Bobby Womack: 10 Essential Tracks

The most transcendent Blaxploitation anthem, devoid of headstrong posturing, just wide-screen regret and aspiration and longing and elegantly urgent bass lines, timeless croon, bone-chilling street life, and a message to every stricken city in the world, transmitted from Harlem, "the capital of every ghetto town." Although Womack does yell against drugs (advice he had trouble taking himself), the vision is descriptive not prescriptive. And when he sings, "The family on the other side of town/Would catch hell without a ghetto around," shit gets really real.