Meters - Les Meters

The Meters' self-titled debut is the album where funk stopped being a sensation and became a language, four musicians from New Orleans proving how much space you can leave in a groove.

Art Neville had already been recording for more than a decade when this album came out in 1969, and the band he formed around his organ was almost absurdly well-matched: jazz-trained Leo Nocentelli's guitar, George Porter Jr.'s bass, and Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste's drums, doing things over a backbeat that drummers are still trying to replicate. What emerged was a mix of rock 'n' roll, Mardi Gras second-line syncopation and jazz improvisation, a combination that could only come from this city. Every funk record made since owes something to this one, and every hip-hop producer who has ever sampled a break knows this album by its catalog number.

Cissy Strut is the one everyone knows, four musicians agreeing on a riff so spare it feels like an argument won. Sophisticated Cissy is harder and slower, Ease Back builds tension by simply refusing to resolve, and Here Comes the Meter Man announces the entire aesthetic in less than three minutes: nothing is wasted, nothing is rushed.

Mostly instrumental, entirely conversational, and still the best groove lesson ever recorded.