Soulquarians Night
48 Record Bar
48 S 2nd St.
Philadelphia
April 5, 2026
Curated by DJ and filmmaker Courtnee Owens, Soulquarians Night is a semi-regular listening and live music event hosted at 48 Record Bar in Old City. The event is named in homage to the Soulquarians, a loose musical collective whose founding members included Questlove, D’Angelo, Roots keyboardist James Poyser, and the late rapper/producer J Dilla. The Soulquarians crew coalesced around the creative partnership of Questlove and D’Angelo when the two began working together in 1996 at Electric Ladyland, the famed New York Studio built by the late guitar genius, Jimi Hendrix. As the duo spent years at Electric Ladyland crafting D’Angelo’s 2000 classic Voodoo, more members joined, and the music they produced reshaped the sound of contemporary rap and R&B. Alongside Voodoo, classic albums like The Roots’ Things Fall Apart (1999), Common’s Like Water For Chocolate, Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun (2000) bore the Soulquarians’ signature of chilled, funky grooves and soulful vocals.
Selecting from his choice collection of Neo Soul, Hip-Hop, and Funk, Owens mans the turntables, dropping gems like Musiq Soulchild’s “Just Friends (Sunny)” and Erykah Badu’s “Didn’t Cha Know." The cocktails flowed, and the music wafted through 48’s lovely sound system before we were treated to a live set from flautist/saxophonist Yesseh Ali and drummer/producer Steve Mickie. Ali and McKie opened with a beautiful cover of Erykah Badu’s "Other Side of the Game" that prompted some call-and-response. In between the vocals and sax solo, Ali beckoned the small crowd to sing the beloved Badu classic. Rather than simply play each song with a definitive beginning and end, Ali and McKie performed more like a live DJ set, playing well-known songs next to their sampled source material. A Tribe Called Quest’s “Check The Rhime” transitioned smoothly into Minnie Riperton’s “Baby, This Love I Have,” while a cover of The Dramatics’ gorgeous ballad “Ocean of Thoughts and Dreams” seamlessly morphed into the song that sampled it, Destiny Child’s “Girl,” before Ali added lyrics from D’Angelo’s “Lady” and the crowd sang along to the intergender musical exchange. Ali — visibly delighted by the moments where the songs, samples, and references came together smoothly — exclaimed: “I’m having fun with these mashups!”
Although 48 Record Bar is about an hour and 40 minutes South of Electric Ladyland, Old City is a fitting spot for a tribute to the Soulquarians and the Neo-Soul sound that they pioneered. Located on 2nd Street, the bar is just around the corner from the other epicenter of 2000s Neo-Soul, the now-defunct Five Spot club at 5 S. Bank Street. From 2000 until 2005, the Five Spot hosted a women-led open mic night called The Black Lily. In that short five-year span, the Black Lily stage was graced by a who's who of R&B and Hip-Hop stars like Jill Scott, Kindred The Family Soul, and a teenage Jazmine Sullivan. In the winter of 2007, a four-alarm fire ended the Five Spot permanently, but Owens’ Soulquarians Night has been keeping the spirit of Neo Soul alive in Old City.
