“…With No One Else in Sight”

The great downside of music’s move toward digitization is the end of liner notes, the record industry’s equivalent of YouTube’s “Related Videos” feature. Microkhan fondly recalls discovering Donny Hathaway via the notes from The Chronic; half the hooks on that album were copped from the great-and-troubled legend of Chicago soul.

Nowadays, alas, you have to be motivated to use The Google when struck by a sample. So it went for years with Smif-n-Wessun’s “We Came Up (Crystal Stair),” which opens a