The record features Jackson on the TONTO, an amalgamation of classic and custom modular synthesizers built by creator Malcolm Cecil…

One of the earliest recorded examples of Prince’s musicianship is the Minneapolis Genius record, credited to 94 East.

It began in Africa. That much seems unassailable, at least when you’re talking about the roots of rhythm-based music…

Whether Goodbye Brains was ahead of its time or not, it certainly flew under the radar.

Ray Manzarek, founding member of the Doors, has passed away at age seventy-four on May 20, 2013.

P-Funk bassist Cordell “Boogie” Mosson passed away on April 18, 2013, at the age of sixty.

In honor of one of R&B, jazz, and rock’s most prolific session guitarists, Wax Poetics looks at ten tracks graced by the great Hugh McCracken.

I can still vividly remember my first rap show. It was the spring winter of 1986 1987, and the Beastie Boys were touring to support their debut album, Licensed to Ill. They weren’t opening for Run-DMC; they were headlining this tour, backed up by punks (Murphy’s Law) and funks (Fishbone). The Jacksonville Coliseum was nowhere near full [...]

As founding member of the D.I.T.C. Crew, Lord Finesse’s search for vinyl is routine and has remained so for decades.

Exceptionalism, the fourth full release from composer and producer Remy LBO, marks both a summation and transition of artistic objectives. It’s a glassy, funky work of permuting textures, one through which the delicacy of craftsmanship is realized.

DJ Babu, part of the World Famous Beat Junkies and Dilated Peoples, shares his top ten, a list that tells the story of his maturation as a kid in Oxnard to a world-class, international DJ.

As a Wax Poetics online exclusive, guitarist Sérgio Dias discusses fifteen of the albums that contributed heavily to Os Mutantes’ dynamic sound.

He was a young drumer trying to keep up in the serious world of spiritual jazz. Then Norman Connors traded the rigorous life for expensive cars, fashion models, and R&B hits.

A Number of Names, Blake Baxter, Cybotron, Derrick May, Intercity, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Kreem, Modell 500

World War II may have given us the atom bomb, but it also contributed what Ray Charles would call “an atom bomb on the musical landscape.” Predating synths like the Moog, the Rhodes piano was the great keyboard instrument innovation of the twentieth century. Its history is intertwined with the history of jazz, and while [...]

In an age in which robotic vocals have become cliche, the most important thing to know about the talk box is that it’s not a vocoder. That’s not to say the ideas aren’t related. The vocoder models human speech as the combination of a carrier and a formant—the sound of your vocal cords, and the way [...]

You can hear the sonic ripples of Fela Kuti’s legacy anywhere in the world. But to appreciate the explosive power of the man as a musician, a bandleader, and a booming voice for social justice, the tale becomes a Nigerian story, an African story. Rikki Stein was Fela’s manager and close friend, a veteran of [...]