Record Store Day 2026 preview: Hip-hop, soul, R&B & reggae

Our preview of this year’s Record Store Day continue with a look at some of the more interesting hip-hop, soul, R&B, funk, and reggae vinyl that’s hitting independent record stores on Saturday, April 18. Last week we tackled hard rock, punk, and metal, and the week before that we ran down all the cool-looking jazz, blues, and Latin stuff, so if those are your bags, be sure to check those out.

This week’s bag is large indeed, so let’s get into it. But first, a huge congrats to Ryan, the winner of our March vinyl giveaway! He won copies of four recent Vinylphyle releases, meaning that in the coming days he will receive a package from us that includes the excellent new pressings of Heart’s Dreamboat Annie, Jellyfish’s Spilt Milk, Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun, and Peter Frampton’s Frampton Comes Alive! Wish you had entered? You can always upgrade to our paid tier and be eligible for our monthly giveaways. We can’t promise they’ll all be as hefty as that, but we’ll do our best to keep things interesting.

And speaking of Vinylphyle, the series has just announced the newest one: Marvin Gaye’s 1976 make-out classic I Want You, a soul/disco masterwork that incorporated synths into Gaye’s sound and presaged the quiet storm movement, influencing R&B for decades to come. As part of the album’s 50th anniversary, the Vinylphyle edition is being released simultaneously with a vinyl collection called I Want You 2, a double-LP set that collects all the outtakes and alternates from the deluxe CD edition of I Want You. You can cop both right now on the uDiscoverMusic site.

HIP-HOP

Cam’ron: Killa Season [Nature Sounds]

Harlem’s Cam’ron was riding high at the time of 2006’s Killa Season. The Diplomats MC’s 2004 solo album Purple Haze had been a well-regarded success, both artistically and commercially, and Cam’ron parlayed that attention into a film/LP vanity project that didn’t just take the wind out of Cam’ron’s sails (and sales) but also affected the heretofore unstoppable Dipset’s momentum as a collective. It didn’t help that “You Gotta Love It” took an unwise shot at Jay-Z, but the real problem is that both the film and the album were indulgent ego trips. I’d love to tell you that with 20 years of hindsight Killa Season has matured into an overlooked gem, but the truth is that it’s still a pretty annoying listen, and without the track skip button on your turntable, this reissue might wear down even devoted fans. Still, it’s never been on vinyl before, which should be enough to satisfy completists. NL

Elzhi: Lead Poison [Coalmine]

The gestation period for Lead Poison, the solo album from former Slum Village member Elzhi, was a long one. The Detroit-based rapper secured funds for the recording and release of the LP through Kickstarter in late 2013, but it took another three years for supporters to see a return on their investment. The wait turned out to be worth it, as the finished record is a warm, heartfelt, hilarious expression of an artist’s struggles to maintain relevance and personal relationships in our fractious age. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Lead Poison’s release, Coalmine Records is reissuing it on “lead storm” colored vinyl with audio remastered by D-Sane of Seattle’s Digital Age Sound. RH

Flying Lotus: 1983 [Brainfeeder]

While his association with British label Warp helped turn him into something of a phenomenon, LA-based rapper/producer Flying Lotus made some waves early on with the help of Plug Research, the underground imprint that released his first album 1983 in 2006. The template for FlyLo’s future success was set even then: cockeyed instrumental hip-hop beats that sound like they were constructed from accidental noises and samples from forgotten private-press new age and exotica albums. Out of print since 2011, this early effort from the musician and filmmaker is getting a welcome repress by his new home, Brainfeeder Records, in an RSD First edition of 2000. RH

Jurassic 5: Quality Control [Get on Down]

Hip-hop groups are becoming rarer these days, so there’s never a bad time to celebrate the outfits that joined multiple rappers and beatmakers together for the sole purpose of blowing minds and moving bodies. LA’s Jurassic 5 remains one of the best of these musical crews, bringing together four distinctive rhymers (Chali 2na, Akil, Marc 7, and Soup) and two of the greatest living DJs (Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark) to build upon the boom-bap foundation set by forebears like A Tribe Called Quest and Gang Starr. The group’s second album, 2000’s Quality Control, remains one of their strongest, with its vital mix of braggadocious rhymes and head-nodding grooves. Though they just missed the proper anniversary date, Get on Down is dropping a 25th-anniversary repress of Quality Control this Record Store Day with updated artwork and “wood grained” colored vinyl. RH

MC 900 Ft Jesus: Welcome to My Dream [Nettwerk]

In the hip-hop scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s, MC 900 Ft Jesus was an absolute anomaly. The rapper and producer born Mark Griffin was a white, classically trained trumpeter from Dallas who was as enamored with the work of Public Enemy and Eric B & Rakim as he was the industrial sounds of Ministry and Front 242. Annoyed with the modern music he was stocking at his record store job, he decided to make his own, in a style that fused his various creative interests. MC 900 Ft Jesus quickly became a cult favorite in the college rock circuit, producing three albums of dark, dense tunes punctuated by Griffin’s reedy voice and seamy poetics. His creative peak was 1991’s Welcome to My Dream, an album that culled the grooves of ’70s funk records and mined the pages of noir literature for inspiration. Though the album was repressed on wax in 2015, this new Record Store Day edition expands that remastered version with the addition of a pair of remixes, five demos, and new liner notes penned by Griffin. RH

Xzibit: Restless [Loud]

With Dr. Dre on board as executive producer, Restless marks Xzibit’s peak, a fiery hourlong declaration from the LA rapper that “I have arrived.” The 2000 album featured guest appearances from Eminem, Snoop Dogg, KRS-One, Nate Dogg, DJ Quik, Dre, and others, and the album balances the aggression of Xzibit’s gangsta persona with West Coast radio-friendly beats and hooks. Pressed to 2-LP blue vinyl, this is Restless’s first time on vinyl since its original release, but few other details of this reissue are forthcoming, as the blurb on the Record Store Day is a lazy copy-and-paste job of the AllMusic review, even including reviewer Matt Conoway’s mild criticisms of the album in the promo copy. Let’s hope more attention was paid to the mastering and pressing. NL

Various Artists: The Man with the Iron Fists soundtrack [36 Chambers]

The soundtrack to RZA’s 2012 kung fu flick The Man with the Iron Fists is no stranger to vinyl, but this Record Store Day pressing touts audiophile-grade vinyl. It’s not clear if it has been pressed on the Neotech vinyl compound that RZA’s other RSD release comes on (Bobby Digital Presents: Juice Crew, a new RZA-produced EP from the ’80s Queen rap group), but I think there’s a pretty good chance. As for the music, it’s a pretty enjoyable ride through Blaxploitation-inflected hip-hop, augmented by appearances from the Black Keys, Frances Yip, Tre Williams, and Corinne Bailey Rae. Wu-Tang is here in full force too, as are Wiz Khalifa and (regrettably) Kanye West. The limited edition of 2000 apparently comes in a new cover variant, but going by the listing on the RSD site, it’s not clear to me what’s different. NL

OTHER HIP-HOP RELEASES OF NOTE:
Big Sean: Detroit [G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam]
Danny Brown: “Grown Up” 7-inch [Reservoir Recordings]
Lil Peep: Crybaby [AWAL]
Living Legends: The Gathering [Legendary]
Paper Route Illuminati: Paper Route Illuminati [Paper Route Empire]
Polo G: Hall of Fame [Legacy Recordings]
Wiz Khalifa: Khalifa [Real Gone Music]

SOUL/R&B

Bob Brady and the Con Chords: Love-In: The Chariot Records Recordings [Omnivore]

This Baltimore blue-eyed soul band never released a full-length, but their string of singles on the Chariot label later became fixtures of the Northern Soul movement. Bob Brady’s falsetto is firmly in the vein of Smokey Robinson, and indeed the Con Chords’ sole charting hit was a rigorously faithful cover of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “More, More, More of Your Love.” The rest of their recorded output is also very much in the Motown-imitator vein—in the best possible way, so much that you could be forgiven for thinking “Everybody’s Goin’ to the Love-In” is a lost Tamla classic. This 13-track collection collects the A- and B-sides of Bob Brady and the Con Chords’ six singles for Chariot dating from 1966 to 1969, plus one additional song, “I Stand Rejected.” NL

Ray Charles: Ray Charles Live in Concert [Tangerine]

On the heels of a lovely run of reissues of albums by soul/R&B legend Ray Charles (you can check out our review of some of these re-releases here) comes a 50th-anniversary repress of Ray Charles Live in Concert, a document of a performance by the artist at the Shrine Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1964. The set finds Charles joined by a big horn section and his nimble backing vocalists the Raelettes, tearing through jazz standards, country gems, and blues. And the show is capped off by an electrifying take on fan favorite “What’d I Say.” This new 2-LP edition is the first vinyl release of the full performance, with audio remastered by Michael Graves and lacquers cut by Kevin Powell. RH

En Vogue: EV3 [Real Gone Music]

After hitting new commercial heights with 1992’s Funky Divas, En Vogue took some time apart for its four members to make solo records and have children. When they reconvened to work on a third full-length, the R&B group was nearly finished with the LP when founding member Dawn Robinson decided to leave. The three remaining vocalists—Terry Ellis, Cindy Herron, and Maxine Jones—carried on, completing and releasing EV3 in 1997. The album is just as strong as its predecessor, with production and songwriting support from hitmakers like Babyface, Organized Noize, and David Foster. For Record Store Day, Real Gone Music is pressing EV3 to vinyl for the first time in limited numbers (only 1,100 copies) and with two bonus tracks previously only available on the Japanese CD edition. RH

Chaka Khan: Naughty [Get on Down]

With her 1978 album Chaka, Chaka Khan already proved she could stand on her own as a solo artist after years of work leading the Chicago funk band Rufus. Her next LP, 1980’s Naughty, was further evidence that this singer was going to be a commercial and creative force to be reckoned with. Dripping in strings and slinky grooves, the Arif Mardin–produced set skirts around the edges of jazz fusion and disco without fully spilling over into either camp. Through it all, Khan sashays and struts with an air of defiance and seduction on fantastic cuts like “Too Much Love” and the Ashford & Simpson–penned “Clouds.” Original pressings of Naughty aren’t terribly hard to find on the secondary market, but we’re still celebrating the album getting a Record Store Day repress on “fig cream” vinyl. RH

Melanie B: Hot [UMR/Virgin]

Here in the States, it can be difficult to get anyone excited about the solo albums made by the members of the British girl group Spice Girls. All five have made them, and only one, Geri Halliwell’s Schizophonic, cracked the American charts in 1999. The album that should have caught fire this side of the Atlantic is Hot, the debut solo effort from Melanie B, aka Scary Spice. The 2000 album found the vocalist collaborating with hitmakers like Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Missy Elliott, and Teddy Riley, meeting each creative moment with soulfulness and sensuality. Never before released on wax, Hot is getting its vinyl bow in an RSD First picture-disc pressing that replaces the cover photo of a bikini-clad Mel B with a far less interesting image of leopard print. RH

Gil Scott-Heron: Reflections [Culture Factory]

The legendary Gil Scott-Heron still confounds expectations, with his work existing outside of our commonly accepted boundaries of hip-hop, R&B, funk, and agitprop. His 1981 album Reflections is no different, as it’s a genre-straddling amalgam of different sounds and styles, including reggae (“Storm Music”), silk-sheet R&B (“Morning Thoughts”), nightclub jazz (“Is That Jazz?”), and covers of Marvin Gaye and Bill Withers. But it’s the album-closing “‘B’ Movie” that sets Reflections apart. A 12-minute spoken-word sermon set against a casual but tight, bass-driven funk groove, it’s Scott-Heron at his best, condemning the Reagan era, the American populace’s detrimental obsession with celebrity, and our consumer dependence on foreign oil. I would say that it’s shockingly analogous to our present day, but such shocks are the very nature of Gil Scott-Heron—shockingly prescient, shockingly astute, and shockingly relevant not just to our political and sociological situations but to how we transmit and transmute ideas through the medium of the music. This one hasn’t been on wax since the ’80s; Culture Factory is reissuing it on purple marbled vinyl. They’re not our favorite label, but their RSD reissue of Scott-Heron’s Moving Target from last year seemed to be solid, so hopefully this one will be too. NL

Labi Siffre: Crying Laughing Loving Lying [Demon]

London singer/songwriter Labi Siffre had significant success with Crying Laughing Loving Lying in 1972, and the title track and “It Must Be Love” were hits in their day—although Madness had even greater success with their cover of the jaunty, buoyant “It Must Be Love” in 1981. Despite this success, Siffre’s thoughtful, catchy songs were generally overlooked for many years, as they confronted the homophobia and racism that Siffre encountered from the music industry and the listening public, although he always approached these topics from the angle of humanity and optimism. It took decades for the rest of the world to catch up, but we did eventually: Eminem famously sampled Siffre on “My Name Is” and in recent years, Siffre’s tunes have become the favorites of Hollywood music supervisors, regularly appearing as needledrops in movies and television shows. This 2-LP reissue of Crying Laughing Loving Lying replicates a recent CD edition, with eight extra songs added to the original 12-song album. NL

Swamp Dogg: Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted [Joyful Noise]

Jerry “Swamp Dogg” Williams was the subject of a recent documentary film, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, that charted the nearly eight decades of the Virginia-born musician’s career. The film focuses in particular on Swamp Dogg’s current scene in California, where he jams with his longtime collaborators in their San Fernando Valley home. The soundtrack to the doc makes its debut on Record Store Day, and if this is your first time dipping your toes into Swamp Dogg’s prodigious output, well, come on in, the water’s amazing. Williams has been responsible for decades’ worth of terrific country soul and swamp funk, embracing current trends like disco and Auto-Tune while still remaining his indelible, wonderful self. Albums like 1971’s Rat On, 1981’s I’m Not Selling Out - I’m Buying In!, and 2018’s Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune all deserve space on your record shelf, but this looks to be a more than worthy entry point into the Swamp Dogg catalog. NL

Ike White: Changin’ Times [Rhino]

Producer Jerry Goldstein got wind of an inmate in California penal system named Ike White, who had entered the penal system at age 19 and was currently serving a lifetime murder charge for a robbery gone wrong. But what interested Goldstein was that White was a gifted multi-instrumentalist who had gotten permission to make music while confined behind bars. Goldstein brought a mobile studio to Tehachapi State Prison and recorded an album of the incarcerated White’s music, released in 1976 on Goldstein’s LAX label as Changin’ Times; the album earned attention from Stevie Wonder, who helped petition for White’s early release. But once he was on the outside, White vanished without a trace, only reappearing in public near the end of his life for a 2014 interview for a BBC documentary, Arena: The Changin’ Times of Ike White, which aired in 2020. Those missing years saw a variety of aliases, marriages, and even a rumored stint in Germany as a porn star, further adding to White’s mystery. The album itself is an alternately lush and funky affair that showcases White’s many skills while not quite living up to its unbelievable backstory. The RSD reissue purports to be cut from the analog tape and includes new liner notes, which should make for an utterly fascinating read. NL

Various Artist: Stax: Killer B’s - 14 Fabulous Flip Sides [Craft Recordings]

This here looks to be a collection of B-sides from the second incarnation of Stax Records—after their nearly catastrophic severance from Atlantic Records, when they dramatically reinvented themselves as a powerhouse label at the end of the ’60s and beginning of the ’70s. There are tracks here by Eddie Floyd, Booker T. and the M.G.’s, Johnnie Taylor, and 11 others. Staxophiles more astute than I will need to determine how rare these tracks actually are—to their credit, Craft have done a fine job keeping the second Stax era in circulation, which means avid collectors might already have great-sounding versions of some of these selections. But whether these are genuine exclusives or not, this platter promises to be a darn fine listen, with tune after tune of great vintage Stax soul. NL

Various Artists: The Westbound Sound: Singleminded [Org Music]

Org Music has been doing a bang-up job with their reissues of the Westbound catalog thus far, including their amazing reissue of the first Funkadelic album and other key titles in the Detroit soul/funk label’s discography. This collection rounds up stray B-sides and rare tracks for a collection curated by independent record store employees, and the tracklist is killer. Funkadelic’s 1970 B-side “Fish, Chips and Sweat” is might be the essential cut (the album that its parent single, “I Wanna Know If It’s Good to You” came from—Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow—is getting an all-analog reissue from Org in May), but you’re not going to want to kick the killer tracks by Fuzzy Haskins, Detroit Emeralds, and Pleasure Web, and others off your turntable anytime soon. NL

OTHER SOUL/R&B RELEASES OF NOTE:
Jhene Aiko: Trip [Def Jam]
Ghost Funk Orchestra: Live in Europe [Karma Chief]
Ghost-Note: Swagism [Mixto]
Jade: Jade to the Max [Get on Down]
Kaytranada: Ain’t No Damn Way [RCA]
Les Nubians: “Makeda” 12-inch [Rhino]
Anderson .Paak: Malibu 7-inch box set [Obe/Apeshit]
Phonte & Eric Roberson: Tigallero [The Foreign Exchange]

REGGAE

Prince Buster: Prince Buster on Tour [Blue Beat Label]

Ska legend Prince Buster toured the UK in 1967, resulting in this quote-unquote live album, which was actually recorded in the studio and overdubbed with crowd noise. Still, it’s one of the few documents of vintage ska recorded outside of Jamaican studios and with a sense of what an audience reaction must have been like, canned though it may be. Buster’s big numbers like “Madness” and “Al Capone” are here in full force, as well as his cover of Desmond Dekker’s “007 (Shanty Town),” and while the sound isn’t anything to write home about, the excitement of the music is palpable. Still, with oddly generic cover art—and with the pre-release blurb not formally acknowledging that this is a fake live album—it might be prudent to be a little wary with this one. NL

U-Roy: Feel Jah Spirit: U-Roy Meets the Aggrovators [Sound System]

The details surrounding this Record Store Day release are few, with the PR notes assuring collectors that the 12 tracks on this limited-run LP have never been released on vinyl and find vocalist U-Roy “at the absolute peak of his career.” Whether that’s true or not, I’m at least reassured that the music will be handled well, as the late toaster is backed up by the Aggrovators, producer Bunny Lee’s constantly shifting gang of reggae musicians that, at various points, included keyboardist Jackie Mittoo and the peerless rhythm section Sly & Robbie. No matter what lineup, these seasoned players gave every session their all with tight grooves and few frills. I’d still like more information about when and where these songs were recorded, but that’s not going to stop me from grabbing a copy next month. RH

Various: Soul Jazz Presents: Studio One Sound [Soul Jazz]

Soul Jazz’s comps are always pretty fantastic, and this one, first issued in 2012, collects 18 vital sides from Clement “Coxsone” Dodd’s legendary label. The ska, rocksteady, reggae, and dub tracks contained within all date from the 1960s and ’70s, with performers like Johnny Osborne, the Heptones, Rita Marley, Freddie McGregor, and others, with the Skatalites and the Soul Brothers providing backing on many of the tracks. While serious reggae collectors will likely have most of this in one form or another, this comp—repressed on colored vinyl with Rob Chapman’s original liner notes—looks like a terrific jumping-in point for new listeners. NL

OTHER REGGAE RELEASES OF NOTE:
Leslie Butler: Ja-Gan [BMG]
Ziggy Marley: Brightside [Tuff Gong Worldwide]
Freddie McGregor: Showcase [Observer]
The Mighty Rootsman: Strike Back (Volume 2) [Kartel/Bulletproof]
Bunny Wailer: Rock ’n’ Groove [Solomonic Productions]
Various Artists: Operation Irie [LAW]