His ambitious 1974 breakthrough as leader, superbly mixing funk and jazz improvisation on a major-label recording budget, with strong political and spiritual themes, even a nod to the Duke.

‘The sublime Time Capsule remains Weldon Irvine’s most fully realized and influential recording… unerringly soulful, spiritual, and funky. Assembled as a kind of musical scrapbook documenting the thought patterns and belief systems of the early ‘70s, it nevertheless boasts a surprising vitality and timelessness thanks to luminous funk grooves that anticipate the latter-day emergence of acid jazz. Irvine also rhymes over several tracks, further cementing his influence on successive generations of hip-hop. A profoundly righteous spirituality winds through all eight performances… deftly balancing between beatitude and bitterness. For fans of funk, soul and jazz, it doesn’t get much better than this 1973 classic’ (Jason Ankeny, AMG).

All three stone classic albums.

Terrific southern soul from the guy who wrote a string of killers as staff at Goldwax, and for Candi Staton and Clarence Carter, at Fame. The Only Way Is Up is his song; and The Osmonds’ One Bad Apple.

A songwriting mainstay of FAME from 1968 to 1972 — monsters like Candi’s Evidence — George was also a very fine singer, unmannered, hurt, open. The first of several volumes.

The 1970 LP — a neglected, heavy-soul classic — with eleven extras, unmissable deep soul like The Love Of My Man, funk like Tighten Up. Watch out, the title-track and come-again Weepers are pretty devastating.

A gospelized, autobiographical collage of raps, beats, modern jazz and songs, featuring the in-demand drummer alongside an expansive roster of collaborators bringing together artists from his hometown of Houston (vocalists Corey King, Lisa E. Harris, Fat Tony, Jawwaad Taylor), those he became close to over several years living in LA (Sam Gendel, Zeroh, Mic Holden, Josh Johnson, fellow International Anthem artist Carlos Niño), and other creative partners from his life-long journey in sound (Chassol, Svet, Kenneth Whalum).
‘Rooted in his faith, Jamire opens the album with Hands Up, a devotional hymn cut against the stark reality of the modern world that sounds like an apocalyptic middle-grounding of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly and Merry Clayton’s Gimme Shelter. Whether in the rousing, spiritual Just Hold On or the fluid verses of Fat Tony on Safe Travels, the music exists in the tension between higher realms and social realities — what Jamire calls the “duality of a personal thing and what I’m seeing in my community, in the Black community, as a Black man.” ‘

Two fabled, previously unreleased soundtracks — hallucinogenic orchestral music for Patrick Chaput, and a waltzing, rhythmic onslaught for Robert Benayoun — complete with an extensive booklet of essays, interviews, secrets and rare images from both films.