The Sweet Inspirations · 1967 · Cissy Houston was eight months pregnant with Whitney when they cut this? No — Whitney was four years old. But listen close, and you'll hear the same DNA.

Kamasi Washington · 2015 · The album that convinced a generation of hip-hop heads that jazz wasn't just for their parents.

Yussef Kamaal · 2016 · Recorded live in a warehouse with no overdubs, this is what happens when drummers take acid and keyboardists play for hours.

The Comet Is Coming · 2019 · Shabaka Hutchings channels Sun Ra through a blown-out amplifier and calls it a revolution.

John Coltrane · 1964 · John Coltrane's Classic Quartet cut this in the same sessions as My Favorite Things — and it's the one that sat on the shelf.

Dizzy Gillespie · 1957 · The salt air and the tent canvas are still in the grooves—this is what a hot July night in 1957 sounded like.

Ella Fitzgerald · 1957 · The one live album that justifies every "greatest singer ever" argument.

Count Basie · 1957 · Seven months after the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, this record had the band swinging like they owned the world — which, for forty-six minutes, they did.

Duke Ellington · 1956 · A single 27-chorus sax break turned a near-disaster into jazz immortality—and the crowd noise still gives you chills.

Little Simz · 2019 Spin it Again - She turned down major label advances to record nine songs in a home studio with one producer. No samples. No radio bait. Just a voice and a beat that still hits harder than most albums with ten times the budget.

C. Tangana · 2021 Spin it Again - He took the copla and the flamenco his grandmother loved and bent them into 2021 without ever breaking them.

Rosalía · 2022 Spin it Again - She recorded engine revs on her phone and left the distortion in — and that was the least punk thing about this album.

OutKast · 2000 Spin it Again - Three-inch tape, a basement Hammond organ, and two rappers who trusted each other enough to leave the beat on the bathroom floor.

Ice Cube · 1990 Spin it Again - The first truly political rap album from a major West Coast artist, and it's still angry.

Boogie Down Productions · 1988 Spin it Again - After Scott La Rock was killed, KRS-One didn't retreat — he loaded up on Malcolm X samples and made the hardest political rap album of the 80s.

Public Enemy · 1990 Spin it Again - A sonic riot assembled from hundreds of samples, sirens, and shouts that still sounds like the future catching up to the past.

Public Enemy · 1988 Spin it Again - This album proved hip-hop could be as dangerous as rock and as smart as punk, by treating the sampler like a machine gun and the studio like a war room.

Led Zeppelin · 1975 Spin it Again - Four sides of a double album recorded in a freezing stone mansion with a generator humming under the tape, and it's the best thing they ever did by about a mile.

The Breeders · 1990 Spin it Again - Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly made a record so raw it still sounds like it was recorded in a concrete basement.

Pixies · 1988 Spin it Again - Steve Albini recorded them in four days. The result sounds like a basement collapsing into God's own PA system.