Play(list) by the Book: Small Worlds, by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Hello, everyone! It's been a while since my previous playlist, and I was looking forward to getting a chance to create one soon. So, when I picked up Small Worlds, I was more than happy to discover that this novel would be ideal for a new literary playlist. Plus, this post gives you a hint of which book I'm going to review next.

Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson is a novel, where music plays a significant role, so I wasn't surprised that the playlist is almost 100 songs long. Since I'd already read Open Water, the author's debut, I was expecting to get a lot of musical references. But what was even great is that there is an official playlist on Spotify, only with the most important songs for the plot. But if you are looking for a more exhaustive list, I have tried to include everything, even the gospels that are referenced as lyrics within the text.

As per usual, I have included all the songs and artists mentioned in the pages of the book. When the author mentioned a record, I picked a song specifically from that record. In addition to this, I also referred to the official playlist and included the songs that the author had selected for artists that were only referenced by name and not by song. 

A couple of things I would like to add, but was unable to find on Spotify are the following:

• Buy Out Da Bar - Charmz - this song is clearly mentioned in the text, but I couldn't find it on Spotify. You can listen to it on YouTube though.
• Pow! - this is another song title mentioned in the book, but we don't get an artist reference. A quick research has brought numerous results, so I don't know which one to include. 

Have you read Small Worlds? 

Find more literary playlists at: Play(list) by the Book