Introducing “From The Pages”: a series of radio shows, curated playlists and DJ mixes from Wax Poetics. 

Ten albums that shaped him as a producer.

From performing in a hooker bar in the dead end side of Detroit to recording his debut with Dennis Coffey and the Funk Brothers, and back to being lost in the world; the making of Sugar Man.

Gilles Peterson keeps on building projects that reflect the musical landscape he'd prefer to see. And the world is a better place when he does.

The Manchester duo discuss their influences and the how growth has changed their approach to the music.

McIntosh discusses the early days of the group, the British R&B invasion, and his legacy.

Recounting the events that led to scrapping the Black Album and embarking on the Lovesexy '88 tour.

El Michels Affair channels the Wu-Tang Clan’s ruckus

Rogê’s samba rock meets Tommy Brenneck’s bespoke soul

An industry town with an historic record-store culture bred a major beat scene.

International Anthem presents the Charles Stepney documentary, Out of the Shadows, Episode 4.

Island Records owner Chris Blackwell offered American Danny Holloway the job opportunity of a lifetime, helping to introduce reggae and Bob Marley to the States.

Dust Brother “E.Z.” Mike Simpson pulls endless possibilities from the funky past.

The Mackrosoft’s Aja West and Cheeba impart synth science.

From the late 1950s to present day, doo-wop and sweet soul has been the unofficial soundtrack of the Chicano experience.

In 1983, veteran journalist Carol Cooper was unable to score an interview with Prince. So she imagined one...

International Anthem presents Episode 3 of the documentary Out of the Shadows about Charles Stepney.

Producer Creed Taylor cast strong jazz talent for his personal masterpieces.

“The Willow Tree” singer-songwriter Cleveland Francis embraced the term soul folk

Average White Band left working-class, soul-friendly Scotland to pursue R&B domination in rock-crazed London. 

New film The Sun Rises in the East documents Brooklyn’s music venue and sociopolitical movement, the East.

Makaya McCraven and Joe Armon-Jones’s intimate London gig.

Engineer Matt Forger discusses producer Quincy Jones and his partner, iconic sound wizard Bruce Swedien, during the making of Michael Jackson’s 1982 album Thriller.

Mexico City’s tropical scene sets a path to the future through classic mambo, danzón, and cumbia.

Excerpted from DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution by Lance Scott Walker. Reprinted with permission from University of Texas Press.

Writer Andrew Scott talks with Phil Upchurch, Cornell Dupree, and producer Arif Mardin to help demythologize Donny Hathaway’s 1974 live masterpiece.

Multi-instrumentalist/producer Dennis Bovell helped cement reggae’s legacy in the U.K.

Rhettmatic doesn’t do much press, but what he lacks in publicity, the Beat Junkie and Visionaries producer/DJ more than makes up for with a fervent devotion to turntablist/vinyl culture.

“My style is combined from a lot of different things I got growing up,” veteran producer and DJ Louie Vega states. 

John Morales set his sights on learning how to re-edit songs by slicing and splicing tape on his reel-to-reel, graduating to extended medley mixes.

Some of the most innovative music of the post-punk era was made at the intersection of the United Kingdom and New York.

“There was no specific intention that we were going for. The songs evolved and took on their own personas.”

Boulevards latest feels like a “psychedelic rock record with a soul base,” says Blake Rhein of Durand Jones and the Indications.

The unsung rhythmic soul behind Miles’s improvisational funk.

The making of Billy Preston’s 1971 album I Wrote a Simple Song.

Here’s a selection of seven that don’t clash—just a few of the many songs inspired by the life, work, and words of Marcus Garvey. 

The birth and rebirth of Manchester post-punk.

South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba’s Exile Years.

Record Rundown: Lord Finesse is on a habitual quest for musical knowledge.

Let us argue about jazz fusion!

Wu-Tang’s origin story, as told by RZA, Raekwon, and the rest of the Clan.

Billy Cox gigged with Jimi Hendrix in the Army, worked the chitlin circuit in the South, played bass as an R&B session man in Nashville, and backed countless stars on television.

After releasing a couple 12-inch singles with the help of producer/songwriters Leon Sylvers and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Real to Reel was poised to release a full-length album.

Vibraphonist Joel Ross makes music to serve a higher purpose.

Aftab commands a calm, precise whirlwind of sound. Never loud, but a deeply intense, personal take on South Asian music.

Composer, arranger, and producer Thom Bell has quietly made his mark on the sound of popular music for the last half century.

Purple Rain is considered Prince and the Revolution’s peak, but Prince never went backwards. Parade climbed mighty heights as the Revolution’s final album.

Aphex Twin and Squarepusher ushered in a new direction of U.K. dance music.

Though a reluctant front man, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen has emerged as one of the most famous rock voices of all times.

As a disciple of kung fu flicks and hip-hop, the RZA began his journey as a teenage rapper learning the ropes. Over time, he has followed a sacred path of music, spirituality, and philosophy.

From rough-cut funk 45s to beloved stars Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, Daptone Records built a lasting empire.

Equipped with determination, a Fender Rhodes, and a mental-health message of personal reflection, self-taught East London composer Alfa Mist creates profound space jazz.

“I was trying to find my voice, my crowd, find whatever my thing was. There was nothing glamorous or cool about singing at four in the morning.“

Kokoroko’s unique sound and take on Afrobeat expanded naturally by embedding an even wider array of sounds and ideas in their music.

G-Stoned immediately changed Kruder & Dorfmeister’s lives.

U-Roy was known as the Originator because he transformed the deejay, making incidental figures attached to sound systems into actual stars.

Brooklyn band B.T. Express bridged the gap between funk and disco, and were the first funk band to play at the White House.

Randy Muller kicked off a trend in disco arrangements that would sweep the globe and help make New York City the epicenter of dance music.

Questlove’s journey uniquely qualified him to bring footage from the fabled Harlem Cultural Festival to full fruition in Summer of Soul.

Beginning 1971, Stevie Wonder utilized the synth wizardry of Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff to create three of his most iconic albums. 

Guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer immersed himself in New York City’s avant-garde scene and traded musical concepts with Ornette Coleman.

Wax Poetics founder Andre Torres sits down with the singer-songwriter Eugene McDaniels, whose revolutionary melding of jazz and soul got the attention of the FBI. 

Damon Locks and the Black Monument Ensemble tackle the moment with a musical and artistic approach to activism.

It was 1960’s Giant Steps that thoroughly and inexorably changed the saxophonist’s game going forward. 

Bill Coleman is a long-standing ambassador of NYC club and music culture.

A tale of two pandemics and a therapist whose unique approach to the unwell and to music-making gives us an undiscovered and heartening tale. 

THEESatisfaction’s Catherine Harris-White and bandmate and partner Stasia Irons met in 2006 during their time at college and discovered a number of parallels.

From sneaking listens to off-limits records in his older brother's room to eventually ruling the dance floor himself, a North London dancer looks back at the U.K. jazz-funk scene.

Sergio Mendes enters a new decade, revamps his band as Brasil ’77, and rubs shoulders with Harrison Ford, Stevie Wonder, the Brothers Johnson, and Pelé.

In the late 1970s through mid-’80s, a Japanese DIY scene flush with post-punk attitude and electronic ambience offered a darker vision of the country’s boom years.

DJ Krush embarked on a journey with Mo’ Wax that found the turntablist/producer using hip-hop’s breakbeat foundation while pioneering a new genre of abstract instrumentals.

Through live jam sessions and studio recontextualization, drummer and producer Makaya McCraven cultivates a conduit between the jazz roots of improv and the expansive branches of modern music.

Monophonics singer-songwriter Kelly Finnigan got his start spinning hip-hop and making beats, which led to an obsession with studio production and classic analog keyboards.

It was 1987, and a nervous teenager, palms sweaty, made his way to the grimy old Times Square, hoping to score.  

Visionary organist Doug Carn brought a spiritual lyricism to his soulful jazz offerings on Black Jazz Records.

The third of a four-part interview that gets to the heart of the talent and charm of the late, lamented Gregory Jacobs, aka Shock G.

Born in West London in the mid- to late ’90s, broken beat (aka bruk) was created by a community of producers with their roots in a variety of London’s club scenes.

Guitarist Junior Marvin had a choice: join the Wailers or Stevie Wonder...

San Francisco’s Om Records is primarily known for house and downtempo. But it had a potent, if short-lived, offshoot dedicated to hip-hop...

At just eighteen years of age, Prince self-produced his debut album, 1978’s For You, writing all the music and playing every instrument himself.

Iconic composer Giorgio Moroder got his start writing and producing pop music in Germany. But an encounter with Donna Summer would change his career forever. 

Sharon Jones is the real deal. She’s an atomic bomb of funk that may come in a small package, but when it’s unleashed, no one is left standing. They’d rather dance.

Nina Simone had no filter. She spoke with candor about civil rights when many in her position didn’t dare. She sang about uncomfortable subjects.... 

Tenor sax player and arranger Gene Barge left his job teaching social studies, music, and English in Virginia, to work at Chicago’s famed Chess Records in 1964.

A prolific musician and songwriter, King Curtis was an in-demand session man who played on records with many legends, from John Lennon to Aretha Franklin.

What’s the future of dance music? Godfathers of the new EDM movement Daft Punk have proposed an answer in the form of a question.

Many of McCann’s most innovative recordings, like his 1972 lush electronic opus Layers, have gone virtually ignored.

Yusef Lateef discusses his colorful musical experiences that influenced his sonic persona and the influential producer Joel Dorn adds his unique perspective.

Remembering the life of J Dilla, featuring conversations with those closest to him, including Q-Tip, Common, Busta Rhymes, Questlove, and more.

Ask music lovers what Detroit means to them, and you’ll probably hear mention of Berry Gordy or Norman Whitfield, perhaps George Clinton. That said, techno's roots can't be ignored.

When did you first hear the Skull Snaps? Was it in the summer of 1993 when the Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By” rode the pneumatic drums of the...

I’d finally done it. Somehow I managed to scrape together the loot, eighty-some bucks to buy the Ornette Coleman box set Beauty Is a Rare Thing and was on my way home...

An excerpt from People Funny Boy: The Genius of Lee “Scratch” Perry

Meeting Tom Moulton is a bit like meeting Henry Ford. Whether you know it or not, if you’ve driven a car, you owe something to Ford. And if you’ve danced in a club....

The Fishtail Bar in the Bay Watch Resort in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, is right out back overlooking the beach. Dozens of families are crowded in several swimming pools....

DJ Shadow discusses transformations in record-buying culture, how his interest in 45s began, his first digging experience, and pinpoints the record that “changed his life.” 

Jimmy Cliff is one of reggae’s true pioneers. Helping to inaugurate the Beverley’s Records label in the early 1960s....

It starts with a check for $3.19. Without that check, there is no Motown. Without Motown, there is no Smokey Robinson. Without them, say good-bye to Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Marvin....

The progressive singer teams up with producer Madlib for bountiful Seeds, which she calls Black music “in the tradition of anyone who wasn’t scared.”

Tim Maia was never satisfied. Brazil’s number one soul brother had a voracious appetite for both carnal and philosophical indulgences.

I had no expectations going into this interview with Teddy Pendergrass at the Conrad Chicago hotel.

After I interviewed DJ Rhettmatic for the Record Rundown in Wax Poetics Issue 22, he mentioned being clowned by fellow World Famous Beat Junkie J.Rocc for exceeding the normal...

Little Dragon’s brand of electronic future funk and fractured pop-soul was delivered the old-fashioned way, through nonstop touring.

It’s hard to imagine an era when an industry giant like Capitol Records would have to choose between signing Brief Encounter or Maze. 

Bobby Womack is a thread that runs through soul music. 

“As some folks say, I helped create the disco music, the house music, and a lot of other different things,” says Bohannon.

There are a few things to know about Erykah Badu. First, she lives on a different plane. One that only true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool artists inhabit. 

Let it be known: this time around, Bilal is not about love songs. 

Ishmael Butler effortlessly made his mark on hip-hop in 1993 with his unique voice and delivery, and then flipped the script with Shabazz Palaces.

It was Aug. 11, 1973, and a teen from the Bronx, NY, named Coke was helping his homeboy Clive “Kool Herc” Campbell set up stereo equipment for a party scheduled for that night.

On a sunny October morning in 2015, a historic marker was placed in front of Sigma Sound Studios, the Philadelphia landmark recording hot spot.

I’ve been fortunate enough to know “Poppa” Willie Mitchell for a handful of years. When we first met, in August 2000, I was working for Ike Turner, who decided to...

Getting his first shot with Marley Marl’s Juice Crew—and the posse cut “The Symphony”—Kool G Rap was a real hip-hop OG.

Madhouse, for the relatively few paying attention, was one of those riddles wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

“Rain is wet, and sugar is sweet…” a voice calls, to the delight of the crowd. These are the words of Ingrid Chavez, in her guise as the Spirit Child....