Isaac Hayes: Black Moses (2LP) [BACK TO BLACK/ENTERPRISE]

Why you'll love it

This remastered 2LP set on 180g vinyl comes with a download voucher. The album topped the Billboard R&B chart, and Hayes' "Never Can Say Goodbye" reached No. 22 on the Hot 100.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Download card included

About the album

Following up Shaft is a tall order, so Isaac Hayes did the sensible thing and made another double album. The title came from Stax executive Dino Woodward's nickname for him, comparing the effect of his music on Black audiences to the leadership of Moses. Hayes, deeply Christian at the time, first found it sacrilegious, then came to embrace it as a symbol of Black pride, and Stax marketing chief Larry Shaw put it on the cover.

Hayes produced and arranged everything, stretching other people's hits into long, lush, slow-burning soul. He turns the Jackson 5's "Never Can Say Goodbye" into a velvet ballad, takes on the Carpenters' "(They Long To Be) Close To You" and Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Fall In Love Again," and digs into Toussaint McCall's "Nothing Takes The Place Of You" and Little Johnny Taylor's "Part Time Love." Between them sit the "Ike's Rap" spoken interludes, Hayes talking low over the band. He named it one of his most personal works.

"Ike's Rap II" found a second life as a sample, most famously in Portishead's Glory Box, with Tricky and Brampton's own Alessia Cara borrowing it too. Four sides of Hayes taking his time is not a hardship; it's the whole point.

Also at Kops: more Isaac Hayes on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Tracklist

Listen

On Enterprise / Back to Black, a reissue of the 1971 album.