Daniel Caesar has emerged as a much-beloved voice in music over the last decade thanks to a string of stripped down, soulful indie RB gems—including his most recent album, Son of Spergy, a powerful rumination on faith and family featuring collaborations with Sampha, Bon Iver, and Devonté Hynes. “[Creating Son of Spergy] was healing. It brought me closer to my family. We had conversations and revelations and honestly, I haven’t been this pleased with anything I’ve made since my first album,” he says. “I’m very, very proud of it and I’m very glad that I chose to follow this path. This is a godless industry—everywhere you turn, somebody’s trying to exploit you, take advantage of you, whatever. I came to this point where I had to have faith or else I’ll sit and cower away in a corner forever.” To curate a playlist for our “Legacy” issue, he looked back at the songs that have left an indelible mark, from Frank Ocean’s “Self Control” (“That [final] section always made me feel like I could punch a hole through a wall”), and Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo’s “Nothing Even Matters” (“A man and a woman coming together, singing to each other about love will never get old”), to gospel singer Richard Smallwood’s magnum opus “Total Praise (With Vision)” (“The most majestic thing I’ve ever heard”). It also includes tracks by Coldplay and Portishead, bands he discovered while growing up in Oshawa, Canada. “Man, so much of my teen years was a lot of alternative and indie rock, but then also the classic British invasion type stuff as well. There was Frank Ocean—when Channel Orange came out that’s all anyone was listening to. A$AP Rocky was the coolest shit on earth at the time,” the musician recalls. “Me and my friends, our whole thing was [about being] eclectic. We listened to anything and everything, but we were still developing our taste.” For Caesar, it’s the visceral way we respond to music that makes it so powerful. “I used to question the concept of God when I was younger. But then I would go to church and the music was playing and I’d get goose pimples,” he says. “All of these songs give me that same feeling.” Listen to Daniel Caesar’s playlist, exclusively on Apple Music.
Leave a Reply