ERRANT NIGHTS | 01

Soulful falsettos drift over luxury grooves and slow-burning R&B. Lower the lights as we raise the pitch.

"Intimate Friends (Shoes Slow Soul Flow Edit)" - Eddie Kendricks

"Beauty & Essex (Instrumental)" - Free Nationals

"I Forgot to Be Your Lover" - William Bell

"Carry On" - JaeGenius

"Time's A Wastin" - Erykah Badu

"One 4 Fredo (Bilal Flip)" - Malik Abdul-Rahmaan

"Have You Been Making Out O.K." - Al Green

"Nxworries For The Soul Soulful Boom Bap Lofi Beat" - Anderson Paak x Knxwledge

"A Place in the Sun (Kaoru Inoue Remix)" - Ysushi Ide

"Oh Honey (12" Version)" - Delegation

"A Long Walk" - Jill Scott

"Two Lovers History" - Mary Wells

"Sweet Thing" - Rufus & Chaka Khan

"Really Love" - D'Angelo And The Vanguard

"Make Me Say It Again Girl, Parts 1 & 2" - The Isley Brothers

"After The Storm" - Kali Uchis, Tyler, The Creator, Bootsy Collins

“Intimate Friends (Shoes Slow Soul Flow Edit)” — Eddie Kendricks
This edit’s backbone is Eddie Kendricks’ 1977 deep-soul confession from Slick (Tamla, 1977), produced by Leonard Caston and tracked at Detroit's United Sound Systems and the Sound Suite. The album was actually finished in 1975, shelved, and quietly released two years later as Kendricks' contractual goodbye to Motown, which is why it was given almost no promotion and only crawled to No. 47 on the Soul Albums chart. The song outlived its release. Alicia Keys built "Unbreakable" around it, Common flipped it on "A Penny for My Thoughts," and Erykah Badu later draped it across "Fall in Love (Your Funeral)," which is its own kind of loop given that Badu shows up later in this set. The Shoes – Slow Soul Flow edit drifts in 12" circulation under the Shoes edits banner.

“Beauty & Essex (Instrumental)” — Free Nationals
The instrumental of the Free Nationals' 2018 debut single, which the band issued ahead of their self-titled debut album in late 2019. Anderson .Paak's road band, which is to say bassist Kelsey Gonzalez, keyboardist and talkbox player Ron "T.Nava" Avant, drummer Callum Connor, and guitarist José Ríos, finally stepping out without their frontman. Stripped of Daniel Caesar's falsetto and Ruban Nielson's tape-warbled hook, what's left is the band's signature: warm Rhodes, heavy bass, an unhurried pocket.

“I Forgot to Be Your Lover” — William Bell
Bell co-wrote this with Booker T. Jones, his Memphis high school friend, and Jones produced it at Stax in late 1968. It hit No. 10 R&B and No. 45 Hot 100 in early 1969, Bell's first Top 10 on the soul listings. The context underneath the song is heavier than the song lets on. Bell was meant to be on the same December 1967 charter flight as Otis Redding, his close friend at Stax, but a Chicago snowstorm cancelled his show and kept him on the ground. The plane went down over Lake Monona. Eighteen years later, Billy Idol refashioned the tune as "To Be a Lover" and rode it to No. 6 Hot 100. The Black Keys covered it in 2024. Bruce Springsteen recorded it for Only the Strong Survive in 2022, sticking close to Bell's tempo and string arrangement. The original 45 stays the standard.

“Carry On” — JaeGenius
A short, dust-covered loop piece from the UK beatmaker's Cherry Pie, released to Bandcamp on October 4, 2014. JaeGenius operates in the same beat-tape lineage that runs from Dilla to Knxwledge to Mndsgn, where structure gives way to atmosphere. No label trail, no liner notes, just a download link and a community of selectors who know where to look.

“Time’s a Wastin’” — Erykah Badu
A counsel piece from Mama's Gun (Motown, 2000), recorded at Electric Lady alongside the Soulquarians, which by then meant Questlove on drums, James Poyser on keys, Roy Hargrove on horns, and Pino Palladino occasionally locking in the bass. The track floats on Rhodes, brushed drums, and Badu’s conversational alto; the album itself pushed neo-soul toward band-led studio craft, landing Top-10 on the Billboard 200 and aging into a classic. Not a single, but a selector staple for downshift moments.

“One 4 Fredo (Bilal Flip)” — Malik Abdul-Rahmaan
Malik Abdul-Rahmaan came up in Tokyo's hip-hop scene during a seven-year Air Force posting, then brought that ear back to New York via the Paxico Records orbit. His Field Research series is what happens when a beatmaker treats record digging as ethnomusicology, building entire releases from records bought in country and field recordings of street vendors and call-to-prayer drift. "One 4 Fredo" runs in a different register, a SoundCloud flip built around Bilal’s honeyed phrasing over dusty drums, sitting in the smooth 70–80 BPM pocket.

“Have You Been Making Out O.K.” — Al Green
A side-two ballad from Call Me (Hi, 1973), which is widely regarded as Green's high-water mark. Tracked at Memphis' Royal Studios with producer Willie Mitchell, the Hodges brothers anchoring the rhythm section, and Mitchell's horn section coloring the edges. Never a single, but the kind of album cut that explains why Call Me hit No. 1 on the Soul LPs chart and went Top 10 pop the year of its release. Crate note: international 45s paired this cut with different B-sides.

“Nxworries For The Soul (Soulful Boom Bap Lofi Beat)” — Anderson .Paak x Knxwledge
A streaming-platform variant in the orbit of NxWorries' Yes Lawd! (Stones Throw, October 2016), the Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge collaboration whose 18 tracks set a template for buttery hooks over SP-style drum chops. The blueprint was Knxwledge's beat archive on Bandcamp, which is also how Kendrick Lamar found him for "Momma" on To Pimp a Butterfly. Cuts like this one circulate in an ecosystem that grew up around the album, repurposing NxWorries-adjacent stems for late-night listening sets. ’90s boom-bap attitude in silk pajamas.

“A Place in the Sun (Kaoru Inoue Remix)” — Yasushi Ide
Released through Brooklyn’s Love Injection on November 17, 2023, 7" on clear yellow vinyl with a Yoko Ota dub on the flip. Love Injection's Barbie Bertisch and Paul Raffaele encountered the remix as a 1-of-50 dubplate while gigging in Japan in 2019, brought it home, and spent four years getting it pressed. Yasushi Ide has been a quiet polymath at the center of Tokyo's club lineage since the 1980s, with a collaborator list that runs from Masters at Work to Don Letts, DJ Krush, Pharaoh Sanders, and U-Roy. The result is a sunrise piece, hand percussion under sparkling Rhodes, a B-side dub that lingers.

“Oh Honey (12″ Version)” — Delegation
A Birmingham trio (Ricky Bailey, Len Coley, Roddy Harris) discovered by Ken Gold and Micky Denne, the songwriting team Gold dreamed of turning into a British answer to Gamble & Huff. Their first run of UK State Records singles charted modestly. "Oh Honey" was the song that crossed over: Top 10 R&B and No. 45 Hot 100 in 1979, issued in the U.S. on Shadybrook. Heads still compare matrix etchings and runout grooves looking for the cleanest pressing of the 12" mix. Coolio and the Geto Boys later sampled it. This classic continues it’s healthy afterlife in hip-hop/neo-soul cuts.

“A Long Walk” — Jill Scott
Co-written and produced by Andre Harris and Vidal Davis (Dre & Vidal) under DJ Jazzy Jeff's A Touch of Jazz umbrella, recorded at A Touch of Jazz Studios in Philadelphia, mastered at Power's House of Sound in New York. It's drawn from Scott's debut Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1 (Hidden Beach / Epic, 2000) and reached No. 9 R&B in 2001. The song's biographical fingerprint runs deep. "A Long Walk" was the first song Jill Scott ever recorded, a single take, and it's about a date with a man named Lyzel who would become her husband. The label initially didn't know what to do with her shaved-back hair in the video, so the director added a pigeon to the shot. The kind of compromise that ages funny.

“Two Lovers History” — Mary Wells
Mary Wells cut this post-Motown heartbreaker in New York in March 1968 with her then-husband Cecil Womack, whose family lineage included Bobby and the rest of the Valentinos. "Two Lovers History" was the B-side of "The Doctor" on Jubilee, and surfaced again on the Servin' Up Some Soul LP. The label copy reads "Mary Wells Womack / Cecil D. Womack," marking the studio partnership that came after her Motown departure. The song lives a second life in hip-hop. J Dilla's "Motor City 9" sits on top of it, and Mos Def and Talib Kweli's "History" (from Yasiin Bey's The Ecstatic, 2009) flips the same source for its hook.

“Sweet Thing” — Rufus & Chaka Khan
Co-written by Khan and Rufus guitarist Tony Maiden, supposedly in about five minutes while they were dating. It was the lead single from Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan (ABC, 1975) and went to No. 1 R&B and No. 5 Hot 100 in early 1976, the band's second R&B chart-topper. Its echo runs further than usual: Mary J. Blige covered it for What's the 411? and made it a 1990s standard, while Nile Rodgers has named the chord cycle as a key influence on the sound he eventually brought to David Bowie's Let's Dance.

“Really Love” — D’Angelo and The Vanguard
The lead single from Black Messiah (RCA, December 2014), D'Angelo's first album in fourteen years and, as it turns out, his last. He produced it. Brent Fischer (son of jazz arranger Clare Fischer) wrote and conducted the string overture. The Spanish-language intro was improvised by Gina Figueroa, a Nuyorican poet whom D'Angelo was dating, and who eventually had to fight through credit channels to be officially acknowledged as a co-writer of the song. The track samples Curtis Mayfield's "We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue", and won Best R&B Song at the 58th Grammys while Black Messiah took Best R&B Album. D'Angelo died on October 14, 2025, of pancreatic cancer, at 51. He was working on a fourth album with Raphael Saadiq. Three records, each a generation-defining statement.

“Make Me Say It Again Girl (Parts 1 & 2)” — The Isley Brothers
Side two, last cut, of The Heat Is On (T-Neck / Epic, 1975), recorded at Kendun Recorders in Burbank and self-produced by the six-man Isley/Jasper writing unit. The Heat Is On was the band's first No. 1 on the Billboard 200, a then-rare feat for a Black band, with Earth, Wind & Fire and the Ohio Players the only contemporary peers. The album split itself in half: side one for the funk, side two for the slow-jam suite, of which "Make Me Say It Again Girl" is the closer and emotional climax. The cut went on to live many lives. Bone Thugs' "Tha Crossroads", Naughty by Nature's "Hip Hop Hooray," and Destiny's Child's "Second Nature" all built on it before Beyoncé closed the loop with a Ronald Isley duet remake in 2022. Ronald’s satin lead, Ernie’s liquid guitar, and Chris Jasper’s languid keys. 

“After the Storm” — Kali Uchis feat. Tyler, The Creator, Bootsy Collins

The third single from Isolation (Virgin EMI / Interscope, 2018), produced by BADBADNOTGOOD, with a music video by Nadia Lee Cohen that puts Tyler in plant costume and renders Bootsy as animation. The cameo origin is a minor classic of the social-media era: Uchis told Billboard in 2015 that she'd been waiting for Bootsy to follow her on Twitter. Bootsy saw the interview, replied, and the two of them eventually wound up in his ranch studio in Ohio, where most of their collaborations were tracked. It charted internationally and cemented Uchis as a new retro-soul vocalist of contemporary beatcraft.

Listen to: Errant Nights | 02