No Beginning No End 2

José James spent a decade reshaping jazz with the genre-blurring verve of a crate-digging beat guru, before becoming a solo R&B star. The last couple years he lived in Bill Wither's shoes — recording and touring his legendary songbook for the Lean On Me project. Now, the satin-voiced songwriter's latest is No Beginning No End 2, a sequel to his 2013 album that resurrects the bold eclecticism audiences first fell in love with. After the Bill Withers tour, James recalls: “I wrote a thing on Instagram saying I was thinking about No Beginning No End 2 and people went insane. They wrote thousands of comments about how the first one changed their life. I don't sit around and think 'my work is so important' so that was kinda nice."

Things are a little different this time around. For one, while the prequel was James' Blue Note debut, this is his first set of new music for his own label/collective Rainbow Blonde Records. Secondly, the album is full of collaborators who are auteurs in their own right: Laura Mvula, Aloe Blacc, Ledisi, Lizz Wright, Erik Truffaz, and Hindi Zahra, to name a few. Thirdly, with the backing of a wildly talented band held down by rhythm sections in Los Angeles and Brooklyn (befitting Rainbow Blonde's bicoastal status), the songs are warmer and more defined than ever.