If you’ve ever hit up The Blue Note in New York City, then
you’ve probably caught Robert Glasper and company working over some jazz-fusion
renditions of John Coltrane classics or J Dilla adaptations, and on occasion,
the appearance of a name like Mos Def Yasiin Bey, Lupe Fiasco or Common on
stage is nothing out of the ordinary. From his solo career in more traditional
jazz to his work with The Experiment, Robert Glasper has been quietly building
a strong report with hip-hop’s most notables on the underbelly of the scene
over the last decade via the skills shown on projects like Mood and Canvas, and with
Black Radio, Glasper, drummer Chris
Dave, bassist Derrick Hodge and saxophonist Casey Benjamin make their proper
mainstream break on Blue Note Records with an album rife with contemporaries in collaboration.
You’re not going to find a better drummer in Chris Dave
(trust me, I’ve seen the dude live, and those skills are not human), and his
jazz-hop style with freeform touches drive alongside Hodge’s rap inspired bass
lines throughout the album to give a foundation to Glasper’s running fingers
and Benjamin’s astral effects. While each seem to remain in their own element
musically, they manage to weave within a single focus without boundaries,
giving each bar a live sounding unpredictable movement. Each track juxtaposes
another--the Erykah Badu-featured “Afro Blue” and kin “Cherish the Day” revisits
jazz lounge nights with the silk style, while across the album, “Consequence of
Jealousy” fast-forwards to an atmosphere of abstract gospel notes and
Benjamin’s psychotropic vocorder and eletro accompaniment. It’s a marriage of
styles familiar yet foreign, enemy and relative, and it’s The Glasper Experiment’s
ability to so effortlessly blend these combating tones while innovating the
regular that make them unconventionally recognizable.
In terms of hip-hop, The Experiment do it as organically as can be. Lupe Fiasco meets his natural element alongside Bilal in
“Always Shine” with its freestyle feel, Yasiin Bey walks in a freeform
poetry jazz-backed landscape in “Black Radio,” and “Move On” echoes sounds
reminiscent of Dilla’s later discography with KING’s contribution to the
record. “Ah Yeah” and “Gonna Be Alright” ground Black Radio in more traditional blueprints, though tracks like the
chaos aesthetics of “Why Do We Try” with Stokley Williams escape any
traditional definition. It’s easy listening that keeps the tone in the moment,
the next sound just out of vision around a bend, but always equal or better
once arrived at. The conversation on quality at the close of “Gonna Be Alright”
expresses the album’s aims in clear terms, and writes the Glasper Experiment as
it is: honest music, and nothing more.
The numinousness of The Robert Glasper Experiment’s style
throughout Black Radio is the
accessibility--it appeals to the late-night dive head-bobbing tradition jazz aficionados,
hip-hop devotees looking to dig on some organic chillers, soul and R&B
fans, and everything in between that can draw some sense of relation from an
aspect of their music. The quiet psychedelic-jazz rendition of Nirvana’s
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” at the close of the album is the Swiss army knife
open, showing the many means that Glasper and company reach in the roots of
music to the collective listener. This is feel-good music from every vantage,
and the universal language it writes is a true rarity in the saturated plastic
market that dominates today.
SumOlogy: purchase
(and you will) the album here.
4.5/5.0
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