Curtis Mayfield was a revolutionary. A guitar was his weapon of choice; the singer’s gentle voice bristled with righteous dissent. Mayfield’s music lobbied black pride and self-determination, while probing every ripple of systemic racism and urban mismanagement.

As a singer and creative center of the Impressions in the 1960s, Mayfield cut rousing civil rights songs you could build a movement on. Into the 1970s, the message became grimier—his tales from the inner city not always coming pre-packed with a positive outcome. But it was the documentary-precise lyrics matched with scintillating funk orchestration that made the whole thing so thrilling. In an alternate universe, Curtis drops the bleakness to cut more digestible songs about girls and stuff to help launch his star. But in this world, the gentle genius’s mind just didn’t grind like that.

• 1 (Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go
• 2 The Other Side of Town
• 3 The Makings of You
• 4 We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue
• 5 Move On Up
• 6 Miss Black America
• 7 Wild and Free
• 8 Give It Up