August 4, 2020 — The gifted Amber Mark is back, this time with a visual for her cover of “My People … Hold On” by Eddie Kendricks, which he originally released in 1972.

The visual is ever so graceful, featuring Mark and her collaborators in a swaying, interpretive dance.  And as usual, Mark’s smokey vocals are spot on and moving. Enjoy.

By Robb Patryk

(August 3, 2020) The gospel classic “Jesus Saves” is Cedric K-Ci Hailey’s redemption song. Long before he became a star of the chart topping 1990s R&B band Jodeci along with his brother Joel (JoJo) and brothers Donald and Dalvin DeGrate, K-Ci was singing “Jesus Saves.”

(August 3, 2020) We’ve been fans of talented singer and songwriter Conya Doss since Day One of SoulTracks, and our readers have agreed, making her a SoulTracks Readers’ Choice Award winner and a perennial favorite. We last heard from her two years ago with the winning album CLEAR, and we definitely needed a Conya fix in 2020. Well, those prayers are now answered with the brand new single, "Not Trading You."

(August 3, 2020) It has been a year of some frustration for soul music lovers. While some of our favorite artists have shown amazing creativity during the months of quarantine, with new songs and online concerts to break up our musical monotony, there has been a decided lack of big time album releases. Many of the anticipated Spring 2020 albums were postponed, some indefinitely.

(August 2, 2020) The following is a true story. 

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I, who are both from Detroit, were talking about Detroit Gospel singers, and the name Stan Jones aka Stan J came up. We talked about how he was respected around the city and released solid projects over the years including one with Leah Jones from the group Witness. She actually used to skate with him.  We both left the conversation wondering if Stan was still releasing music.

Our newest Song of the Month features a couple of ST faves: one who has been a regular on our pages and one we haven’t written about in a decade.

“When The World Says No” is the powerful new song from award-winning songwriter supreme James Day, who won the SoulTracks Readers’ Choice Award a couple years ago for his Glenn Jones and Regina Belle duet, “Love By Design.” And his new single features one of the great voices we covered in the early days of SoulTracks, but whom we haven’t heard from in awhile, Lorenzo Owens.

(August 1, 2020) For those of us who believe that Philadelphia soul of the 1970s and 80s was one of the greatest music periods ever, Cynthia Biggs El is a type of musical royalty. As a songwriter for many of the great songs of Patti LaBelle, The O’Jays, The Stylistics and The Jones Girls, among others – often as part of the legendary songwriting team with Dexter Wansel – Biggs created classic after classic over a two decade period.

(July 31, 2020) Earlier this Spring, we featured the wonderful new single from Ledisi, "Anything For You." We just loved the old school soulfulness of the song, and she simply killed it vocally. We never for a moment wondered, "How could this be even better?"

(July 30, 2020) For many of us, the all-star benefit song “We Are The World” served as the quintessential pop culture moment of a lifetime. Inspired by the tragic famines in Ethiopia and Sudan, the idea was birthed by Harry Belafonte, materialized through the vision and connections of mega-agent Ken Kragen and superproducer Quincy Jones, and put into words and music by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie.

(July 30, 2020) Earlier this Spring, smooth soul man Kem ended six years away from the studio with the cool new single, “Lie To Me.” It was a welcome return that took him right back to the top of the adult soul charts. And as we await the late August release of his upcoming album Love Always Wins, Kem has given us an even bigger advance treat: a sultry duet with Toni Braxton.