Day: September 11, 2025

R&B trailblazers Jodeci’s original trilogy of albums concluded with 1995’s Platinum-certified The Show, The Afterparty, The Hotel. To celebrate the album’s 30th anniversary, the group is pressing it to vinyl again for the first time since its original release. The 2LP black vinyl release is housed in a standard capacity jacket mirroring the original tracklist.

The Show, The Afterparty, The Hotel sent Jodeci’s original run out on a high note. The album reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart and became the third straight Jodeci album to soar to the top of Billboard’s Top R&B albums chart. In addition to its success on the album charts, it yielded three high-charting tracks on the Hot 100, including “Freek’n You,” “Get On Up,” and the iconic wedding ballad “Love U 4 Life.” The latter song’s music video is officially premiering on Jodeci’s YouTube channel in honor of the new reissue.

Emerging as one of the definitive R&B acts of the new jack swing era, Jodeci brought a hard edge to the genre, forgoing the look favored by many in the genre in favor of a hip-hop-informed presentation involving baseball caps, sports jerseys, and military boots. The then-unconventional styling fueled Jodeci’s reputation as the “bad boys of R&B”—an antithesis to smooth, clean-cut acts like Boyz II Men.

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But it wasn’t just about the clothes. Jodeci pushed the limits of R&B with the often raw and deeply sexual content of their music, never more than on The Show, The Afterparty, The Hotel. The album’s erotic qualities come through in the lyrics but also the music itself, which takes cues from producer Devante Swing’s hero Prince. Also behind the boards was a young Timbaland, who was just beginning to carve out his place as one of the most visionary producers in music history.

“Although Jodeci could skillfully craft floor-fillers, they were in a league of their own when it came to slow jams,” Rashad Grove wrote in a look back at the album. “Songs such as the smooth ‘S-More,’ which was co-written by Missy Elliott, the decadence of ‘Pump It Back,’ and the seductive, West-Coast inspired ‘Can We Flo?’ are essential Jodeci deep cuts that exemplify the essence of 90s R&B.”

Order Jodeci’s The Show, The Afterparty, The Hotel on vinyl now.

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In John Carpenter’s seminal horror classic, Halloween, evil was omnipresent. It could be in anyone, as evidenced by Michael Myers, AKA “The Shape,” who went on a rampage in his fictional hometown for seemingly no reason at all. This sense of chaos and terror permeates throughout Toronto-born singer The Weeknd’s debut album Kiss Land – an album that eschews the tried and true hit-making formula he’d later be known for in favor of what he described to Complex as a “terrifying place.” Instead of making hits, he burrowed deeper into himself, highlighting his losses instead of his burgeoning rise to superstardom. With his influences ranging from horror masters like David Cronenberg, Ridley Scott, and (of course) John Carpenter – Kiss Land is Weeknd’s invitation to his haunted house, skeletons, and all.

Before Kiss Land, The Weeknd slowly became the pioneer of a new-age R&B star – one that is heard and not seen. Besides a few shadowy pictures and grainy performance footage, he was basically a phantom. His run of mixtapes – House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence (also known as Trilogy) – was critically acclaimed, and he began to gain traction after lending his talents to Drake’s Take Care. Even with this success, the pressure mounted for his proper debut studio album. His fans were familiar with his talent, but was the world truly ready for this reclusive and moody new superstar?

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Erykah Badu will soon begin a tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Mama’s Gun. The run will kick off with a show at the Hollywood Bowl on October 3 featuring opener Westside Gunn. The anticipated celebration will continue through October and into November and December.

Before the Mama’s Gun anniversary shows, Badu went on tour with the Alchemist, with whom she released “Next to You” in June. Those concerts took place across North America in August.

Mama’s Gun, originally released in 2000, remains one of the most influential albums in modern music. Badu reflected on its place in the cultural landscape in a 2021 interview with The FADER. She said: “Yeah, I hear it. It tickles me. I’m thinking, ‘Oh my god, these are my kids. These are what Mama’s Gun spat out.’ They heard it. They internalized it. It’s a language that I thought only I knew.”

In that same interview, producer Mark Ronson also reflected on the album’s influence. He said: “Mama’s Gun, that is really my favorite album of that whole era, and I know that there’s so many great records that came out of that magic folklore period of Electric Lady and there’s Voodoo and Phrenology and all this stuff. I will stand in front of everybody else, and Mama’s Gun, when I heard it, it just knocked me out in a way that … I think because there were so many other influences in ‘Penitentiary Philosophy’ and the heaviness of it, too, and it did things that not all the records really did.”

Mama’s Gun cemented Badu’s status as the new face of R&B upon its release. After taking several years off to raise her first child, Badu returned to the studio to record her second album, much of which was inspired by love and her relationship with her then-partner, Andre Benjamin. Leaning into a more organic sound with less-elusive lyrics, Badu opted to speak to the state of Black womanhood and the world around her.

Shop for Erykah Badu’s music on vinyl or CD now.

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