Results for “sensuality through craft”

Songs

Big Time Sensuality

Björk

A euphoric, almost breathless meditation on giving in to a feeling too big to name, delivered as pure present-tense sensation…

surrender to the present moment intimacy without explanation courage as a precondition for pleasure

Keep the Beat

Eric B.

This track is Rakim's rare romantic showcase, built on a conceit that fuses music-making with lovemaking so thoroughly that the…

music as seduction control and rhythm stamina and endurance

Completeness

Minnie Riperton

A soft, incantatory love song built almost entirely from direct address and imperative pleading, in which the singer asks a…

romantic surrender identity through the other sensuality

When We Get By

D'Angelo

A slow-groove love song built almost entirely from a single circling phrase, promising that romantic devotion is enough to…

romantic devotion as survival domestic intimacy sensuality

Hit It Run

Run-DMC

A boast-driven b-boy anthem in which D.M.C. asserts lineage, dominance, and craft over Jam Master Jay's stripped-down beats. The…

braggadocio hip-hop lineage and authenticity self-naming/identity

Honey

Robyn

"Honey" is a slow-burning dance track that turns sensual invitation into a philosophy of pleasure and self-repair. Built from…

desire and surrender self-care as sensuality the gap between want and need

What They Do

The Roots

A mid-90s Roots track built around a single defiant refrain, positioning the group's artistic integrity against a hip-hop…

authenticity vs. commercialism artistic integrity hip-hop lineage and craft

Sumthin' Sumthin': Mellosmoothe (Cut)

Maxwell

This is a stripped-down, mostly instrumental-feeling neo-soul seduction piece built from fragments rather than full verses. It…

desire and seduction emotional guardedness persistence versus reciprocity

Come Live with Me Angel

Marvin Gaye

A slow-burning seduction song built almost entirely on a single proposition: move in with me. Marvin Gaye layers a soft, almost…

seduction and desire domestic fantasy emotional vulnerability masked as pleasure-seeking

Merry Christmas Baby

B.B. King

This is a blues-idiom Christmas song built almost entirely on gratitude and physical warmth rather than religious or sentimental…

romantic gratitude domestic contentment sensual celebration

Hollis Crew (Krush-Groove 2)

Run-DMC

An early foundational Run-DMC record built almost entirely around boasting: each MC takes a turn establishing his name, his…

braggadocio and self-mythologizing identity and naming hip-hop lineage/crew loyalty

Feel Like Makin' Love

Roberta Flack

A slow-building meditation on desire that treats ordinary moments — a walk, a candlelit dinner, a touch — as triggers for…

desire and intimacy the sensuality of the ordinary seasonal renewal as metaphor

99 Lbs

Ann Peebles

Ann Peebles builds a playful boast out of an odd conceit: itemizing her own body and character in pounds, like a recipe or a…

self-affirmation physical confidence sensuality as arithmetic

All Caps

Madvillain

A pure showcase of technical rap virtuosity built almost entirely on internal rhyme chains and boastful non-sequiturs, "All…

braggadocio persona/mythmaking criminal alter-ego

You Are My Sunshine

Johnny Cash

This is Johnny Cash's stripped-down take on the standard "You Are My Sunshine," but the version on Unearthed leaves the tape…

heartbreak and loss irony of the title versus the lyric the mechanics of recording

You Move Me

Cassandra Wilson

A slow-burning soul-jazz meditation on physical intimacy, built almost entirely around a single sensation: being moved, bodily…

sensual intimacy vulnerability through touch memory and desire

Nickel Bags

Digable Planets

This track is less a song than a controlled-substance thesis on funk itself, using the language of street-level drug dealing as…

funk as intoxicant urban sensuality collective identity

Lyrics to Go

A Tribe Called Quest

A pure showcase track in which Q-Tip and Phife Dawg trade verses of boastful wordplay, with the title hook functioning less as a…

braggadocio craft and mastery of rhyme group identity and loyalty

Paid In Full

Eric B.

This is the title track and origin document of hip-hop's most sampled record, a first-person account of a hustler talking…

hustling and survival redemption through legitimate work the music industry as a means of escape

Coffin Nails

MF DOOM

Coffin Nails is an instrumental beat from MF DOOM's Special Herbs series, the long-running set of production-only tracks he…

mortality vice and self-destruction underground hip-hop craft

Mathematics

Mos Def

Mos Def builds a dense, statistics-driven indictment of American racial and economic injustice around the conceit of numbers,…

mass incarceration systemic racism economic inequality

Award Tour

A Tribe Called Quest

A victory-lap travelogue disguised as a posse cut, where the pleasure of touring the world with a hip-hop crew becomes the whole…

hip-hop craft and lineage global travel and touring life authenticity vs. imitation

Excursions

A Tribe Called Quest

Q-Tip opens The Low End Theory with a genealogy lesson, tracing hip-hop back through his father's love of bebop and framing rap…

lineage and continuation of Black music integrity versus phoniness time and history repeating

Vampire Empire

Big Thief

A tense, sensual account of a relationship that runs on contradiction — intimacy that drains as much as it nourishes. The song…

toxic intimacy dependency and addiction desire vs. self-erasure

Can't Get Enough

Bad Company

A straightforward blues-rock strut about wanting sex and not being satisfied, built almost entirely on one repeated declaration…

physical desire insatiability masculine bravado

Move the Crowd

Eric B.

A foundational Golden Age hip-hop track in which Rakim narrates his own creative process in real time, describing how a beat…

craftsmanship and artistic discipline self-mythologizing music as spiritual/intellectual pursuit

As the Rhyme Goes On

Eric B.

A dense, self-referential display of MC craft in which Rakim narrates his own performance as it happens, treating the rhyme…

self-reflexive artistry mic authority and lineage hip-hop as physical/mental control

Hand of Kindness

Richard Thompson

A first-person account of self-sabotage—hanging, shipwrecking, sabotaging one's own vehicle of escape—that keeps circling back…

self-destruction dependence on others redemption/salvation

Righteously

Lucinda Williams

A woman lays out terms for a lover who confuses aggression with masculinity, insisting that tenderness and respect are the real…

masculinity and its performance sexual respect and reciprocity desire coexisting with frustration

Cool Cat

Queen

A slight, groove-driven vignette about attraction to someone effortlessly stylish and self-possessed, filtered through…

infatuation cool detachment vs. desire surface style over substance

You Know My Steez

Gang Starr

This is a straight-up hip-hop statement of purpose: Guru surveys a rap landscape he considers watered down and reasserts Gang…

artistic integrity authenticity vs. commercialism spiritual/moral authority

Doomsday

MF DOOM

The title track of MF DOOM's debut solo album is both a resurrection and a mission statement. Rapping under a new mask after the…

reinvention through persona mortality and legacy underground rap ethics vs. commercial rap

Just Like Water

Lauryn Hill

Performed live and introduced almost as an experiment in vulnerability after the confrontational 'Rebel', this song builds an…

surrender spiritual longing conflated with romantic desire purification

Long Legged Larry

Aesop Rock

A children's-book superhero story about a heroic frog who rescues people (and a poodle) from peril, delivered with a straight…

heroism as ritual childlike wonder absurdism

Oh No

Mos Def

A posse-cut showcase built around G-funk swagger, "Oh No" pairs Mos Def and Pharoahe Monch trading verses over a Nate Dogg hook,…

hustle and self-made success competitive supremacy coastal unity