music

Kurt Cobain would count Red as a landmark in his brief, but influential career. The album landed on many best-of lists over the years. And McDonald, who'd earlier worked on King Crimson's genre-defining 1969 prog classic Court of the Crimson King, counts this album among the group's most important. "I think Red is the best of the next wave of Crimson," he said in Will Romano's Mountains Come Out of the Sky. "Robert defined the band and found his voice, as far as I'm concerned, guitar-wise."

Legendary jazz greats Branford Marsalis and Kurt Elling collaborate for the first time on a full album, Upward Spiral. Their versions of the chosen material are simply incredible, as the musicality of Branford and Kurt and their deep understanding of these songs shows through immediately.

Mecca and the Soul Brother is the 1992 debut album from the Mount Vernon, New York hip-hop duo, Pete Rock & CL Smooth. The album contains their best known song, "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)". Mecca and the Soul Brother has been widely acclaimed as one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. The album was mostly produced by Pete Rock and executive produced by DJ Eddie F of Heavy D & the Boyz (co-group member with Trouble T-Roy).

The 1972 Atlantic release Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway is a million-selling duet album by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway produced by Joel Dorn and Arif Mardin.

What Color Is Love is 40 or so minutes of undiluted bliss and beauty that deserves to be heralded in the same way as those titanic soul albums of the 1970s by artists such as Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway and his childhood friend Curtis Mayfield. If you don’t know Terry Callier’s music, start here, in fact start anywhere. Just get some in your life.

In order to celebrate Aretha Franklin's 50th anniversary in Pop music, we present a double album plus a bonus 10" with some of her best recordings for Columbia Records. The remarkable recordings in this deluxe package make a convincing case that Aretha Franklin was already royalty by the time she made her first album for Columbia Records as an 18-year-old gospel singer brimming with hope, possibility and a glimpse of glory.

The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend is the only album of Baby Huey that has been released to date. It was put together and released in 1971 after his death. The title refers to the "legend" of Baby Huey that survives after his death. A quarter century after its release, "The Baby Huey Story" went on to become a cult classic among soul musicians and hip-hop fans. Its single "Hard Times" in particular has been sampled many times, by artists such as Ice Cube, A Tribe Called Quest, and Ghostface Killah, and was covered by John Legend & The Roots in 2010 for the album Wake Up!

Angel Dust is the fourth studio album by American rock band Faith No More, released on June 8, 1992, by Slash and Reprise Records. It is the follow-up to 1989's highly successful The Real Thing, and was the band's final album to feature guitarist Jim Martin.

Plans is the fifth studio album by indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, released August 30, 2005 on Atlantic Records.

Narrow Stairs is the sixth studio album by indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, released on May 12, 2008 in the United Kingdom and on May 13, 2008, in the United States, on Atlantic and Barsuk Records.