It was called Soulsville U.S.A. for a reason. The grit to Motown's polish, Stax Records was soul served up without the frills - both real and real Southern. In the '60s, the label graced us with Otis R …

Like whiskey and wings, Southern soul blues is a tangy mix. Stripped-down, grown-up, it's the sound of the chitlin' circuit - party music for people who still know what to do with a Saturday night. The …

When it came to hip-hop, the City by the Lake was also a City on the Make, as hard-spittin' rhyme hustlers came hurtling out of Chicago for a nationwide hip-hop invasion: "conscious" rapper/activist/ac …

Never mind Cali and N.Y.C. - the Midwest was ground zero for the funk. The Motor City's main musical export may have been Motown, but Detroit also dropped the cosmic slop of Parliament/Funkadeli …

Under the roof of Chicago powerhouse Chess Records, Southern country-blues cats like Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy went straight from Delta pickers to Windy City wonders, harnessing electricity to ignite  …

In the '90s, at the height of hip-hop, R&B true believers began waxing a sound that dug deeper, burned longer and stronger. Neo-soul-stirrers like D'Angelo, Jill Scott, Angie Stone, and Raphael  …

Back in the '50s, sharp young cats in New York, Philly, and D.C. discovered that joining voices on city street corners, or in the readymade echo chambers of tenement stairways and high-school bathrooms …

It took no less than a doctor to G-up P-Funk for a new generation. By the time Dr. Dre stepped out of the O.R. with 1992's The Chronic, he'd done just that, reinventing George Clinton's cosmic c …