Anthony Hamilton, Musiq Soulchild, Floetry, Robert Glasper, Common, Bilal, Gotts Street Park, Olive Jones, Benji B, and Questlove

Anthony Hamilton’s music career has its beginnings in the gospel choir at church he used to sing in since he was 10 years old. Having signed with label Uptown Recordsin 1993, Hamilton moved to New York to pursue music. He was a backup singer on tour for artist D’Angelo’s album “Voodoo” and subsequently collaborated with southern rap group Nappy Roots on albums “Watermelon, Chicken, and Grits,” “Wooden Leather,” and “The Humdinger.” The collaboration on single “Po’ Folks” won them a Grammy nomination for “Best Rap/Sung Collaboration” in 2003.

Hamilton signed with label So So Def Imprint by Jermaine Dupri and came out with an independent album called “Comin’ From Where I’m From” in 2003. The album went platinum and features the single “Charlene.” His sophomore album, entitled “Ain’t Nobody Worryin” was released in 2005 with successful single “Can’t Let Go” and the album became certified gold.

Hamilton has collaborated with numerous R&B artists, even snagging a duet for "Buon Natale" with Nat King Cole on his holiday album. In 2007, Hamilton had a cameo role as a singer in the film “American Gangster” and also contributed to the soundtrack. He sang “Freedom” with Elayna Boynton on the soundtrack for Quentin Tarantino film “Django Unchained” in 2012.

Unlike most artists who normally have to wait a while before achieving mainstream success, Musiq didn't waste any time. His début album "Aijuswanaseing" (I just wanna sing) went into the Billboard 200 at number four, whilst his following album, "Juslisen" was a number one hit. Both albums received critical acclaim as they gained platinum status, making Musiq a household name after just a few years.

Following a successful couple of albums, Soulchild was inevitably nominated for many prestigious awards. Two of his leading singles from his early discography "Love" and "Halfcrazy" were short-listed for the Best R&B Vocal Performance in consecutive years, whilst "Juslisen" was nominated for Best R&B Album in 2002. Despite not winning the awards, the nominations clearly gave him the encouragement to make better and more soulful music.

Soulchild went on to release two more number one albums in 2007 and 2008 with "Luvanmusiq" and "OnTheRadio". The former album in particular was well received and was awarded with three Grammy nominations.

Having not released a solo album since 2011, Musiq's most recent project was an album entitled '9ine' with Syleena Johnson, although this failed to have any major chart impact. Musiq is now a artist signed to My Block Records following his recent departure from Atlantic Records.

Musiq is first and foremost a rather unique singer. Although you could vaguely describe his music as either being soul or R&B, he encompasses a wide range of genres that make him stylistically different. He has been known to incorporate elements of funk into his music, whilst he also claims he has a "hip hop swagger". To a modern audience, the easiest way to describe him would be a mixture of the soulful singing of Frank Ocean combined with the vocal range and relaxed paced of The Weeknd.

Strangely enough for a music duo who debuted so young, Marsha Ambrosius and Natalie Stewart first bonded over their shared love of basketball while they were studying together at the BRIT School in Croydon. While Ambrisious was musical, she wasn’t even studying a performing art the way that Stewart was, but the two young women kept in touch even after they left for university. Stewart went on to form a performance poetry group called 3 Plus 1 while Ambrosius began writing songs prolifically, and in 1999, they collaborated on a song called “Fantasize”. The fledgling duo were so proud with their efforts that Ambrosius joined 3 Plus 1 to perform its live debut with them, and soon afterwards Stewart and Ambrosius decided to collaborate more, forming a band together that they called Floetry.

However, the band saw no future for them in the U.K, so in 2000 the duo moved to the United States to perform on the poetry circuit there. They settled down in Philadelphia to begin writing and recording demos together, and in 2002 they signed a record deal with Dreamworks Records to release their debut album “Floetic” in the same year. Right off the bat they were critically acclaimed and found a sizeable following thanks to their live shows, but the duo wouldn’t find commercial success until the 2005 release of their second album “Flo’Ology”. Even though it stormed into the Billboard charts at number 7, it still couldn’t stop the band parting ways the following year. After succesful solo careers for both members, the band got back together at the end of 2014 during a solo concert of Ambrosius’, and have announced a string of tour dates for 2015. For being one of the best songwriting acts of the neo-soul style, Floetry come highly recommended.

Common’s first brush with hip hop stardom came with a group he formed called C.D.R. with two of his childhood friends. One of whom was called Ernest Dion Wilson, who you might know today as legendary producer No I.D, who would go on to produce most of Common’s early solo work, not to mention Jay Z’s “D.O.A: Death Of Auto-Tune”.

The group toured a bunch and played gigs with the N.W.A and Big Daddy Kane but it wasn’t until Common went solo in 1992 that he started really realizing his true potential. Two years later he released the album Resurrection and all bets were off. Up until that point he’d been a name in Chicago alone but after that album dropped his name spread all over the country.

It says a lot that Common’s first feud came from criticising the path that mainstream hip hop was going down. He lamented the decline of conscious or political hip hop in his immortal track “I Used To Love H.E.R” and put at least some of the blame on West Cost Gangsta rap. Los Angeles super-group Westside Connection took issue with this and the two acts traded barbs for a couple of years.

However, one must only look at Common’s subsequent album to see that he practised what he preached. “One Day It’ll All Make Sense” contains guest appearances from Lauryn Hill, De La Soul, Questlove and Q-Tip, and distanced itself from any hint of Gansta rap culture.

It was the album that got him a Major label contract with MCA records and the rest is history. To this day, Common is hailed as the voice of reason and intelligence in mainstream hip hop.

Albums like “Like Water For Chocolate” and “Finding Forever” have balanced strong sales, eloquent rapping and genre experiments with rock, neo-soul and electronica. A true national treasure that we should be grateful to have.

New York City was the stomping ground for Bilal Sayeed Oliver as he started to blossom on the scene. It wasn’t long before Aaron Comess from the Spin Doctors, in an after-school jam session, discovered him. Bilal took the opportunity to record a demo CD with Aaron Comess, which was sent to an A&R at Interscope Records. The label offered him a contract and sent him straight into the studio to record what would later become “1st Born Second”, which was released on July 17th 2001. The album was very well received in the charts with it making it to number 31 on the Billboard 200. To date, it has sold upwards of 319,000 copies.

Bilal would feature on various recordings over the next decade, whilst working on his sophomore release, which would be titled “Love for Sale”. It was an album that was slightly experimental, exploring new genres and showing a natural progression. Unfortunately, Interscope rejected the original idea, saying that it wasn’t commercial enough. If that wasn’t enough, most of the album was leaked online. He considered quitting music, but the album was downloaded upwards of 500,000, so he consequently embarked on a tour of the album. With almost a decade having gone by, Bilal came back with the album “Airtight’s Revenge” released on his own Plug Research Label. It was released on September 6th 2010, and peaked at number 21 on Billboard’s R&B chart.

With his career back on the rise, he toured and re-entered the studio a couple of years later to work on “A Love Surreal”. It was released on February 26th 2013, making it to number 17 in the Independent Albums Chart.