From Slum Village to k.d. lang, and good stops in between. There are many 2019 electro-soul favorites here sprinkled with vintage pop classics and jazz-based film soundtrack music before closing out with a bit of twang.

Eden (LES) from If Beale Street Could Talk soundtrack – Nicholas Britell || As We Come (To Be) – Young Disciples || Lovestained – Hope Tala || Jealousy (Instrumental) – Slum Village || Living in Denial – Michael Kiwanuka || Abre Las Manos – Devendra Banhart || Stay High – Brittany Howard || Mary Don’t You Weep (Piano & a Microphone 1983 Version) – Prince || Poetry Man – Phoebe Snow|| Brooklyn Bridge – Bill Lee || MF GROOVE – Smino & Ravyn Lenae || Guilty – Barbra Streisand (with Barry Gibb) || Now That You Need Me – Taylor McFerrin || All These Flags – Mr. Carmack || Texas Sun – Khruangbin & Leon Bridges || Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield – Lou Rawls || Miss Chatelaine – k.d. lang

In this episode, we skip across multiple genres, still designed to allow you to ease into your day. The saxaphone solo from 'Do The Right Thing' soundtrack beckons you before Alice Smith (who I saw give an amazing performance recently at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood) draws you in with 'The One.' She's followed by this dope recrafting of Paul Simon's 'Can't Run, But' with a chamber orchestra. There's plenty of new school artists from 2018 in the mix -- Nick Hakim, Phony Ppl, Carrie Cleveland, Kelly Finnigan -- alongside some known soulful gems, like Cal Tjader's 'Morning' or 'What is Wrong With Groovin'?' by Letta Mbulu. Near the end, to rouse you, there's Jeremih with 'Oui,' arguably the first trap song on a Slo Get Up music podcast(!), with Curtis Mayfield closing things out. Enjoy.

In this session, we have a some cuts that I might call ‘Slo Get Up Hall of Fame’ songs (like John Coltrane’s “Naima” or “La Vie En Rose” by Grace Jones) that were slo get ups for me before I started using that phrase. And alongside those classics are some very fresh gems from 2017-18 including the just released “Forever Always” by Peter Cottontale, “Me&My” by Andre 3000 and “Beginning of the End” by Black Opera with LA’s Georgia Anne Muldrow. Also proud of unearthing a digital file of the commonly heard, underground hip-hop jazz instrumental “Smilin’ Billy Suite” by The Heath Brothers.

Full Playlist (in order): Naima - John Coltrane; Learn Your Lesson - Madison McFerrin; Smilin' Billy Suite - The Heath Brothers; Forever Always (feat. Rex Orange County, Chance the Rapper) - Peter Cottontale; Drink I'm Sippin On - Yaeji; Gettin' Down Again - Tek 9; Kaes on Aeg - Velly Joonas; La Vie En Rose - Grace Jones; Timeless - Sergio Mendes feat. India.Arie; Master in Disguise - Jimetta Rose; Boy - Duckwirth; Me&My (To Bury Your Parents) - Andre 3000; I Want You (Marvin's Mood) Remix - Stro Elliot; Beginning of the End (starring Georgia Anne Muldrow) - The Black Opera

If there’s ever been a year that we wish for a new day, 2017 is probably at the top. We're not chopping cotton, but yet, we are. Ya know? So, here’s a little something to make everyday a fresh one to wake up to, slowly. More new great emerging artists – like SZA – are here alongside classics by the legendary Neil Young and the truly obscure but precious work of Italian Lucio Aracri. Kilo Kash and Sean Leon are serving up some nice electro-soul plates that I just can’t get enough of these days and another gem from PJ Harvey quietly calls out. I have to give shout-outs to the TV productions “Insecure” and “Pretty Little Lies” and “Master of None,” whose music scapes provided inspiration for a couple of the selections here. Surprises are coming from wonderful places.

SLO GET UP 16

Tree of Level - The Fairfield Four

Fall in Love - Badbadnotgood

Shine On - Ladi6

I Wish - Tom Misch

The Wind - PJ Harvey

Biking - Frank Ocean

(feat Jay Z and Tyler the Creator)

Frustrations + Solutions - Kilo Kish

Georgia - Emily King

Supermodel - SZA

Harvest Moon - Neil Young

Matthew in the Middle - Sean Leon

(feat. Daniel Caeser)

Amarsi un po - Lucio Aracri

Jupiter - Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

Stand Tall - Childish Gambino

Way Back When - Brenda Russell

Posted nearly two years after the last Slo Get Up, this is a double-length version at nearly two hours. To say the least, I was a little busy but always gathering this track or that along the way, putting choice items in my digital rucksack. And here they are.

There’s a mix of soulful salves and simmering sizzles in this podcast. We start with Cuba’s Dayme Arocena and her beautifully layered acapella building towards the timeless and now politically timely ‘Compared to What?’ by Roberta Flack.

No look back over the last two years for me is complete without a little Dice Raw (thanks Leigh Ann!) and a track from his ‘The Last Jimmy’ hip hop musical about mass incarceration. The totally rare, digital ‘white label’ track like StaRro’s bossa nova treatment of a loop from “Prototype’ by Oukast is a fave and more bossa is threaded from Camila Meza and Kendrick Lamar (yes, that dude).

There’s a nice little suite of LA underground soul-jazz homies embedded back-to-back who I always dig: Shafiq Husayn, Dexter Story, Anderson Paak, and Kamasi Washington, like blap, blap, blap, blap. In between all of this there’s Solange, Frank Ocean, Chance the Rapper, The Black Keys, Lianne La Havas, NoName, King, and more.

And there’s a snippet or two from President Obama’s Farewell Speech. And if that don’t get you up and at ‘em and stay positively woke, I don’t know what will.

In this series, I ground the playlist with a variety of gems from 2014. Starting with Moses Sumney, who seemed to punctuate my listening adventures all year long from his time at Red Bull Music Academy to a residency at the Bootleg Theater to a collab with Miguel Atwood Ferguson at the Blue Whale by end of year. He had to start this. He's then followed by a stream of great artists like Zara MacFarlane, D'Angelo, Fatima, SBTRKT, Kele and more. Unlike most Slo Get Ups, things get smashed off on the end quite uptempo with Mark de Clive Lowe and Azealia Banks (and a Maya Angelou quick poem in between). The sorrow of 2014's injustices is also present but you have to listen for it. Not because those woes are undervalued but because music -- of all kinds even with frivolous messages -- may be the only thing that can soothe that pain. See Amalgamated Recordings  for more Slo Get Ups and other good stuff.

This was originally done in haste as a party mix for a friend but I started to dig it for my work out purposes. Yes, I am the type of dude that tries to match up my treadmill pace with BPMs. Anyway, we've got old and new here from Justin Timberlake to Mandrake to M.I.A to Big Boi to Ludacris, Jet, Black Keys, Beck, A Tribe Called Quest and one of my fave underground hip hop tracks of all time "Come Get With It" by Basic Vocab. Astute DJs will pick up some "sneaker in the dryer" moments and other slight technicalities but hopefully all will bob along just the same.

Starting off with an acoustic spiritualized medley (track from the film 'Babel' + gospel-oriented jaimeo brown and contact field orchestra), we move into Bill Withers' 'Grandma's Hands.' from there its a journey that includes Quadron with Kendrick Lamar, jazz vocalist Gregory Porter, and some bossa by Lalo Schifrin from way back. Later a Vampire Weekend track actually sets off an electro-soul arc of Kelela, The Internet, Jamiroquai and Toro Y Moi as Oddisee closes with one of my fave tracks from the last two years "You Know Who You Are."

This podcast is inspired by an event I produced one time called Sookie Sookie Sunday under the guise of Madame Zenobia Presents in DC. It was Labor Day Weekend.  We were searching for a vibe that had a southern soul sensibility  but was a little gritty/greasy and still felt fresh. The event went well but we always wanted more for the music. We couldn’t find that sweet spot comingling old school R&B, certain types of authentic blues, organ grooves, and then new stuff that paid homage to those sounds.

 

Here we have a range of funky grinding tracks from new schoolers like Alabama Shakes, Platinum Pied Pipers, Raphael Saadiq, and Cody Chestnutt to classic sanctified soul from cats like Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, Lester Abrams’ LA Carnival experiment and an even more obscure track by a 70s funk band from North Carolina that called themselves The Communicators and Black Experience Band. At the end, we cap it off with the song “Sookie Sookie” itself, but not before a baby mash-up of Eddie Murphy’s “The Barbeque” comedy routine rides over top of it for a minute.

 

For some this will be road music or some music to barbeque by perhaps.  For me, its what might be playing at a juke joint near my childhood home if it were around today.  It was a cinderblock building serving liquor and pig’s feet. I was never allowed to go there. Or its what I envision is on the jukebox at The Hideaway, a spot I went to in Harlem when I lived there where hardworking men, part-time pimps, and flashy cats hung out before really going into the street. Colt 45 Malt Liquor posters with Billie Dee Williams were still hanging there a few years ago.

 

That’s what made things Sookie Sookie to me. Like grape Kool-Aid and gin.

Could say I've carefully collected this one for a while as the majority of tracks are all connected with Butterflies specifically. Many genres -- jazz, neo soul, dance -- but were all part of my library, gently landing in it over the years. Bookended by two classics -- Jimi Hendrix with "Little Wings" and Herbie Hancock's jazz opus "Butterfly", what's in between is Michael Jackson, Corinne Bailey Rae, Swing Out Sister, Jamiroquai, Digable Planets, Towa Tei, Big Brooklyn Red, Abbey Lincoln and more. And the beautiful positive house track "Butterfly(You Send Me) by the always soulful and percussive Masters at Work. The art is by friend and 'artivist' Favianna Rodriguez and it works well not only because of the Butterfly motif but also due to her dope use of it as a metaphor on the struggle for immigration reform. Something that will also be rising this season. Which I'll tweet about from time to time @wyclo. Up jumps spring.