A Change is Gonna ComeSam Cooke
A Change is Gonna Come
1964 · From Portrait of a Legend
Cooke wrote it after a motel turned him away, and sang it like a hymn he already knew by heart.
★ 9.7
The Songs canon
Sourced and sung.
Every song chosen by hand, with the recording to play it.
Browse all 2,393 songs or filter by genre, subject, artist, and year.
Browse all 2,393 songs or filter by genre, subject, artist, and year.
Strange Fruit
1939
A Bronx schoolteacher's poem about lynching, sung in a single spotlight, still the bravest three minutes on record.
★ 9.6
Fight the Power
1989 · From Fear of a Black Planet
Spike Lee asked for a defiant anthem, and the Bomb Squad answered with layered samples and Branford Marsalis's saxophone.
★ 9.0
Fuck tha PoliceNWA
Fuck tha Police
1988 · From Straight Outta Compton
Structured as a mock trial with Dre presiding, and it drew a warning letter from an FBI assistant director.
★ 8.6
Living for the CItyStevie Wonder
Living for the CIty
1973 · From Innervisions
Wonder played most of it himself, then broke it open with a spoken street scene running past seven minutes.
★ 7.8
Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud
1968 · From Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud
Brown cut it in Los Angeles with thirty-odd young people from Watts and Compton shouting the answer back.
★ 7.7
Bring the Noise
1987 · From It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
First released on the Less Than Zero soundtrack, it opens with Malcolm X and never stops arguing rap's case.
★ 7.6
All Falls Down
2004 · From The College Dropout
Denied the Lauryn Hill sample, West had Syleena Johnson sing the part, and got his first solo top ten.
★ 7.3
Changes (2Pac)
1998
Recorded in 1992, shelved, then remixed after his death over Bruce Hornsby's piano; a posthumous Grammy nomination followed.
★ 7.1
Sound Of Da Police
1993
The siren is KRS-One's own voice, over Showbiz's loop of a Grand Funk Railroad cover cut at D&D.
★ 6.9
New SlavesKanye West
New Slaves
2012 · From Yeezus
Projected onto sixty-six buildings worldwide before anyone had heard it, with Frank Ocean closing over a Hungarian prog sample.
★ 6.5
Black or White
1991 · From Dangerous
Bill Bottrell played the riff everyone credits to Slash, then rapped the verse himself after eight months of searching.
★ 6.5
The Way It Is
1986
Hornsby wrote the words first in a Van Nuys garage; that piano figure later became the spine of Tupac's Changes.
★ 6.2
Where Is The Love?
2003
An uncredited Timberlake sang the hook to protect his solo album, and Britain kept it at number one six weeks.
★ 4.6