HUH & HAH! Upright bass. Jimi Hen­drix looks. John Coltrane poster on the wall. Sin­cer­ity of Bernard. The break­down part of the song start­ing at 2:27. Not a sin­gle mis­step in the video — or in the song. Pure aes­thetic pleasure.

Atlantic Starr — Freak-A-Ristic (Spe­cial Dance Mix) (320 kbps)

Prob­a­bly among the best 12“s I’ve bought among the recent his­tory. Straight con­nec­tions to mod­ern R&B cuts like Justin Timberlake’s Love­stoned etc. I’d like to hear a mod­ern ver­sion of this. Dig it.

Ruf­fin & Kendrick — You Only Get What You Put Out (320k)

What a smooth tune by Ruf­fin & Kendrick of The Temp­ta­tions fame who later left the group and had this duo thing going on — and even­tu­ally went onto solo careers. At least Kendrick.

This has been my spring time jam since 2008. Those moments when the snare drum gets some extra crack’n’reverb really do enhance the mes­sage of the lyrics. Lately I’ve been hav­ing some wet dreams that in a par­al­lel uni­verse this song has also some juicy boogie-y syn­the­sizer as another lead instru­ment. Nev­er­the­less, A Classic.

Photo by David Mcgough © Time Inc.
Luther Van­dross — I Really Didn’t Mean It (320 kbps)

Top notch boogie/soul track by one of the most suc­cess­ful amer­i­can male R&B singer/songwriters of the eight­ies, pro­duced by Mar­cus Miller. Nope, haven’t said bye-bye to my girl­friend and the pic­ture above doesn’t quite fit the songs atmos­phere. Enjoy(ing) the song nevertheless.