that night. Heard here are standout versions of Appalachian folk-blues classics such as Single Girl, John Henry, East Virginia Blues, Swanno Mountain and more. Once cited as Bob Dylan's favorite singer, Roscoe Holcomb appears at the peak of his powers here, showcasing his immense vocal talents on an extended acapella version of "The Village Churchyard". The recording itself is warm and mysterious, sounding like the room itself is alive with the spirit, while the rumbles of trucks and hints of city sounds peek through the walls from the outside streets.160 gram black vinyl LP in gold & black color reverse-board jacket. Co-release with Jalopy Records.

If your circle of friends includes any guitar players, take this little test. Ask them if they are familiar with Eddie Hazel's Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs. Chances are their eyes will widen, followed by an exclamation something like 'I thought I was the only one who knew about that record!' Indeed, knowledge of this relatively obscure album is something of a secret handshake among axe men, because the guitar work on it is flat-out incredible. But then, you had to be a bad mutha to be in a band with George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell and the rest of the Parliament/Funkadelic mothership, and that's where a 17 year-old Eddie Hazel found himself in 1967, as the new guitar player in the Parliaments. Over the next ten years, Hazel would become an instrumental mainstay in PFunk, most notably on Fender Strat showcases like 'Maggot Brain' and 'Dollar Bill,' which he co-wrote. By the time he recorded this album in 1977, however, Hazel was out of the band, beset by personal problems that led to his premature demise in 1992 and which also explain at least in part why this album never reached commercial lift-off. All of the aforementioned PFunk notables are here, along with the Brides of Funkenstein on vocals, but this is Eddie's show, as he let's loose with one coruscating, psychedelic funk lead after another over a mixture of George Clinton-penned originals and covers of 'California Dreamin' and 'I Want You (She's So Heavy).' And now you can get Game in two different ways: on CD with liner notes by former Minister of Information for PFunk, Tom Vickers, or on LP in an electric blue vinyl edition!

Stokley's "Sankofa" the sophomore album offering from the 2x Grammy Nominated Sonic Healer. Including Billboard #1 hit "SHE.. ", Rush Ft. H. E. R. , Billboard Top 10's Vibrant Ft. Snoop Dogg and Cascade Ft. The Bonfyre along with Woman ft KiDi and much more. TRACKLISTING: 1. Sankofa - past 2. Vibrant (feat. Snoop Dogg) 3. Cafe (feat. Wale) 4. She (Extended) 5. Vudoo 6. Clouds (feat. Shakespeare!) 7. Homecoming interlude 8. Cascade (feat. The Bonfyre) 9. Rush (feat. H. E. R. ) 10. Sankofa - present 11. Recipe 12. Woman (feat. KiDi) 13. Cascade-Lvrs Quarrel (Remix) 14. Trinkutsi interlude 15. Verbalize: Jeopardy (feat. Snoop Dogg) 16. Slip 17. Lost 18. Sankofa.