Consider this a starter pack, culled from the innumerable great LPs recorded by Black musicians, both revered and overlooked, throughout the decades, and presented here alphabetically. And before you have your assistant send us an angry email, these aren’t the essential 25 albums, but 25 we love dearly; your 25 might be altogether different. But since it’s our website…
Bad Brains, Bad Brains (The Yellow Tape) (ROIR, 1982)
While hardcore punk may be one of rock’s least racially diverse subgenres, its most influential practitioners were four Black jazz-fusion musicians from Washington, D.C. who discovered punk, christened themselves Bad Brains after a Ramones song and became the most ferocious live band of the 1980s. Blacklisted from Washington-area venues after violence at their shows (recounted in the anthem “Banned in D.C.”), they relocated to New York City in 1981 and gigged regularly at CBGBs. Originally a cassette-only release, their first album remains a hardcore milestone, yet unlike other high velocity punks, they could rev through the Mach 2 blur of “Pay to Cum” and “Big Takeover,” then stop on a dime and break into dubbed-out reggae jams like “Leaving Babylon” and “I Luv I Jah.” The group re-recorded most of its debut in 1983 with producer Ric Ocasek as Rock for Light, but I and I say: Accept no substitute for the original Yellow Tape. —Mike Rubin
Body Count, Body Count (Sire, 1992)
When Ice-T, the permed-out godfather of West Coast gangster rap, unleashed the debut from his hardcore metal band, Body Count, it ignited a censorship frenzy. The group’s mantra, “There Goes the Neighborhood,” stands defiantly as a punch in the face to decades of racist typecasting in the music biz. “Don’t they know rock’s just for whites/ Don’t they know the rules?” Ice mockingly screams over the hands-on-fire shredding of lead guitarist Ernie C. And “Bowels of the Devil” amplifies the horrors of dying in prison. “Cop Killer,” however, remains Body Count’s third-rail anthem, so incendiary that President George H.W. Bush rebuked the anti-police brutality song, leading to Ice-T’s eventual split from Warner Bros. Nearly a decade later, the rapper had the last laugh after he was cast in the role of Detective Tutuola on the long-running TV drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. —Keith Murphy
James Brown, Star Time (Polydor, 1991)
James Brown released not only the ultimate live album (1963’s Live at the Apollo) but also the quintessential CD box set, 1991’s Star Time. Spanning almost five hours over four CDs, Star Time covers most of the Godfather of Soul’s career, from his 1956 debut single “Please, Please, Please” to his 1984 collaboration with Afrika Bambaataa, “Unity Part 1” (the first time he had directly worked with a hip-hop artist, despite being sampled countless times). Especially with (and after) 1967’s “Cold Sweat,” Brown radically reconfigured rhythm; every instrument—including his own singing, screams and exhortations—was precisely layered into interlocking syncopated grooves. To this day, no popular music sounds like such a break from what came before, and what came after—from R&B to disco to hip-hop to house—indelibly bears his imprint. —M.R.
Betty Davis, Betty Davis (Just Sunshine, 1973; Light in the Attic, 2007)
Betty Mabry first attracted attention as a model in Seventeen, Ebony and Glamour, before becoming Miles Davis’ second wife and gracing the cover of his 1969 Filles de Kilimanjaro. She turned Miles onto the psychedelic sounds (and threads) that would dominate his 1970s period, but after their split she stepped out in her own I. Miller shoes to rekindle a music career. Produced by Sly and the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico, her debut album highlighted her raspy, suggestive snarl as well as her connections: session musicians included guitarist Neal Schon, bassist Larry Graham and backing vocalists The Pointer Sisters and Sylvester. Commercially impotent when originally released, reissues of her work in the 2000s revealed that the fiery funk-metal of “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up” and “Game Is My Middle Name” and the sultry swagger of “Anti Love Song” and “Your Man My Man”—as well as their steamy sensuality—were far ahead of their time. —M.R.
Bo Diddley, His Best (Chess/MCA, 1997)
Bo Diddley was such a crucial figure in the development of rock & roll that he not only had his own theme song—arguably rock’s first, 1955’s “Bo Diddley”—he also had his own signature beat: a five-accent stomp similar to the hambone or Latin clave. Using shimmering tremolo and fuzzed-up amp reverb, Diddley built one of rock’s foundational superstructures, a gritty groove that borrowed from African rhythms while providing a bridge between Delta blues (though raised in Chicago, Ellas Otha Bates McDaniel was born in Mississippi) and rock’s dawning era. Songs like “I’m a Man” and “Who Do You Love?” influenced Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Clash (who took him on tour as opening act in 1979), among many. His longtime bassist and bandleader Debby Hastings may have said it best: “He was the rock that the roll was built on.” —M.R.
ESG, Dance to the Best of ESG (Fire, 2010)
Just as hip-hop was getting the party started in the late 1970s, elsewhere in the South Bronx the young Scroggins sisters dubbed themselves ESG and crafted singular minimalist art-funk. This idiosyncratic idiom not only proved a perfect complement to rappers’ rhymes, but also appealed to the downtown post-punk scene; the sisters’ 1981 debut single came out on Manchester’s Factory Records, and around NYC they shared bills with The Clash and Public Image Ltd. ESG’s DIY tracks have a raw, unfinished feel—echo-drenched vocals buried deep in the mix, occasionally jagged hen-scratch guitar, taut basslines and insistent, reverberating percussion—and influenced then-nascent genres of house (“Moody” was one of the top 50 tracks at the Paradise Garage) and hip-hop (the lean instrumental “U.F.O.” was sampled endlessly by the likes of Public Enemy, The Beastie Boys and LL Cool J), as well as latter-day adherents like LCD Soundsystem and Sault. —M.R.
Fishbone, Truth and Soul (Columbia, 1988)
Fishbone’s 1985 ska-punk-funk debut EP remains a fan favorite. And its ambitious 1991 double album The Reality of My Surroundings is the group’s best-selling LP. But Truth and Soul pushes the needle to red. Guitarist Kendall Jones was frustrated that critics weren’t taking the crew’s more socially conscious offerings seriously, so he injected a harder, distortion-heavy tone into the mix. The result? Curtis Mayfield’s classic 1972 cautionary dope dealer tale “Freddie’s Dead,” transformed into a frantic call-to-action. Saxophonist and vocalist Angelo Moore delivers arguably his most urgent performances, from the slow burning Black Uhuru-meets-Funkadelic gem “Pouring Rain” to the groovy jam “One Day.” Keeping all the chaos in check is drummer Philip “Fish” Fisher, whose versatility allows the Los Angeles outfit to cut through genres like a prized Hattori Hanzo sword. And when the band goes acoustic on the hopeful “Change” you believe every word. —K.M.
Funkadelic, Maggot Brain (Westbound, 1971)
George Clinton may be better known as one of funk’s forefathers, but the Funkadelic wing of the Parliafunkadelicment Thang was actually one of the heaviest, funniest and least predictable outfits in the rock & roll universe. While Parliament laid down brassy dance-floor grooves, Funkadelic fused funky “good old music” to raw Marshall-stack powered proto-metal, not unlike The Temptations harmonizing in front of Blue Cheer. Before recording the title track of Funkadelic’s stellar third LP, Clinton told guitarist Eddie Hazel to play as if his mother had just died; the result is 10-plus minutes of delicate and dramatic soloing, one of the most expressive rock instrumentals ever recorded. Elsewhere, the sledgehammer riffing of “Super Stupid” puts the “Black” in “Sabbath” and the church-metal of “Hit It and Quit It” shakes it to the east and west, before the acid-fueled, bongo-driven fury of “Wars of Armageddon” ultimately scorches the Earth. —M.R.
Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced? (Track/Reprise, 1967)
The debut album of former Isley Brothers and Little Richard backing guitarist Jimi Hendrix and his new U.K.-assembled group, the Experience, was instantly groundbreaking. Widely considered among the most innovative musicians of the 20th century, Hendrix reimagined what could be done with the guitar, whether flexing his technical prowess by playing medieval tritones and pentatonic scales, simulating bombs and gunfire through pedal effects or (quite literally) setting his instrument aflame. Arriving at the dawn of the album-oriented rock era, songs like “Purple Haze,” “Foxey Lady," “Fire” and “Manic Depression” became FM radio staples for generations to come, the Experience established the template for the hard-rock power trio, and their heavily amplified assault helped conceive heavy metal. In addition, the disturbances to the time-space continuum created by the title track’s backwards-looped guitar, bass and drums anticipated the sonic distortions of hip-hop’s turntable scratching by a decade. —M.R.
Labelle, Nightbirds (Epic, 1974)
Founded as the girl group The Bluebelles, the grown-woman soul trio Labelle—Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash—spread its wings and learned to fly with 1974’s Nightbirds, its Epic debut. The project was buoyed by the updrafts of Hendryx’s burgeoning songwriting prowess and the formidable production muscle of Allen Toussaint, who loaded the group’s New Orleans sessions with an arsenal of secret weaponry including a top-of-their-game-era Meters, plus jazz oddity Earl Turbinton and the versatile Crescent City session drummer Smokey Johnson. The disco-funk street strut “Lady Marmalade,” an international million-seller and Library of Congress inductee, is Nightbirds’ lasting legacy. But from the tough, slinky funk of “Space Children” to the country soul of “All Girl Band,” there are no throwaway cuts here. —Alison Fensterstock
Steve Lacy, Gemini Rights (RCA, 2022)
There’s a reason Steve Lacy has drawn comparisons to Prince. Like the Purple One, he’s an enigmatic singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist who creates his own sonic universe he once described as “the bare maximum.” And like Prince, whom Lacy cites as a major influence, he thrives on erasing lines between rock, soul, funk and weirdo bliss. On Gemini Rights, the guitarist and studio conductor of the alternative R&B band The Internet sounds like he’s opening up a diary of a love gone cold on the toxic “Buttons.” On his #1 hit “Bad Habit,” he regrets not shooting his shot on a crush—a catchy, laidback strut that Beck wishes he could have made. —K.M.
The Last Poets, The Last Poets (Douglas, 1970)
The first album by Harlem’s Last Poets fired perhaps the most incendiary volley in the revolutionary union of Black nationalist art and politics. The Poets—Abiodun Oyewole, Umar Bin Hassan and Jalal Nuriddin (then known as Alafia Pudim)—not only infused traditional Black toasting with the urgent race consciousness of Malcolm X and Amiri Baraka but also set their rhymes on top of traditional African drumming and delivered them with the incantatory energy of free jazz, laying the foundation for the hip-hop nation. Whether skewering the hubris of technophilia (“Mean Machine”), decrying the oppressive racist grip of drugs and welfare (“Jones Comin’ Down”) or unapologetically dissecting the political apathy of the Black bourgeoisie (“Niggers Are Scared of Revolution”), the Poets were as rigorous as they were intense. Under the name Lightnin’ Rod, Nuriddin would later record Hustlers Convention backed by Kool and the Gang, as well as jam with Jimi Hendrix. —M.R.
Little Richard, Here’s Little Richard (Specialty, 1957)
Rock & roll will forever be divided between pre-Little Richard and post-Little Richard. Yes, Chuck Berry laid down the genre’s guitar-hero blueprint. And Elvis commercialized it for a burgeoning white youth culture. But on his decadent debut, Here’s Little Richard, the Macon, Georgia, native stakes his claim as early rock’s true disruptor. Even during the ’50s, when artists released uneven LPs of singles plus filler, Here’s Little Richard feels like a greatest hits album. Many of the classics are here: “Tutti Frutti,” “Ready Teddy,” “Long Tall Sally”… To witness Richard in all his gay-dandy glory singing about balling on “Rip It Up” is peak badass. The man with the perpetually copied, high-pitched “Whoooo!” was also a gifted pianist; on “Oh Why?,” he gives Fats Domino a run for his boogie-woogie money. —K.M.
Love, Forever Changes (Elektra, 1967)
This multiracial Los Angeles band’s third album was initially a commercial failure but now stands as perhaps the pinnacle of psychedelic pop. Love’s leader was Arthur Lee, a Memphis native who reconnected with guitar-playing childhood pal Johnny Echols after moving west to South Central. Conceived as an ambitious song cycle by Lee, Forever Changes reveals itself as a baroque masterpiece the moment that leadoff track “Alone Again Or” explodes from gentle acoustic picking into a post-Bacharach orchestral attack, complete with swelling strings, mariachi horns and flamenco guitars. Despite the band’s blissfully positive moniker, Lee’s lysergic imagery—sample couplet: “Oh the snot has caked against my pants/ It has turned into crystal/ There’s a bluebird sitting on a branch/ I guess I’ll take my pistol”—bristles with paranoia. Influencing everything from The Stone Roses to Neutral Milk Hotel, Forever Changes remains as timeless as its title prophesied. —M.R.
Janelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid (Wondaland Arts Society/Bad Boy/Atlantic, 2010)
Janelle Monáe’s acclaimed album debut traced Superman’s journey in reverse, metaphorically launching the star from her small Kansas town of Earth origin on a fiery arc, blazing straight through the ionosphere and into the limitless galaxies beyond. This epically funky cyborg manifesto adds to an Afrofuturist creative universe previously mapped by the imaginings of Sun Ra, Octavia Butler and Parliament-Funkadelic, who busted through barriers of linear time and space to build a world of Black love, selfhood and possibility. As a concept album, its ambition is vast, exploring strange new worlds of art-pop storytelling and breathless, whip-smart funk—but it never loses sight of the prime directive to tear up the dance floor. —A.F.
Prince, Dirty Mind (Warner Bros., 1980)
On Prince Rogers Nelson’s third album, he veered from discofied R&B towards post-punk funk, creating his first masterpiece and the best “Black new wave” album ever released. With his helium falsetto conveying liberatory lyrics over squiggly synthesizers and skinny drum-machine beats, Prince dared to envision a utopia that looked to him remarkably like… Minneapolis? “Now where I come from/ We don’t let society tell us how it’s supposed to be/ Our clothes, our hair, we don’t care/ It’s all about being there/ Everybody’s going uptown/ That’s where I want to be/ Uptown/ Set your mind free.” He flexed his burgeoning songwriting chops on “When You Were Mine” (later covered by Cyndi Lauper and Mitch Ryder), while also leaning into his louche libertine persona, from the title track to the oral fixation of “Head” to “Sister”—his punkish paean to incest—providing an early forecast of the superstardom Purple Rain would deliver. —M.R.
The Ronettes, Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes (Philles, 1964)
Rock & roll would never be the same after the primal kick-drum thump of “Be My Baby,” but it’s a literal thunderclap that opens this full-length opus that presents the fabulous Veronica Bennett (a.k.a. Ronnie Spector) to the world like Athena triumphantly emerging from evil genius Phil Spector’s cracked head. Uncredited vocal ringers like Darlene Love and Cher round out the background chorus, and first-call Gold Star Studios session players like Carol Kaye and Hal Blaine build the wall of sound. But it’s Ronnie’s indelible voice that plants a flag in music history—the yearning embodiment of puppy love and lust, told though sha-la-las and whoa-oh-ohs. These are the teenage kicks that inspired everyone from The Rolling Stones to The Ramones. —A.F.
Run-D.M.C., King of Rock (Profile, 1985)
In the prophetic video for King of Rock’s sneering title track from its sophomore set, the hip-hop icons barge through the doors of a rock & roll museum, where rap is not welcome. Nearly 25 years later, Joseph “Run” Simmons, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and the late Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell would be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, having helped shift popular music forever. King of Rock expanded on the trio’s head-banging, guitar-propelled 1984 breakthrough, “Rock Box.” Credit producer Larry Smith with recruiting metal axe man Eddie Martinez, who provides six-string credibility on throwdowns like “Can You Rock It Like This” and “You’re Blind.” D’s voice rattles teeth, Run rhymes like the coolest MC on the block and Jay proves on “Jam-Master Jammin’—Long Version” that a pair of turntables can be just as enthralling as an Eddie Van Halen solo. —K.M.
Santigold, Santogold (Downtown, 2008)
“What I’m searching for/ To tell it straight, I’m trying to build a wall,” an introverted Santigold admits on the opening track, “L.E.S. Artistes.” It’s an engrossing, anti-poser summation (the ironic acronym stands for Lower East Side Artist) that fuels much of the singer-songwriter’s empowering freshman statement. Certainly no one predicted a quirky Black girl from Philly and former Epic Records A&R (for unsung alternative R&B artist Res, among others) would make the last great gasp of New York’s 2000s indie-rock scene that spawned The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and LCD Soundsystem. Santigold is tough to pin down. She flips ska into an infectious, punky confection (“You’ll Find a Way”), conjures up ethereal garage rock (“Lights Out”) and immerses herself in lo-fi electro reggae (“Unstoppable”). It’s like witnessing the birth of Grace Jones and Karen O’s love child. —K.M.
Sonny Sharrock, Guitar (Enemy, 1986)
One of the first jazz guitarists to utilize rock-style amplification and distortion, Warren “Sonny” Sharrock was as important a six-string innovator as Jimi Hendrix; his trademark buzzy trill was a precursor to abrasive rock subgenres like No Wave and grunge. A 1960s sideman with Pharoah Sanders, Miles Davis and Herbie Mann, Sharrock remained relatively obscure until the 1980s, when his work with Last Exit morphed jazz into heavy metal, creating a shape-shifting, ear-splitting energy music. His splendid solo effort Guitar highlights his unique ability to freeze incredible beauty and utter brutality in consecutive notes, as displayed on an electric version of his “Blind Willie” (the acoustic original first released on his 1969 debut, Black Woman). Sharrock suffered a fatal heart attack as he was about to sign a major-label deal in 1994 and was thus denied the acclaim in his lifetime that he rightfully deserved. —M.R.
Sly and the Family Stone, There’s a Riot Goin’ On (Epic, 1971)
This multiracial Bay Area septet had already released four albums when Sly Stone burrowed into the studio for nearly two years, working largely alone on the group’s first LP since their Woodstock success. Due to internal band dissension and drug use, as well as the darkening sociopolitical moment, the sunny vibes of earlier material like “Sing a Simple Song” and “Dance to the Music” were replaced by a brooding disillusionment; as Sly sang on “Thank You for Talkin’ to Me, Africa,” “Dyin’ young is hard to take/ Sellin’ out is harder.” Using an early drum machine and continually overdubbing, Stone conjured a dense cloud of murky, multi-layered funk that cloaked even poppier songs like “Family Affair” and “Runnin’ Away” in an ambiguous haze. Riot spurred Miles Davis’ most 3D future funk (On the Corner) and continues reverberating through innovative R&B (D’Angelo’s Voodoo is a Riot homage) and hip-hop (Earl Sweatshirt, Isaiah Rashad). —M.R.
The Specials, The Specials (2 Tone/Chrysalis, 1979)
A multiracial ensemble from Coventry, England, The Specials souped up early 1960s Jamaican ska (a precursor to reggae) with an injection of punk’s energy, velocity and attitude to create the 2 Tone movement, a defiantly anti-racist subculture that included other ska bands like The Selecter, Madness and The Beat. Produced by Elvis Costello, the band’s debut blended a handful of covers (like Dandy Livingstone’s “A Message to You Rudy”) with their own skanking grooves and protest anthems. While their attire (mod suits, skinny ties, porkpie hats) was as retro as their influences, their subject matter was perfectly attuned to the turbulent moment in Thatcher-era Britain, tackling racial strife (“It's Up to You”), street violence (“Concrete Jungle”) and teenage pregnancy (“Too Much Too Young”). Personnel departures stymied the band’s career progression, but their early efforts have inspired ensuing generations of would-be rude boys (and girls) like No Doubt, Sublime and Less Than Jake. —M.R.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Gospel of the Blues (MCA, 2003)
The sui generis gospel, blues and pop star Rosetta Tharpe enjoyed a well-deserved renaissance after her 2017 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a belated acknowledgement of how, overdriving her Gibson Les Paul in praise of the Lord and more, she sketched the blueprint for what an American guitar slinger looked, sounded and acted like. Though she recorded in the album format in her lifetime, singles collections like this one—which includes straight gospel from her earliest years, collaborations with Lucky Millinder’s big swing band and more—underscore why rock icons like Chuck Berry and Little Richard bowed down.
Tina Turner, Private Dancer (Capitol, 1984)
In 1984, Tina Turner (both personally and professionally) was a phoenix still rising from the smoldering embers of her marriage to Ike Turner—a tortured partnership that had defined both her own career and also, to an extent, the hybrid, electrified animal of ’60s rock and soul. Tina never did anything nice and easy, and this apocalyptic, multiplatinum platter of ’80s synth-rock fusion is no exception. Fully liberated from the “and” phase of her career, Tina wields her vicious yowl to lay waste to (among other songs) the Mark Knopfler-penned title track’s simmering first-person memoirs of a woman of pleasure, the cathartic “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” her first #1 in more than a decade, and an explosive cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” a song that originated as a warm groove but in Tina’s hands, turns love into a battlefield. —A.F.
X-Ray Spex, Germfree Adolescents (EMI, 1978)
London’s X-Ray Spex were led by vocalist Poly Styrene—born Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, the daughter of a Somali father and a Scottish-Irish mother—who was still a teenager in orthodontia when the band wrote its debut single, “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!,” U.K. punk’s first feminist anthem. On this, the group’s first album, her target was capitalist consumerism; as she sang on “Art-I-Ficial,” “I wanna be Instamatic/ I wanna be a frozen pea/ I wanna be dehydrated/ In a consumer society.” On songs like “I Am a Poseur” and “Warrior in Woolworths,” her caterwauling screech jousted for attention with blasts of piercing saxophone, dropping brand names like they were F-bombs amid catchy, sugar-coated hooks. Poly was one of punk’s most dynamic personas, but the singer was forced to leave the band in 1979 for health reasons and remained largely retired from music for the rest of her life (she died of cancer at 53 in 2011), even as she became an icon to the riot grrrl movement. —M.R.