Here are four veteran artists who are more relevant than ever in 2017.
Some artists first emerge before their time. Others are so influential that those who follow in their footsteps go on to shape the music scene of the present day.
These four artists have decades of combined experience in the music industry, but thanks to their own influence, their sounds are perfectly suited for the modern soundscape.
1. Shalamar
One of the biggest bands in the world at their peak, Shalamar’s music is a thrilling blend of funk, soul and disco with an 80s sensibility which has never been as fashionable as it is now since, well, the 80s.
The group are the pioneers of the 80s Funk/Pop aesthetic that has proved enduringly popular. In 2017, the influence of their sound can be felt more than ever in chart-topping music.
One of the biggest-selling artists in the world at the moment, Bruno Mars, released 24k Magic this year to critical and commercial success, and that album screams Shalamar (and Prince, and Michael Jackson, and Jam & Lewis, and a bunch of other influences).
Aside from influencing some of the biggest young artists at the moment, Shalamar frequently work up a storm on the strength of their barnstorming live performances, as evidenced by their roof-raising appearance on Strictly Come Dancing in 2016.
We chose Craig David’s return to the spotlight in 2016 as one of the most impressive music comebacks of all time last week. But let’s not forget that Craig David would never have got this far if it wasn’t for a certain Garage DJ-production duo named after one of Dickens’ most well-known characters.
Artful Dodger were behind David’s biggest hit, ‘Re-Rewind (the Crowd Say Bo’ Selecta) in 1999, which appeared on his mega-selling album Born to Do It.
Craig David’s victory at the MOBO Awards this year, and the huge amount of love he gets from the Grime scene in general shows that this kind of UK Garage is one of the most popular sounds around at the moment.
Perhaps 2017 will be the year the Garage legends follow-up their Gold-certified album It’s All About the Stragglers, which was released way back in 2000.
3. Twista
The Chicago rap scene has never been bigger. Artists like Kanye West and Chance the Rapper are breaking streaming and Grammy nomination records, and artists like Noname, Saba, and Jamila Woods released some of the best lesser-known albums of 2016.
It all started, of course, with Twista. As the godfather of the Chicago scene, Twista started drew attention to the city’s Hip-Hop sounds in the early 2000s with tracks like ‘Slow Jamz’ and ‘Overnight Celebrity’.
He has already been acknowledged by this new movement of young Hip-Hop artists with a guest appearance on Saba’s Bucket List Project, in which the younger rapper pays respect to Twista as his forebear.
2016 saw the return of two beloved Hip-Hop groups from the 90s: A Tribe Called Quest (who released the chart-topping We got it from Here… Thank U for your service after the tragic death of founder member Phife Dawg) and De La Soul (who released a long-awaited album backed by Kickstarter).
As the success of these albums proved, this kind of eclectic, vibrant and conscious Hip-Hop never goes out of style, and it slots in perfectly with the 2017 aesthetic. This perfectly sets the stage for the return of another of Hip-Hop’s positive, uplifting, Afrocentric groups – Arrested Development.
With Tribe striking a serious tone on their new work as a reflection of the darkness of the Trump era, Arrested Development are in the perfect position to bring some brightness to the picture.
Book Arrested Development, Twista, Artful Dodger or Shalamar now to see some of the most eternally current artists around.