I've mainly always been into dance/electronic music but as much as I love it, I've began yearning for something else for whenever I feel I want a little break from dance. It can be from any year, (a mixture of old and recent stuff would be great) and I'm also open to both male and female artists/bands.

Here's the genres of music I mainly want recommendations for:

Rock - I never really had the chance to get into rock growing up, since my mother always hated it.

Hip Hop/Rap - I've always found myself liking some hip hop when it's actually decent but I find this pretty rare. Would love some quality hiphop/rap without all the "Niggas, hoes, guns and bitches" type stuff that we get from mainstream rappers these days.

Reggae - I've always really liked reggae when I have heard it but I've never known where and how to find music within this genre.

R&B/Soul - Some REAL decent stuff, instead of Chris brown/Ne-Yo/Rihanna.

Pop - By pop, I mean songs from pop albums that were actually pretty good but were never released as singles and aren't that well known.

and just ANYTHING really, any song or any other genre YOU think is good, I will at least give it a listen, even if i don't end up liking it.

Thank you

What about Gorillaz, they seem to meld in almost all the genres listed.

Stylo with the late great Bobby Womack.

Go here for what I think couldn't be a more soulful song: "Lets Just Let Go" from my most favorite singer James Otto.

God bless you and him always!!!

Holly

Try some Of Grace Jones later albums e.g, Warm Leatherette, Nightclubbing ect, they have some excellent reggae stuff on there.

If you're thinking of rock, the obvious place to start is Led Zeppelin. The practically wrote the book when it comes to rock music and have never been bettered. The best place to start is probably Led Zeppelin 4, but any of the first 4 albums, plus Physical Grafitti are brilliant.

If you're after rap without all of the Gangsta nonsense check out 3 Feet High and Rising by De La Soul or 3 Years, 5 months, 2 days in the Life Of...by Arrested Development.

For Rock, The Rolling Stones or The Faces.

Reggae means Legend by Bob Marley.

Prince - for just about a bit of everything, from 1982 - 1988

Dirty Mind, Controversey, 1999, Purple Rain, Around The World In A Day, Parade, Sign O The Times, Black Album & Lovesexy.

Later Works

Come, The Gold Experience, Symbol Album, The Rainbow Children, 3121, Lotusflower & Art Official Age.

Parallel Lines or Plastic Letters - Blondie
Park Life - Blur
Night Nurse - Gregory Isaacs
Hunky Dory - David Bowie
Gish - Smashing Pumpkins

sounds like some pretty good recommendations so far and I will be sure to check them all out thanks

New stuff worth listening to:

Shaun Escoffery - In The Red Room. Best soul album of the year, bar none.

Sean McCabe - It's Time. Soulful house with class. Dance music that will make you smile, dance and never want to listen to badly produced EDM ever again.

Soul Togetherness 2014 - Compilation of all that's been great in soul and modern day dance floor classics.

Smoove and Turrell - Broken Toys. Grown up UK soul at it's finest.

Lack Of Afro - Music For Adverts. Eclectic UK soul, dance, funk

There are some great album tracks on The Saturdays Chasing Lights album that were never singles such as Lies, Work, Chasing Lights. In fact most of their albums have non-single tracks that are better than their singles.

Don't Let Me Stop You from Kelly Clarkson's All I Ever Wanted album is brilliant and should have been a single.

If you like quirky pop music then how about listening to Stefy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq3wYJzE8T8

or The Bird and the Bee (by Greg Kurstin the guy who gave Lily Allen/Ellie Goulding their No. 1's),

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HRMLLXzKlw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWYoIoqJURA

Donkeyboy (especially Caught In a Life album)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr_zSyBB8AU

DRI Smoke Rings album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z6TL1TfkK8

If you like luscious dream-pop then try Say Lou Lou

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEAu0DooDOc

Dead Heat from Diana Vickers second album is brilliant and also should have been a single.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Zs1IutSZE

Goldroom Fifteen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFtpvdTUWYc

If you like really saccharine pop then there's Bonnie McKee American Girl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uh6VZF0R5U

Or you like Acoustic Pop then there's loads from Tina Dico

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcnHAC0uZa0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4td-zWwzZLI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwPJB4rSTn4

Swiss Lips Something In The Water

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_tIYmfemOk

Catchy dance pop like AME Play The Game Boy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAbCYkE2QMM

Aly & AJ's Insomniatic album is a brilliant guitar pop album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SL-abDHcQE

Fauxliage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6A-KH7m2sg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jmqq9yO0fY

Delerium - Stopwatch Hearts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlYly9FTlHQ

Conjure One Extraordinary Ways

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11xt6Fu7xFM

I think I'll stop now.

I think Curtis Mayfield is very good. Also, Rokysopp.

Be sure to get something by Nick Drake. One of the compilations is probably the best way in.

It's very laudable that you're looking for something outside of current mainstream pop. I think too much of it is formulaic and repetitive. You've got a huge task on your hands, though - nigh on 60 years of modern pop / rock music to cover and an awful lot of different musical types.

However, within the genres you listed I'll pick out a few artists. In most cases it's worth searching out all these artists' "Best Of" or "Greatest Hits" albums to get a feel of their career as a whole rather than individual albums. You can progress from there if you like what you hear.

Rock - this comes in many forms from soft to hard to unlistenable. Good entry points would be Queen for accessible pop-orientated rock and for harder rock Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and AC/DC.

Hip Hop/Rap - I'm not a fan of modern hip-hop because there's a lot of that "n*gga-ho-b*tch" rubbish going on. Old school is best - from its roots in Grandmaster Flash to the likes of Public Enemy (whose two seminal albums "Fear of a Black Planet" and "It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back" are essential listening)

Reggae - Bob Marley is the obvious choice. I'm not a fan so I don't really have any other recommendations here

R&B/Soul - Best to go way back for the good stuff - Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, James Brown, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, Smokey Robinson, Isaac Hayes

Pop - Well that's just about everything from Abba to the Zutons (alphabetically speaking!) Probably worthwhile doing a Google search for the top 100 artists of all time or something similar and seeing what takes your fancy.

Incidentally there's a good book called "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die" with recommendations of good stuff from the past six decades. Obviously 1001 albums is a lot to trawl through but it's a good starting point to check out a few names you recognise and go on from there.

Stuff I've been listening to lately:

Wild Nothing - Shadow

Múm - Green Grass of Tunnel

Beach House - Myth

Balmorhea - Days

One of the ways I've discovered new music is to look into the bands and artist I like already, and discover their influences, then look into those bands and artist to see if I like their music, and that of other bands/artists they may have inspired. I've discovered some amazing music this way that I probably wouldn't have from just recommendations, and it gives you a real appreciation of how some of these bands ended up producing the music they do, and how much has already been done, e.g. as a fan of Pop Will Eat Itself, I looked into their influences, an obvious one being Sigue Sigue Sputnik as they covered Love Missile F1-11, and through looking into them discovered Suicide, and that they were doing similar things way before them. Even with dance music, there'll be a whole string of influences through many of the genres the OP mentioned.

Hip-hop with a live band - The Roots

Soul/r'n'b - Mayer Hawthorne

Gavin Degraw - Pop/rock/acoustic type music
Robyn - Pop, dance, electronic type music.

~David Bowie and Nick Cave, such brilliant story tellers

Reggae, 70s is the best, 2 Sevens Clash is the last classic album IMO

Burning Spear, Heptones, Mighty Diamonds, U-Roy, Culture, Abyssians, Marcia Griffiths, Dr Alimantado, Big Youth, Lee Scratch Perry, Joe Higgs, Augustos Pablo - in no particula order
try this best albums list for suggestions, I have all the 70s ones and there isn't a bad one even if I might prefer other albums by the same artist.
http://www.mojo4music.com/15098/50-g...reggae-albums/

goes away to hunt out King Tubby meets Rockers uptown

http://youtu.be/jo1cyl0QbWo

I'd recommend Caro Emerald.

It's down to being subjective as far as taste is concerned. So it's not what other people like and think is good. It's what you prefer to listen to is what matters.

The 60s and 70s were probably the most inspiring periods for most of the genres you listed.
Just to take one genre - R&B/Soul, you could do a lot worse than listen to people like Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin or Sam Cooke. They are all classic 60s soul artists who broke the mould but that was the decade for quality soul.

Moving right away from soul I'd give someone like Joni Mitchell, arguably the greatest female singer songwriter since the war. She's made some classic albums and written countless great songs. She's listed in US music mag Rolling Stone's 100 greatest artists of all time.

I know a lot about 80's soul, jazz funk, R&B.

I could be here all day posting YouTube links.

Groups such as Change, SOS Band, 52nd Street, Kleeer, Total Contrast, Slave, The System, Loose Ends etc. are good bets.

I have posted various stuff in this thread:
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...721&highlight=

You can look at the discograpy in the following links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_%28band%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_S.O.S._Band
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/52nd_Street_%28band%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleeer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Contrast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_%28band%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_System_%28band%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Ends_%28band%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Jam_and_Terry_Lewis

A few examples in no particular order.

Stepping Out- Slave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C27S9ZZlh4k

I Can't Take Losing You - The System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAULFoIeq6Q

X-Periment - The System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79eQUgXbHvA

Kleeer - Seeekret (Funk 1985)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ennZBlDDIzM

Total Contrast - Jody
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj5KXgVPo-A

Change Change Of Heart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co0vdyvioL8

WEEKEND GIRL (Original Full-Length Album Version) - SOS Band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BvuSzxcE5o

52nd Street - Tell Me (Extended Vers.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ck25PGjlLc

LOOSE ENDS HANGIN ON A STRING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8FYy5YfK7k

We are only scratching the surface here.

Others.
Alexander O'Neil
Cherrelle
Cheryl Lynn
Howard Johnson
Stephanie Mills
George Benson
Imagination
Jeff Lorber
Janet Jackson
Nona Hendryx
Full Circle/First Circle

A rare one.

Tia Monae (Sabrina Johnston) - Don't Keep Me Waiting (Special Club Version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LednX4txf8E

Early house music.

Nitro Deluxe
Kenny Jammin' Jason and Fast Eddie Smith

Nitro Deluxe - This Brutal House (UK Version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnqJ7ojAPro

Kenny Jammin Jason With Fast Eddy Smith - Can U Dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZxGElvaea0

You might also want to check out Kraftwerk (one of the main pioneers of electronic music).

They were using vocoder and voice recognition/computer speech type systems before most of us DS posters were born, way back in the 70's/early 80's. In those days of course very few people had a PC, the internet (as we know it) hadn't been invented, no mobile phones or other such devices etc. and these guys were doing all this.

Kraftwerk - Computer Love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtWTUt2RZh0


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk

Another recommendation would be Soul II Soul.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_II_Soul

Soul II Soul - In The Heat Of The Night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hviDVw5lZKs

Soul II Soul - Love Enuff (Album Mix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMpl35k5xFg

If you want to get into rock music, Alternative rock (not hard rock) is always good I recommend Red Hot Chili Peppers who are quite funky too. There's the greatest hits cd but I really enjoy listening to the albums and think By The Way,Californication or Blood Sugar Sex Magik are worth trying out.

^If you want something rock-y but not funky then try Radiohead,they have some great songs.