Santana

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

More than 25 years after a collaboration-heavy album rocketed Carlos Santana back into the spotlight, the guitar legend is releasing another - albeit one assembled from an assortment of solo tracks and guest spots spanning his last five decades of work.  Sentient brings together joint tracks with Michael Jackson, Miles Davis, Smokey Robinson, and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels of Run-DMC, along with select deep cuts.  The 11 tracks span from "I'll Be Waiting," from his 1977 studio/live hybrid double album Moonflower, and the title track off 1987's Grammy-winning Blues for Salvador, all the way to last year's single "Let the Guitar Play," a team-up with McDaniels released as a Record Store Day single last year. Three of the tracks are billed as previously unreleased: an alternate take of "Please Don't Take Your Love," as heard on Smokey Robinson's Time Flies When You're Having Fun (2009); the track "Coherence," a duet with Santana's wife and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana; and a live instrumental cover of Michael Jackson's mid-'90s ballad "Stranger in Moscow," cut with Narada Michael Walden and his band in 2007. ("Whatever Happens," a post-"Smooth" track issued in 2001 on Invincible, the final album of Jackson's lifetime, is also featured.) The rest of the album is devoted to some lesser-heard work with Italian jazz-rock keyboardist Paolo Rustichelli including a couple of tracks posthumously released with Miles Davis on trumpet. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.