40 Producer Playlists

Some incredible bodies of work for you to sift through. Plus more tomorrow.

May 19, 2025

An undated photo of Don Davis in the studio from his Discogs page.

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I love listening to albums. I also love playlists. I listen to and follow tons of them, and they’re the place where I discover a lot of great music.

A few years ago I started making producer-focused Twitter threads and accompanying playlists. It was such a rewarding process. In addition to deep-diving catalogs for sample-based/rap producers, I also had the opportunity to explore the production catalogs of producers working in a variety of genres. I learned so much about music just by going through people’s bodies of work and listening to different albums and songs. Asford & Simpson, for example, was just one production team whose work I explored thoroughly.

I also got really into albums like former Dramatics member L.J. Reynolds’ 1982 release Travelin', which contains a slept-on cover of Aretha Franklin’s “Call Me” and other high-quality tracks. The entire b-side is produced by the late Don Davis, a visionary creator and businessman who isn’t talked about enough. The quality of his catalog on its own and the influence of his work on rap/sample-based music is considerable. Peep the absolute scorcher “Say You Will” for a taste of how well-produced his work is.

I put a lot of love into these playlists, and I wanted to share them all in one place. There are 55 total. I can’t fit all of them into one email because of length limits so I’m sharing 40 today. Some are YouTube-only, some have Spotify and YouTube versions. The Spotify versions typically have fewer songs because YouTube has a bunch of hard-to-find and out-of-print stuff that isn’t on other streaming services.

Enjoy. And drop a comment to let me know what you think about my selections.