Oliver Wang
Oliver Wang is an culture writer, scholar, and DJ based in Los Angeles. He's the author of Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile DJ Crews of the San Francisco Bay Area and a professor of sociology at CSU-Long Beach. He's the creator of the audioblog soul-sides.com and co-host of the album appreciation podcast, Heat Rocks.
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Raucous, outspoken and empowered, Davis, who died last week at 77, always knew what she wanted her music to be — raw — and she took control of her career in an era when few Black women could. -
Valerie June has just released a new LP called The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers. The album foregrounds her distinctive voice and mixes reassurance with a yearning for engagement.
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In 1968, the British singer flew to the U.S. after signing with Atlantic Records. Her acclaimed recordings from this period are collected in Dusty Springfield: The Complete Atlantic Singles 1968-1971.
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The Gospel Truth was a subsidiary of the famous soul label Stax Records. A new anthology, The Gospel Truth: The Complete Singles Collection, revisits its brief moment in gospel soul history.
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With a production team consisting of two seasoned retro-soul veterans, Nicole Wray's solo act shepherds '60s and '70s R&B styles into the present.
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The 1972 concerts at The Apollo were recorded but, inexplicably, never released — until now. They show a side of Brown content to turn the show over to his collaborators.
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Maybe this is all part of some performance-art piece we've been unwittingly sucked into. But either way, it seems to be working.
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Kendrick Lamar's long-awaited new album dropped late Sunday night, nine days early. On it, the rapper wades into our current moment of peril around race, inequality and brutality.
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Steven Ellison has built an impressive reputation among critics and fans in the know for mixing hip hop, jazz and electronica into something original. But even for the aforementioned followers, the new album from Ellison — better-known as Flying Lotus — is a surprise. It's all about death, not as something to be mourned but as a journey to be anticipated.
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On an unlikely tribute album, singer Dionne Farris and guitarist Charlie Hunter tackle Warwick classics with revealing subtlety — and nods to the musicians' own origins in early-'90s rap.
