José James is both conductor and conduit. Across 17 years as a singer, songwriter, bandleader, and producer — not to mention co-head of the fearless Rainbow Blonde Records since 2018 — he’s dived deep, over and over again, into genres, eras, scenes, and songbooks, exploring with the verve of a reverent musicologist, and then churning it all up with the confidence of a master practitioner. Blessed with a silken baritone that sounds classic against any backdrop, James first turned heads on his 2008 debut The Dreamer by subtly swirling contemporary jazz with hip-hop instrumentation. As it turned out, mixing those two fluid, frenetic, and frequently time-travelling strains set off a deeply soulful discography that knows no bounds. There was his stunning Blue Note breakthrough No Beginning No End (2013), recorded with fellow genre upsetters like Pino Palladino and Robert Glasper. There was an album of standards, For All We Know (2010); the rock-addled While You Were Sleeping (2014); and that time he ditched the bands and became a modern R&B star for Love in a Time of Madness (2017). He’s also taken a Method approach to covers projects — even matching his wardrobe to his subjects’ worlds — like 2015’s Yesterday I Had the Blues (Billie Holiday), 2018’s Lean On Me (Bill Withers), and 2023’s On & On (Erykah Badu). He’s released dynamic live LPs, a Christmas set, and a four-album series inspired by hooky, funky, disco-dipped songcraft of the ’70s, culminating in his latest, 1978: Revenge of the Dragon (2025). That last one is as immediate, unpredictable, and vibrant as anything James has made, affirming the mantra in the lead single’s title: “They Sleep, We Grind.”