Otis Redding · 1967 Spin it Again - He died twelve weeks after this came out, which means every track on it was recorded by a man who had no idea he was making a legacy.

Arthur Conley · 1967 Spin it Again - Otis Redding produced this record, co-wrote the hit, and was dead before the year was out — and somehow none of that is the most interesting thing about it.

SZA · 2017 Spin it Again - She knew the men weren't worth it while she was writing about them, and somehow that made the whole thing worse.

Drake · 2021 Spin it Again - Noah '40' Shebib mixed the loneliness of having everything until it sounded like a room you actually want to sit in.

Chris Brown · 2019 Spin it Again - Thirty-two tracks of late-night R&B from a man who still hasn't decided whether he wants to be a pop star or a soul singer, and somehow that indecision is the whole point.

Chris Brown · 2024 Spin it Again - You owned this for a year and never actually heard the bass.

Frank Ocean · 2016 Spin it Again - Frank Ocean waited four years, fired his label in a single move, and handed in something that still hasn't been fully explained.

Solange · 2016 Spin it Again - Eight years of patience went into one song, and then she built a whole album to hold it.

Sampha · 2017 Spin it Again - Sampha spent years writing for Drake and Kanye, then went home to London and made the record none of them could have made.

Vicki Brown · 1987 Spin it Again - She spent twenty years making other people's records sound better, then made one of her own, and almost nobody noticed.

Corinne Bailey Rae · 2006 Spin it Again - Four million people bought this record, and it never once raised its voice to earn any of them.

Lianne La Havas · 2012 Spin it Again - She plays her own guitar, sings behind the beat, and leaves more air in the room than anyone asked for — and somehow that's the whole trick.

Lionel Richie · 1983 Spin it Again - Eighty million dollars in sales later, critics still can't figure out why this one hurts.

Babyface · 1989 Spin it Again - Babyface turned down the lights, turned down the volume, and somehow turned up everything that matters.

Mariah Carey · 1990 Spin it Again - A nineteen-year-old holds back, and that's exactly what breaks you.

Exposé · 1992 Spin it Again - Martinée built the Miami freestyle sound like load-bearing walls, and this is the record where it finally had somewhere to stand.

Niki Haris · 1991 Spin it Again - She sang background for Madonna and then made a debut this good, which is exactly the kind of injustice that takes thirty years to correct.

D'Angelo · 2000 Spin it Again - Questlove played the drums slightly behind the beat on purpose, and that decision is why this record still sounds like nothing else made in your lifetime.

Ginuwine · 1996 Spin it Again - A twenty-two-year-old from DC and an unknown Virginia Beach beatmaker made one of the most spatially strange R&B records of the decade, and somehow everyone only remembers the horse.

Mariah Carey · 1997 Spin it Again - She was leaving her controlling husband-label-boss and made the only Mariah Carey album that sounds genuinely private.