The Hits: Double Soul Collection Vol. 2 is a 15-track compilation released in 2006 by The People record label. Highlighting the legendary Motown vocal group The Temptations across their prime era, the collection features iconic, chart-topping soul classics and groundbreaking psychedelic soul anthems including "My Girl," "Ain't Too Proud To Beg," "Papa Was A Rolling Stone," "Get Ready," and "Cloud Nine," along with various bonus selections.

Emperors of Soul is a comprehensive 5-CD box set anthology celebrating the extraordinary legacy of Motown legends The Temptations. Compiling 109 tracks across more than six hours, the set traces the quintet's career from their pre-Motown beginnings as The Distants and The Pirates through their '60s Smokey Robinson-produced pop/R&B chart-toppers (My Girl, Ain't Too Proud to Beg, Get Ready), Norman Whitfield's groundbreaking psychedelic-soul era (Cloud Nine, Ball of Confusion, Papa Was a Rollin' Stone), and into their '70s and '80s funk, quiet storm, and disco evolution. Featuring pristine remastering, rare alternate mixes, and previously unreleased studio gems, Emperors of Soul stands as the definitive retrospective of one of vocal music's most influential groups.

Mr. Supernatural is the explosive third studio album from Berlin-based garage-soul juggernaut King Khan & The Shrines, released in 2004 via Hazelwood Records. Fronted by the wildly enigmatic Arish Ahmad Khan (King Khan), the 9-piece ensemble delivers an infectious, sweat-soaked blend of raw 1960s garage rock, brass-fueled rhythm & blues, and psychedelic soul. Driven by blistering horn arrangements, gritty guitar hooks, and uninhibited showmanship, tracks like "Destroyer", "On A Brass Bed (In Paradise)", and the hypnotic 9-minute closer "Burnin' Inside" showcase the band's signature high-energy groove. A cornerstone release in the mid-2000s garage rock revival, Mr. Supernatural remains one of the most vibrant and exhilarating entries in King Khan's extensive discography.

Released in 2021 by Ace Records' acclaimed archival imprint Kent Soul, Psychedelic Soul is a definitive, expertly curated masterclass celebrating the revolutionary sonic architecture of legendary producer and songwriter Norman Whitfield. This stellar anthology tracks Whitfield's visionary studio wizardry, charting his journey from reshaping Motown's pristine pop formula into gritty, socially conscious cinematic soundscapes to launching his independent Whitfield Records empire. The tracklist is an essential treasure trove of heavy bass grooves, swirling wah-wah guitars, and intricate multi-layered vocal arrangements. It frames undisputed monuments like Edwin Starr's blistering War and the cinematic epic Papa Was A Rollin' Stone by The Temptations right alongside rare gems from underappreciated outfits like The Undisputed Truth, Yvonne Fair, Masterpiece, and Mammatapee. Preserved in a stunning, audiophile-grade digital archive complete with full artwork, this compilation serves as an indispensable historical document chronicling the golden era where rhythm and blues collided head-on with counterculture psychedelia.

Originally released in 1979 and beautifully preserved on Nippon Columbia's 2015 high-fidelity CD reissue, Count Buffalo Plays Country Rock! is an incredibly unique and adventurous genre-bending project led by master Japanese percussionist Akira Ishikawa. Fronting his legendary outfit, the Count Buffalo Jazz Rock Band, Ishikawa takes classic Western country, pop, and folk melodies and completely transforms them into heavy, hypnotic grooves. The production seamlessly fuses thick, psych-infused jazz-rock arrangements, swirling vintage keyboards, and explosive drum breakbeats with underlying currents of deep psychedelic soul. Ishikawa's syncopated rhythm section breathes an entirely new, late-70s Tokyo funk identity into traditional songbooks, building an intriguing crossover sonic bridge. From the opening reimagination of Wichita Lineman (ウイチタラインマン) and the driving energy of By the Time I Get to Phoenix (恋のフェニックス) to the relentless rhythmic motion of Harper Valley P.T.A. (ハーパーバレーP•T•A), this high-fidelity digital archive captures a stellar team of legendary session musicians reshaping sonic boundaries with pure instrumental power.

Vol. 1-2: Movie Scenes is one of the most imaginative and cinematic instrumental hip hop releases created by Madlib under his Beat Konducta alias. Released on Stones Throw Records, the album presents a collage-like sequence of short instrumental sketches that blend dusty soul samples, psychedelic textures, jazz fragments, funk grooves, and abstract beat constructions into a continuously flowing listening experience. Designed almost like the soundtrack to an imaginary film, the project moves rapidly between moods and atmospheres while maintaining Madlib’s unmistakable raw production style. The brief tracks create a hypnotic rhythm that rewards immersive listening, revealing layers of obscure samples, offbeat percussion, and lo-fi textures with every revisit. Pieces such as “Face The Sun,” “Third Ear,” and “Black Mozart” demonstrate Madlib’s ability to transform fragmented sounds into emotionally rich musical narratives. Deeply rooted in underground hip hop culture while drawing influence from global music and vintage cinema soundtracks, Vol. 1-2: Movie Scenes remains a landmark release in instrumental beat-making and sample-based production artistry.

Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow is the second album from funk innovators Funkadelic, arriving in 1970 mere months after their trailblazing debut. Famously originating from a single LSD-fueled marathon session, the record saw the band honing their songcraft, while still allowing plenty of space for mind-bending exploratory jams. It marked the official introduction of legendary keyboardist Bernie Worrell, and would go on to chart at No. 92 on Billboard's Pop chart. Remastered direct to lathe from original master tapes by Dave Gardner (all analog).

The definitive version of Funkadelic’s groundbreaking 1970 debut, remastered from original master tapes and restored to its full cosmic glory.

Released in early 2007 as part of Universal's extensive and cheaply packaged Number 1's: Temptations series (see also: volumes dedicated to James Brown and Marvin Gaye), this disc compiles 19 number one R&B singles from the Temptations. It's worth mentioning that some of the inclusions – "The Way You Do the Things You Do," "You're My Everything," "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," "Ball of Confusion" – were number ones on the Cash Box chart, rather than the Billboard chart (the usual source), and 1998's "Stay" is a bit of a stretch since it topped Billboard's Urban Adult Contemporary chart. Nothing can argue against the set as a decent introduction to the group, even though several great singles – such as "Cloud Nine" – peaked below the top spots.

Mother's Finest tried to smash the embargo blocking black rock acts with this live record. It was the closest any album came to actually conveying the kind of nonstop excitement, spontaneity, and unpredictability of their live shows, although it also showed how vocally erratic they could be in performance. The failure of a band that had as exciting a vocalist as Joyce Kennedy and did both solid rock and fine grinding funk proved one of the '80s' more puzzling questions. It couldn't just be attributed to racism either, because Mother's Finest actually did better among white audiences than black ones.

It's one of the best titles in modern musical history, for song and for album, and as a call to arms mentally and physically the promise of funk was never so perfectly stated. If it were just a title then there'd be little more to say, but happily, Free Your Mind lives up to it throughout as another example of Funkadelic getting busy and taking everyone with it. The title track itself kicks things off with rumbling industrial noises and space alien sound effects, before a call-and-response chant between deep and chirpy voices brings the concept to full life. As the response voices say, "The kingdom of heaven is within!" The low and dirty groove rumbles along for ten minutes of dark fun, with Bernie Worrell turning in a great keyboard solo toward the end - listening to it, one gets the feeling that if Can were this naturally funky, they'd end up sounding like this. From there the band makes its way through a total of six songs, ranging from the good to astoundingly great…

It starts with a crackle of feedback shooting from speaker to speaker and a voice intoning, "Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y'all have knocked her up" and talking about rising "above it all or drown in my own sh*t." This could only have been utterly bizarre back in 1971 and it's no less so decades later; though the Mothership was well on its way already, Maggot Brain really helped it take off. The instrumental title track is the key reason to listen, specifically for Eddie Hazel's lengthy, mind-melting solo. George Clinton famously told Hazel to play "like your momma had just died," and the resulting evocation of melancholy and sorrow doesn't merely rival Jimi Hendrix's work, but arguably bests a lot of it. Accompanied by another softer guitar figure providing gentle rhythm for the piece, the end result is simply fantastic, an emotional apocalypse of sound…

The first solo album by the former leader of the Impressions, Curtis represented a musical apotheosis for Curtis Mayfield - indeed, it was practically the "Sgt. Pepper's" album of '70s soul, helping with its content and its success to open the whole genre to much bigger, richer musical canvases than artists had previously worked with. All of Mayfield's years of experience of life, music, and people were pulled together into a rich, powerful, topical musical statement that reflected not only the most up-to-date soul sounds of its period, finely produced by Mayfield himself, and the immediacy of the times and their political and social concerns, but also embraced the most elegant R&B sounds of the past. As a producer, Mayfield embraced the most progressive soul sounds of the era, stretching them out compellingly on numbers like "Move on Up"…

Soul singer Barbara Massey and jazz guitarist Ernie Calabria paired up for this rare 1971 album. With Calabria having worked with Nina Simone and Harry Belafonte, among others, and Massey having sung backup for artists including Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens, and Herbie Hancock, the pairing was an inspired one and resulted in this superb soul-jazz outing. Massey has a dry yet passionate and evocative vocal quality that often brings to mind Grace Slick. Fittingly, the duo takes on Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love," turning the Summer of Love anthem into a steamy and hypnotic soul-funk jam. Elsewhere, the duo touches upon such varying styles as folk, Latin, and psychedelic rock with cuts like "For You" and "Do You Know?," bringing to mind such similarly inclined acts as the Free Design and Bill Withers. Anyone who has even a passing interest in this kind of '70s cross-genre aesthetic will certainly want to seek out Prelude To…

The Budos Band's VII marks the nonet's return to full-length recording after 2020's Burnt Offering and 2023's fine Frontier’s Edge EP. It's their debut long-player on Diamond West, the label created by Budos guitarist/producer Thomas Brenneck and baritone saxophonist Jared Tankel. VII extends the dark psychedelia approach of 2020's Burnt Offering, but it's more a vibe than an aesthetic. Instead, BB focuses on extending their stylistic reach with sophisticated horn charts - played by Tankel, trumpeters Dave Guy and Andrew Greene, and trombonist Ray Mason - framed by incendiary percussion from ace drummer Brian Profilio and newcomer percussionist Rich Terrana (ex- Frightnrs). It's texturally and ambitiously buoyed by the rhythm section that includes Brenneck, bassist Dan Foder, and organist Mike Deller. BB hadn't been in the studio together for two years when they convened in California to write and record…