When José James hits his stride, the songwriter’s omnivorous taste for R&B, hip-hop, soul, and performance poetry makes an inspiring fusion—evoking the revolution-shaded ’70s soul of Gil Scott-Heron and Bill Withers and clever contemporary stylists like Erykah Badu and J. Dilla. This album finds a balance between wrenching downtempo ballads that invite you to dim the lights (“Bird of Space,” “Do You Feel”) and lithe, funky grooves (“Trouble,” “It’s All Over Your Body”). Classifying James as just a jazz vocalist is too constraining; similar to broadly imaginative, populist experiments from Robert Glasper and Esperanza Spalding, No Beginning No End is an example of jazz with no limits.