The Best Neo-Soul Albums of the '90s and 2000s

Electric Lady Studios swallowed three years of sessions, Russell Elevado engineering to analogue tape with Questlove and Pino Palladino locked in behind. Everything drags a fraction behind the beat and the whole record lives in that gap. Untitled (How Does It Feel) is a Prince homage that refuses to resolve, D'Angelo stacking his own falsetto until the harmony goes thick. Virgin, 2000; it won Best R&B Album.

Ruffhouse and Columbia put it out in August 1998 and it took Album of the Year at the Grammys, the first hip-hop record ever to manage that. Doo Wop (That Thing) turns from a Fifties vocal-group hook into a sermon over one horn stab, and Hill sings and raps both halves herself. Part of it was cut at Tuff Gong in Kingston. Spotify credits her as Ms. Lauryn Hill.

Kedar Entertainment issued the debut in February 1997; it took Best R&B Album at the following year's Grammys. On & On rides a two-chord bass vamp, brushed drums and almost nothing else, and Badu phrases behind the beat the way a horn player would rather than a singer. The Billie Holiday comparisons were lazy, but they were not baseless.

Columbia sat on the tapes for roughly a year, unsure what to do with a concept album tracing one relationship from first meeting to the morning after. Sade's Stuart Matthewman co-wrote and played most of the guitar; Leon Ware turned up as a co-writer too. Ascension (Don't Ever Wonder) floats a falsetto over a bassline that never once raises its voice. Every track on Spotify's copy is tagged Remastered 2021, with no 1996 master on the service.

Ten tracks on Virgin in July 1995, most of the keyboards, bass and drum programming played by a twenty-one-year-old who had been writing for other people. Cruisin' takes the Smokey Robinson song down to a crawl, Rhodes chords smeared and the lead vocal mixed low enough that you lean in to hear it. This is where the movement actually starts.

Motown, and the Soulquarians are all over it — Questlove on drums, James Poyser on keys, Pino Palladino's bass sitting so far forward it carries the tune. Didn't Cha Know is J Dilla's beat, built on a loop of Tarika Blue's Dreamflower and deliberately left a little crooked. Warmer and more argumentative than the debut, and the better record for it.

MCA shipped it in 1999 with five different sleeves, a stunt that actually worked. Border case: a rap record played by a standing band, which is why the hip-hop lists were told to leave it here. You Got Me hands the hook to Erykah Badu after Jill Scott wrote it, then Questlove detonates the last ninety seconds into double-time drum and bass.

Hidden Beach Recordings, July 2000, nineteen tracks and in no hurry about any of them. Scott came up through Philadelphia poetry readings and had already written that Roots hook before anyone heard a note of her own album. A Long Walk moves on a shuffling guitar figure and a bass that strolls the title, horns held back until the final chorus.

That sleeve is a 1956 Gordon Parks photograph and the music underneath it is pure Soulquarian: J Dilla, Questlove and James Poyser at Electric Lady. The Light loops Bobby Caldwell's Open Your Eyes with the tape hiss left in. Border case: a rap album, but the hip-hop list took Be and Resurrection, and this one belongs beside the band records. Spotify capitalises it Like Water For Chocolate.

Interscope, 2001, and the credits swerve badly in the middle: Dr. Dre produced Fast Lane, which Spotify labels a remix featuring Jadakiss, on a record otherwise built by Philadelphia players and Soulquarian regulars. Soul Sista is where the range does its damage, Bilal starting conversational and arriving at the top of his falsetto with no visible seam. A jazz-school voice aimed squarely at soul music.

Universal Motown put it out in February 2008 with the beats farmed out to Madlib, 9th Wonder, Sa-Ra and Karriem Riggins instead of a house band. The Healer is Madlib's: hand drums, a bass note that lands late in every bar, and a chorus arguing that hip-hop outranks religion. Spotify's page dates it 2007, a year early. Denser and stranger than anything she had released before.

Arista, 1999, from a singer who had already made history: Stone was in The Sequence, the first female rap group signed to Sugar Hill Records. No More Rain (In This Cloud) lifts Gladys Knight and the Pips and slows it into a weary, forgiving groove. Spotify's fifteen-track master carries a 2020 copyright line over the 1999 recording.

Def Soul released this in November 2000 with fifteen tracks and a title that is simply a sentence spelled phonetically. Just Friends (Sunny) borrows Bobby Hebb's chorus and then rides a soft two-bar loop for four minutes without ever pushing at it. The international edition adds a bonus track; the fifteen-track sequence linked here is the original.

Craig Street produced these twelve songs for Maverick in 1999, mostly upright bass, brushed drums and strings, quiet enough that listeners who came for the funk of her earlier albums left. Fool of Me spends four minutes on one unresolved movement with a vocal barely above speech. Border case: nearer folk and jazz than anything hip-hop-adjacent. Spotify drops the apostrophe from Me'Shell.