Various Artists - 80's Soul Gold / Various (Rmst) (CD)

All Music Guide

HipO Records, the reissue arm of the major label Universal, often licenses tracks from other record companies to broaden the selections on its compilation albums. But in assembling '80s Soul Gold, an entry in HipO's discountpriced series of doubleCD collections, compilation producer Harry Weinger must have felt that such borrowings were unnecessary. After all, Universal, a company formed by the merger of MCA and PolyGram, already has deep holdings in soul music, starting with the Motown catalog and including MCA itself, which was a big player on the RB scene in the '80s. The 30track album Weinger has compiled cannot be called a greatest soul hits of the decade exactly. It contains only three songs that were among Billboard magazine's 25 biggest RB records of the '80s the Dazz Band's "Let It Whip," Smokey Robinson's "Being with You," and Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me." But it is hardly lacking in hits. Every track but one reached the RB Top Ten (the exception, Billy Preston and Sy...reeta's "With You I'm Born Again," hit the Top Ten of the pop and adult contemporary charts), and 16 more than half went to number one. As such, the album provides a good sense of what RB music sounded like in the decade. That sense is enhanced by Weinger's wise decision to sequence the album in roughly chronological order. The '80s was a transitional decade for RB (as is every decade, come to think of it), and the beats that were moving listeners early on were replaced by other ones as time went on. By the end of the second disc, one can hear hiphop coming on with the cutups and James Brown sampling of Vanessa Williams' "The Right Stuff" and the very '90slike sound of Guy's "I Like," the final track. - William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Read more Less