PLAYLIST: UK Street Soul

Hello hello! On this week's Subscribers Only Playlist, we're bringing you the feel good grooves of an oft-overlooked subgenre: UK Street Soul.

A sound that laid critical groundwork for today's "Neo Soul" and heavily influenced both Erikah Badu and Jill Scott, Street Soul shook things up in a decidedly DIY way. Inspired in part by legendary R&B producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, early producers in the UK like Toyin Agbetu built their early songs from minimal swinging drum machine rhythms and relatively inexpensive synthesizers, often out of their own home studios (not dissimilar to House Music's Chicago origins...).