One of the many ways to celebrate Black History Month during this time of the month is through music.
This playlist was enjoyable and challenging to curate because we wanted to pull together a diverse set of love songs from an array of talented black artists – both familiar to most people, and those who are less widely-known but nonetheless belong in the pool of black artists representing worldwide.
It’s impossible to create such a playlist that is a full, comprehensive (in the truest sense) collection of great love songs from black artists. So we put together as representative a collection as we could with a limit of 50 songs.
One of the factors we wanted to address with this playlist was to collect amazing love songs from as many genres as possible and that include all of the decades of recorded music going back to the 1950s.
The playlist covers a wide selection of high-caliber love songs from genres like hip-hop, rap, soul, R&B, jazz, rock, and Motown.
Artists range from Tupac, Marvin Gaye, Lauryn Hill, Bob Marley, Black Eyed Peas, Stevie Wonder, India-Arie, The Supremes, Whitney Houston, Fugees, Mos Def, John Legend, Chance The Rapper, Jay-Z and more.
Not to be forgotten of course are all of the tens of thousands of black producers, composers, songwriters, and musicians behind-the-scenes of so many of the greatest love songs ever made – regardless of who sang them, made them famous or is remembered for.