Before his collaborations with King Britt and Masters at Work introduced his name to house heads, Philadelphia’s Vikter Duplaix cut his teeth in R&B, earning credits on records by Erykah Badu, Musiq, and Gamble & Huff. Fittingly, his DJ-Kicks mix gracefully sketches the links between house and R&B, weaving between tracks by Herbert and Osunlade, on the one hand, and De La Soul and Badu herself, on the other. The glue that holds it all together is the funky, hybrid sound of broken beat, which was nearing its creative peak in 2002, when Duplaix made his mix: Cuts from 4hero, P’Taah, Spacek, and New Sector Movements trace the nexus of sounds—syncopated beats, spectral keys, soulful vocals—that were bouncing across both sides of the Atlantic in an attempt to fashion a properly Afrocentic style of dance music for the new millennium. There’s no better example of the form than Duplaix’s own “Sensuality,” which pairs stuttering drums with his own velvety falsetto, to spellbinding effect.