Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff gave The Intruders "Cowboys to Girls" in Philadelphia in 1968, a song about the moment childhood games give way to grown-up love. Aaron Frazer says he has wanted to write in that tradition for years, and last Tuesday (Oct 6) he released his attempt, a single called "Same Old Game." "I love childhood imagery in soul music," he wrote in the note that came with it, where he compared a long crush to a game of tag that never quite ends.

The song opens Corners, a six-track EP that Dead Oceans will release on Oct 30, and it reaches wax on Dec 4 as a Colemine 45. Two albums landed ahead of it on Friday, from a Rochester lawyer turned singer and a Houston rapper who went back to Nigerian highlife. Tinie Tempah's first album since 2017 follows this week.

The rest of the calendar belongs to people building on their own terms. Sampa the Great is reclaiming the 1970s Zambian rock band her uncle helped found, and Myles Sanko is touring 11 countries behind an album on his own label. Colemine, meanwhile, is pressing a compilation of songs that are not on any streaming service.

Aaron Frazer Takes Falsetto to Every Corner of Los Angeles

Frazer made his name as the drummer and co-lead singer of Durand Jones & The Indications, the Indiana soul band that broke wider with his falsetto lead on "Is It Any Wonder?" in 2017. His solo run started with Introducing... in 2021 and continued with Into the Blue in 2024, and the Baltimore-raised singer has since settled in Los Angeles.

Corners takes its title from geography, since the sessions had him driving between studios in South Central, Riverside, Pasadena and Lincoln Heights. His collaborators included Kelly Finnigan, Gabe Roth, Mayer Hawthorne, Tommy Brenneck, Blake Rhein, Cold Diamond & Mink and producer Anthony Masino. Frazer has described the EP as music made with no tour to time it around. Its six songs include "It's A Shame" and "Paint The Picture," the two singles that came before "Same Old Game."

The 45 tells you more about the record than the press notes do. Colemine's listing for CLMN-271 credits Brenneck with the guitar that opens "Same Old Game" and puts "Let Your Love Grow" on the flip, with harpsichord laid over hard drums. The opaque red pressing is capped at 1,000 copies, and a black pressing ships the same day.

Already Out: Danielle Ponder and Tobe Nwigwe

Two records on this calendar arrived Friday (Oct 9), and both ran in our Oct 9 New Music Friday. Ponder's Everything Has Changed is her second album and her first for Dead Oceans, released in partnership with Phoebe Bridgers. She practiced criminal justice law in Rochester until 2021, when she left the profession at 39 to sing full time, and she signed her first record deal the following year.

The 14 tracks open with "Seasons," close with "Laurel Canyon" and carry "Power," a lead single addressed to the Black diaspora. Her debut, Some of Us Are Brave, had already put one of her songs into Apple's iPhone 16 Pro campaign, and Ponder now lives in Atlanta.

Nwigwe's THE BRIDGE spent the summer carrying an Aug 21 date before landing the same Friday. Its 12 tracks open with "CHINEKE," a Busta Rhymes feature, and the guest list splits along the album's two cities. The Cavemen, Adekunle Gold, Flavour, Odumodublvck and FirstKlaz carry the Lagos side, Scarface and Paul Wall represent Houston, and Sia, Labrinth, Jacob Banks and Malice also appear.

Nwigwe grew up in Alief, on the southwest side of Houston, in an Igbo household where highlife was the sound in the house. He told WYSO that highlife is "the bedrock of Afro beats," and the plan was to lay the Houston sounds he grew up hearing on top of it. Tobe Nwigwe LLC released the album with distribution from Human Re Sources, and the Grammy-nominated rapper has still never signed to a major label.

Tinie Tempah Ends a Nine-Year Wait With The Night's Not Dead

The South London rapper has charted 22 Top 40 singles in the UK since "Pass Out" broke him in 2010, and seven of them reached No. 1. His last album, Youth, peaked at No. 9 in 2017, according to the Official Charts Company, and he went quiet on full-length work after that.

The Night's Not Dead lands Friday (Oct 16) as his fourth studio album, 17 tracks on Imhotep Records under exclusive license to Believe. He assembled it from three EPs titled 9PM, 12AM and 3AM, which follow one night from getting ready to the dancefloor to the search for an afterparty. "Heaven or Hell" featuring Reggie led the first EP, and Skepsis, Kah-Lo and Tropkillaz are among the collaborators.

Tinie had stepped back to run his publishing business, and the record started after his longtime South London studio was slated for residential redevelopment. In the shared space he moved into, he told Decoded Magazine, "I was hearing amazing music coming through all the walls." Artist David King Reuben made the album's artwork, which W1 Curates is showing this month on the screens that wrap the FLANNELS building on Oxford Street.

American coverage of the rollout has been close to nonexistent, which has been the pattern for most of his catalog. The three EPs mean that by release day, much of the album has already been out for weeks on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Charities Cut Their Second Colemine 45 at Penrose

The Charities are a six-piece sweet soul band from California, and "Movin' On" b/w "I'm Still Learning How" is their second 45 for Colemine, due Oct 23 as CLMN-274. Masino, whose credits run from Bruno Mars to Thee Sacred Souls, wrote the A-side, and the band tracked and mixed it at Penrose Recorders in Riverside.

Riverside is also one of the four neighborhoods Frazer named for the Corners sessions, and Masino worked on both records. Colemine has been leaning on that Southern California network for a while, and last month it released Love Stories from Thee Sinseers, the East Los Angeles band fronted by Joey Quiñones.

The B-side leans on 1960s two-part harmony, the vocal setup sweet soul groups have borrowed from Philadelphia and Chicago for decades. A grey pressing is limited to 1,000 copies on the label's pre-order page, with black vinyl and digital editions due the same day.

Sampa the Great Goes Home to WITCH on Nu Zamrock

While reconnecting with relatives in Zambia, Sampa learned that her uncle, George Kunda, known as Groovy Joe, was a founding member of WITCH, the psychedelic band at the center of the 1970s Zamrock movement. That discovery became the organizing idea for her third album, Nu Zamrock, out Oct 30 on Loma Vista Recordings.

"It is the future remembering where it came from," she said in the album's announcement, and the 16-track sequence sets hip-hop, poetry and soul against Zamrock's mix of rock, funk and African rhythm. "Can't Hold Us," with Mwanjé, ran in EA's FC26 and an Arsenal and Adidas campaign, and Sia appears on "Supernova." The newest single, "Location", was produced by Cadenza.

Sampa was born in Zambia, raised in Botswana and broke through in Australia, where The Return won the 2019 Australian Music Prize and made her the first artist to win it twice. She plays two shows at the new Blue Note in London on Wednesday, Nov 4, an early set and a late one, and has no US dates announced.

Myles Sanko Takes I See My Light Across Europe

Sanko's British dates, which ran from Newcastle through the Jazz Cafe in Camden to Norwich, ended Sunday (Oct 11). The European run starts Wednesday (Oct 14) in Utrecht and moves through Ghent, Copenhagen, Oslo, Berlin and Madrid before Paris on Nov 13. His full calendar runs to Vienna's Musikverein on Feb 23.

The tour supports I See My Light, his seventh studio album, which came out Sept 11 on 213 Music. He self-released his 2013 debut, Born In Black & White, on the same label, and he took his releases back there for Let It Unfold after licensing four records to Légère Recordings in Hamburg. Sanko was born in Accra in 1980 and grew up in Tema before moving to Cambridge in the 1990s, where he started out singing and rapping alongside nightclub DJs.

He has no American label and no American dates on this run, and the routing follows his audience. Britain has long sustained soul singers the US industry passes over, a pattern HitsCulture traced last month when Houston's Patrice Isley found her label in the UK. Sanko built his version from a Ghanaian childhood and a British base, with the masters in his own name.

Colemine's Brighter Days Ahead Vol. 2 Previews 2027 on Vinyl Only

The first Brighter Days Ahead grew out of March 2020, when Colemine's release schedule stopped and the Loveland, Ohio label put out a new digital single every Thursday night. Those songs became a 2LP set in 2021, and owner Terry Cole has spent the years since looking for a way to make the name permanent.

Volume 2 runs the opposite direction. Its 12 tracks preview the label's 2027 roster, several are rough mixes, some titles are not final and none of them are available digitally. "This piece of plastic you hold in your hands is the only way to hear it," Cole wrote in the liner notes on the pre-order page.

Say She She contribute "Not Ready For Love," Mae Powell sings "Love You In The Morning" and the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio check in with "Buttered Popcorn." Parlor Greens cover "La-La Means I Love You," which Thom Bell produced for the Delfonics in Philadelphia the same year The Intruders cut "Cowboys to Girls." The LP ships Nov 27, the Friday after Thanksgiving, on blue vinyl limited to 2,000 copies.