Los Angeles, since 2011
Soulection. The Sound of Tomorrow.
Fifteen years of our radio show, our label, our shows and the family that grew around them. We are a genre, a community and an artist collective, and Sunday is still ours.
Our station
Fifteen yearsof Sundays.
We put Soulection Radio on the air on January 24, 2011, out of a college station in Long Beach. Four years later Apple put it on Beats 1 and picked us as one of the station's tastemakers, in the group with Drake, Pharrell and Dr. Dre. Seven hundred and forty three episodes on, Joe Kay still hosts it and we are still there every Sunday, on Apple Music.
The show is the source everything else we do runs from. On takeovers we hand the controls to our family and to guests like Swizz Beatz, and we archive every episode with a full tracklist and timestamps, so a record you caught at minute 44 stays findable forever.
Show #742, the ESTA. takeover
On air
R&B, funk and hip hop, live from Annex House LA, on our own channel.
The takeovers
The channelShow #700, the milestone
Joe Kay. Up tempo, edits and soul
Show #737, an Aaliyah tribute
Sahar Habibi, live from Apple Music Studio LA
Show #717, Swizz Beatz takeover
Part two of the two week residency
Show #727, Sango takeover
Live from Shinola Hotel
Who takes the controls
The voices on our show
Our host, and the selectors we hand the show to. Each one on their own account, so you can hear where an episode came from.
Took the controls for show #742 out of Annex House LA, and put Intersections out on our label.
Hosted show #737, the Aaliyah tribute, live from Apple Music Studio LA.
On our label out of Seattle, on the controls for show #727, and on the London bill for the fifteenth.
Came in as a guest and took the show for a two week residency.
Beats 1, July 4, 2015
The names we were picked with
Apple picked us as one of the tastemakers for Beats 1, in the group The FADER named these three in. These are their accounts, not ours: it is the room we were put in.
One of the artists behind Beats 1, and one of the names The FADER put us alongside on it.
Another of the names The FADER put us alongside when Beats 1 took our show.
The third of the names The FADER put us alongside in that Beats 1 group.
The run
Since 2011
A college station, a Beats 1 pick, a nine hour five hundredth episode, seven hundred, and two open airs for the fifteenth. Every row can be checked in one tap.
- 2007IllvibesJoe Kay starts the Illvibes podcast, the seed we grow out of four years later.
- 2011First broadcastJanuary 24: our first Soulection Radio show airs on KBeach Radio at Cal State Long Beach. Joe Kay, Andre Power and Guillaume Bonte found us in Los Angeles the same year.
- 2013CoachellaTwo years in, we play Coachella. The beat scene we championed lands on the biggest festival lawn in America.
- 2015Beats 1July 4: our first Soulection Radio show airs on Apple's Beats 1. We are one of the tastemakers Apple picks for the station, in the group with Drake, Pharrell and Dr. Dre. The FADER covers it the day before.
- 2021Episode 500April 11: our 500th episode airs as a nine hour live broadcast, marking ten years. VICE's anniversary headline calls us still the standard for music discovery.
- 2026Episode 700We cross seven hundred episodes with a Joe Kay set of up tempo, edits and soul, and strike the Soulection 700 collection to mark the number.
- 2026Soulection 15: LondonAugust 16, Magazine London: our fifteenth anniversary show, open air, with Joe Kay, Leon Thomas, DJ Tunez, Wayne Wonder, Sasha Keable, Sango and D Double E on the bill.
- 2026Soulection 15: Los AngelesOctober 3, Reframe Studios, outdoors: the anniversary comes home. The Soulection Experience, fifteen years in the city that made us.
Los Angeles, 2011
The ones who started it
We began as three people and a college radio slot in Long Beach. Two of us are here on our own accounts, and the third is in the ledger above.
Our founder, and the voice hosting the show since the first broadcast in 2011.
One of the three who started us in Los Angeles in 2011.
On the record
Our label
Records thatfound you first.
We have run our label independent since 2011, seventy eight records deep, from the White Label beat series to full albums. The catalog reads the way the show sounds: soul first, futures early.
Monte Booker and Smino cut Kolors through us, one of the records VICE calls a testament to our ear for talent. The names that came through: Sango, GoldLink, Sam Gellaitry, Tom Misch, IAMNOBODI.
The artists on our records
Who we pressed
Four of the names on the releases above, each on the account that is actually theirs. Joe Kay, ESTA., Monte Booker and Smino are on theirs elsewhere on this page.
Brown Eyed Girl, cut with Ernie Isley, is on our label.
Two generations of Isleys on one of our records, Brown Eyed Girl.
Intersections, cut with ESTA., is on our label.
White Label 025, twenty five deep into our beat series.
The catalog, since 2011
Who came through it
Kolors came out through us. The rest of these are the producers and singers our catalog carried while the rest of the world was still catching up.
Kolors, the record he cut with Smino, came out through us.
The other half of Kolors, the record we put out with Monte Booker.
Came up through our catalog, and VICE puts him on the list our platform played first.
Label alumni out of Scotland, from the years our catalog was finding producers first.
Label alumni out of London, from that same run of records.
Label alumni, from the run of producers our catalog carried.
Came through the platform
Names the published record ties to our platform: early plays per VICE, label alumni per the encyclopedia entry, takeovers per our own channel. We confirm our own roster, and nothing here claims membership for anybody.
The same names, live
See them for yourself
Five of the names above are right here on their own accounts. The other eleven are on theirs further up this page, under the run, the records and the shows that carry them.
VICE puts him on the list of artists our platform played early.
On VICE's list of the artists our platform played early.
VICE names him among the artists our platform played early.
VICE names him among the artists we played early, and on October 3 he plays a Soulection Experience for the first time.
On VICE's list of the artists our platform played early.
The archive
Press play here
One thousand and twenty one tracks deep on our own SoundCloud, where the archive began.
Soulection on SoundCloud
1,021 tracks
Soulection on Spotify
The artist page
Soulection 15
Fifteen years,two open airs.
Our anniversary run: one night in London already on the record, one night in Los Angeles on the calendar. Two open air shows, in our own billing.
Both dates are as our own pages publish them. Sponsorship for the anniversary run goes to sahar@soulection.com.
Magazine London, Aug 16
The bill we booked
Five of the seven names on that London bill, on their own accounts. Joe Kay and Sango are on theirs further up this page.
On our fifteenth anniversary stage at Magazine London.
On the bill we booked for Soulection 15 in London.
On the London bill for the fifteenth, pulling the night back into the classics.
On the Magazine London stage for our fifteenth.
On the London bill for our fifteenth.
Supply
WEAR THE FREQUENCY.
Soulection Supply is our own storefront: the Adidem Asterisks collaboration, the Soulection 700 collection we struck for the episode milestone, and a radio throw blanket for the Sunday ritual. Every order runs through our store.
Straight from the account
See it for yourself
The anniversary run, the show, the family. Live embeds off our own account, so any of it can be checked in a tap.
Leon Thomas, full circle in London
Reel · @soulection
The 15 year announcement
Post · @soulection
Kaytranada, for the first time
Post · @soulection
The London lineup
Post · @soulection
The room
Fifteen years, one night
Every frame is ours, taken off our own account, and every one goes back to the post it came from.
The bio, as we wrote it
@soulectionConnecting People Through Music / Soulection Radio | Sundays on Apple Music / bookings@soulection.com@soulection, our own Instagram bioReproduced exactly as it stands on the profile. Nothing on this page is written around it that the record does not carry.
The story
We are a genre, a community, an artist collective.
That is our own line, and fifteen years of record back it. What started as a college radio hour in Long Beach in 2011 became our Sunday show on Apple Music, a label seventy eight records deep, a festival scale events brand, and a family of selectors and producers scattered across the map.
The through line is discovery. Brent Faiyaz, Bryson Tiller, GoldLink, Anderson .Paak and Kaytranada all came through us early, per VICE. Our White Label series turned bedroom producers into names. Our show turned a time slot into a genre.
We say it in eight words at the foot of every page we run: fifteen years of connecting the world through sound.
The sound of tomorrow, fifteen years running.
Our inbox is open.
Bookings
Book us
Festivals, clubs, brand moments, takeovers, private dates. The address below is the one we publish in our own bio, and it comes straight to us.
bookings@soulection.com
Date, city, room, hours. The address our own bio gives out.
DM @soulection
The verified account behind the link in bio. 3,684 posts deep.
Both routes above are ours. Sponsorship for the anniversary run goes to the address we publish on soulection15.com, and press goes through the address on our FAQ. Keep them separate and nothing lands in the wrong inbox.
The sound of tomorrow, fifteen years running.
Fifteen years, 743 episodes on air, and one address. Our inbox is open.
Book usbookings@soulection.com