Oliver Wang

The prodigious San Antonio band's new anthology is a tempting selection of its most enduring singles, from the era that helped propel the band from Texas locals into national stardom.

If To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar's ornate jazz-funk experiment, played like billiard balls scattering after the break, then DAMN. wraps its focus inward: tight and layered, like a bundle of rubber bands.

The Los Angeles band's distinct sound includes touches of Rio de Janeiro's tropicalia, Lima's cumbia, and American soul and funk.

Most of Fields' songs have been about love won, fought over and lost; it's a testament to his talent that each new one can feel like he's singing his heart out for the first time.

The fiery singer, whose work with The Dap-Kings helped inspire a soul revival, died Nov. 18 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

The new album from A Tribe Called Quest is the group's first in 18 years. We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, was recorded before the death of founding member Phife Dawg last March and was just released this month.

Singer Dan Klein died of ALS earlier this summer, but at least his rocksteady band was able to see its collective vision through on this one sublime album.

Frankie Reyes is a Los Angeles-based artist who remakes classic Mexican and other Spanish-language ballads and waltzes using a vintage synthesizer. His new album is called Boleros Valses y Mas.

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.

Betty Davis was already gaining attention as Betty Mabry in the late 1960s when she met Miles Davis. He produced legendary sessions for her that have never been released — until now.

The steel drum tradition is unfairly maligned. The mysterious Hamburg group takes Cat Stevens' pioneering electro jam and replaces synths with steel.

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.

#TBT to a 2001 track that surprised fans not with its title or message, but with the ferocity of Jay Dee's production.

#TBT to a Bay Area garage studio in 1987 and an outsider boogie funk new wave disco fusion that was downright prescient.

Daptone's "Screaming Eagle of Soul" returns with a restrained groove that could make even low-rider O.G.s go a little weak in the knees.

Maybe this is all part of some performance-art piece we've been unwittingly sucked into. But either way, it seems to be working.

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.

Ghostface Killah's new 36 Seasons is a concept album with a big cast. It stars his Tony Starks alter ego in dense action scenes.

In the past week, protests over the decisions not to indict police in two separate fatal incidents spread to communities around the country. We hear from two of the demonstrations in Berkeley, Calif., and Washington, D.C.

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 ...