Rare Gems: Robert Brookins- Come to Me

Maybe you’ve heard his name. Maybe you haven’t. But one thing’s for sure—you’ve heard his work.

As Andrew Hamilton of AllMusic put it, "The often overused term multi-talented is true to its definition when referring to Robert F. Brookins."

Robert Brookins was the kind of talent who could make a song sparkle whether he was behind the mic, behind the board, or behind the scenes. He may not have reached household-name status as a solo artist, but his fingerprints are all over some of the smoothest and most memorable R&B of the 1980s and 1990s.

The Royal Scam: Decoding Steely Dan's Musical Masterpiece

Released in 1976, The Royal Scam is Steely Dan at their most unapologetically jaded. It's a jazz-rock hybrid with teeth—a cynical, slick sonic masterpiece drenched in New York cool and post-Watergate paranoia. While previous albums like Can't Buy a Thrill, Pretzel Logic, and Katy Lied already established Donald Fagen and Walter Becker as masters of genre-defying songwriting, The Royal Scam took things to a sharper, more rebellious nature. Such musically complex chordal arrangements and lyrical themes weren’t really part of the Pop/Rock/Jazz landscape at the time. Then again, they may have been all of those things, and yet none of them at all.