Dangerous is the eighth studio album by American recording artist Michael Jackson, released on November 26, 1991 by Epic Records. It was his fourth studio album released under the Epic label. Jackson wrote twelve of the fourteen songs on the album. Lyrical themes expressed on the album included racism, poverty, romance, the welfare of children and the world and self-improvement, topics Jackson had covered before. Dangerous peaked at number one in nine countries, while charting at the top ten in four other territories. Dangerous received several Grammy nominations, winning only one for Best Engineered Album (Non Classical) by Bruce Swedien and Riley.

Meshell Ndegeocello’s 2nd Blue Note album No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin is a striking homage to the eminent writer and activist James Baldwin to be released on his Centennial: August 2, 2024. Ndegeocello’s transformative music and collaborative spirit ignites this genre-bending work that is at once a musical experience, a church service, a celebration, a testimonial, and a call to action. Co-produced by Meshell and guitarist Chris Bruce, the album also features frequent collaborators Justin Hicks, Kenita Miller-Hicks, Josh Johnson, Jebin Bruni, Abe Rounds, Jake Sherman, and Julius Rodriguez, as well as powerful spoken word performances by poet and activist Staceyann Chin and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hilton Als.

If this is blues, it's blues in the Billie Holiday sense, not the Muddy Waters one. This is one of Nina Simone's more subdued mid-'60s LPs, putting the emphasis on her piano rather than band arrangements. It's rather slanted toward torch-blues ballads like "Strange Fruit," "Trouble in Mind," Billie Holiday's own composition "Tell Me More and More and Then Some," and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." Simone's then-husband, Andy Stroud, wrote "Be My Husband," an effective adaptation of a traditional blues chant. By far the most impressive track is her frantic ten-minute rendition of the traditional "Sinnerman," an explosive tour de force that dwarfs everything else on the album.

The Staple Singers are perhaps best remembered for their period recording for Stax Records in Memphis between 1968 and 1975, where they enjoyed a string of pop, soul and international hits. Here though Jasmine focus on the groups early recordings when they were strictly a religious group steeped in American Gospel traditions. Although the line-up was unusual for the time, male and female groups were not common in Gospel music then, they undoubtedly appealed to the huge number of migrants who had moved to Chicago from the rural south. 'Pops', as he was known, had a guitar style highly reminiscent of the Mississippi blues singers of the 1920s and 30s and the vocal arrangements that he gave the girls were also similar to those of the earliest jubilee style gospel groups of the pre-war years like the Golden Gate Quartet and The Charioteers. Here then are their famous early recordings as released by Vee Jay Records who continued to reissue their repertoire on LP for many years.