Why Jazz Musicians Love Hip Hop (ft. Switched On Pop)

I'm Adam Maness and I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Music Explored. Explored brought to you today by Open Studio. Go to openstudiojazz.com for All your jazz lesson needs. Peter. Yes, special day today. Very special. Avec Guests. Con guests. With the guests and actually these are are these are our first returning guests.

I think they. Might be, does it count returning if it's been 7 years between? Absolutely, yeah. Today on the show, we have Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding from the incredible Switched on Pop podcast. Nate, Charlie, welcome. Welcome. Thank you guys. It's great to be here. I'm honored. 7 years we're back, we're older, we're wiser. Look.

At us, look at how far. We've come down with you all. Yeah, we. Actually, I think they might be the second returning guest. The the only other person we've had on twice is actually Ron Carter, who we're going to talk about in a minute. Connection there. Wow, that's right, Solid. Company. Nate, Charlie and Ron we call it.

But when we were talking to you guys about what we wanted to talk about on the show, we started talking about jazz musicians and being. Well, let's be honest, we started talking about jazz because we got whenever we're talking to Nate and Charlie, we start getting nervous. We don't want to talk about their bread.

Like we revert back, let's talk about jazz. Let's talk about jazz. Like, come on, minor, major stuff, you know, like we got to go back to our wheelhouse real quick because these are two of the most knowledgeable, it's true, interesting and nuanced commentators on music. So it's super exciting. But we we did want to talk about something that that both of us might have some purchase in.

And so we started talking about maybe when jazz musicians come into big recording sessions, big albums, and really leave their mark. A lot of what we're going to be talking about today is hip hop, but we're going to go a little bit beyond that into some other areas. But yeah, I don't know, guys. Maybe talk about your relationship to jazz musicians in the pop music that you love.

Yeah, well, I, I think this is such a cool topic because it personally, it bridges my 2 interests. I grew up listening to and playing jazz. And then ten years ago, Charlie and I started this podcast about pop music. At the time, we were not familiar with pop music at all. And 10 years later, I've become, we both become sort of recalcitrant experts in the, in the field of Top 40 pop. And this idea of these two worlds, which you think of as being so separate in so many ways, right. Jazz and pop, it's like they they, they, I think are perceived as not having any overlap. But, but actually, when you think about albums from Van Morrison to Joni Mitchell to Steely Dan to, to A Tribe Called Quest to Kendrick Lamar to even

Miley Cyrus's most recent release, it's like all of these big pop albums have been shaped by the, the sound and, and, and, and even more significant, significantly like the philosophy of, of jazz. So I'm I'm excited to to dig into this. Yeah. I feel like I'm here to Why am I here? I I Candy. Thank you.

Why are we all here? I I candy primarily. That's I honestly probably could answer that question better than what I'm doing on a jazz podcast because I'm a pretty lapsed jazz musician. As in, I've played guitar for the longest time and I did my high school cool jazz ensembles. And I remember getting, I remember going to my first college jazz ensemble and getting a side eye from the drummer who just like you don't belong here.

The last time I saw that guy, which was like 20 years later, he gave me a side eye again. And you know who it is, but I'm not going to name names. Actually, I really like this person. It was. So yeah, I think I'm here to be the the person that needs to be educated the most on my jazz harmony and to be the pop guy.

Yeah, you know what? If there's one thing that the jazz musicians are truly virtuosic, virtuosic at, Yeah, it's gatekeeping. Right, it's gatekeeping. And then once we do get an opportunity to get into the pop role, overplaying and over overplaying our hand and overplaying the notes. Well, as a guitarist, I'm really good at overplaying. So I can realize you that I mean. Not to get too professorial off the bat, but there, there's, there's that inflection point where, where it right, right around the end of World War 2, where prior to that, jazz and popular music were synonymous.

They were inseparable. Jazz was in in many ways, the first popular music, the first mass media. And then, and then there's the shift with, with the rise of bebop and this desire to create this art discourse and, and to create something that's like separate from the commercialism of the, of, of the pop music world And that and that sort of splinters those two. But but then there are all these moments when they do come back together and they, they connect through these, you know, incredible musicians and these incredible collaborations. Yeah.

Well, one of the, I think brightest moments, especially in my lifetime was for that collaboration was the early 90s and specifically with with Tribe Called Quest, we were talking about how influential Q-tip from Tribe Called Quest has been on the music of our life. I mean, it goes way beyond just Tribe. It's it, it reaches into, well into our lives now with his production.

But this is very special for us because like we mentioned, we've had Ron Carter on the show before. Ron Carter, been under a rock as a jazz fan, is on the Mount Rushmore of jazz bassist. He's there. Might be. Three Ron Carter's on Mount Rushmore. And then Paul? Chambers and Paul Chambers. No, but he is truly one of the most iconic. He's he's, I think he's in the Guinness Book of World Record for being the most recorded musician in history. He's on a lot more recordings than just straight ahead jazz recordings.

And what makes I think Tribe and specifically Q-tip as a producer so special is their willingness to incorporate all kinds of musicians into what they're doing and take risks. And so we're going to start the show here with the track "Versus From the Abstract" from Tribe, one of their, I think, 2 incredible early 90s masterpieces, The Low End theory, this features Ron Carter. And this isn't a sample.

This is they had the maestro himself come in and record it and we'll hear a little bit of that. I had a dream about my man last night and my man came by the the studio and his name is Busta Rhymes in effect. Ali Shaheed is in effect. Phife Dawg is in effect. Check it out and give me my spec. I'm moving. Yes, I'm moving because my mouth is on the motor to the morning to avoid the funky odor.

Can't help being a funky I'm the funky app. They brought him in on F# sense, but I played the undercover. Yeah, he's going for. Some booty. Now I'm getting funky and my rapping. That's my duty. So again. That's not a sample. I mean, there's samples in there. The drums are a sample, the guitar is a sample, but the bass is Ron Carter playing.

And you can hear, if you isolate some of this, you can hear how organically he's playing. Here we go. Going down to that low E yeah, they actually anti samples him. They're they're they're ranking up what he played, which is A Q-Tip thing too, so. And he's doing all of those Ron Carter isms, too. What what we've talked about timeless times here with with the man himself about, you know, his his signature styles. And then, you know, my favorite part actually, of this whole thing is that he gets famously a shout out at the end. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this one goes out to my man. Thanks a lot for Ron Carter on the bass. Yes, for me. And Ron Carter is on the base. Check it. Out many answers. Yeah, so. Good. He gets called out on on a a song that half of the lyrics are call outs to just everybody who's in the it's like 5 Diddle Bob Power, the mixing engineer. You know, he's just like calling everybody out. But then Ron gets his own little section at the end. It's great.

It makes you wonder about how this was even put together. I mean, oftentimes hip hop tracks are going to be less live in the room, but there was this conversation that just happened. I mean, obviously those drums are sampled, so. Yeah. Are they like playing an MPC in the room and Ron's playing and they're also doing the rap at this? I think.

It's a beautiful little compositional moment or improvisational moment that feels live whether it is or not. Yeah, You know, I actually asked Ron Carter about this because I've always loved this track so much. And he all respect to to Sir Ron Carter, proud for Ron Carter, but he kind of gave me two conflicting versions of that.

Yeah, we played together and yeah. No, no, no. I just came in and they laid everything down already so I couldn't. Even remember he's been on too many things. That's what I'm saying for lunch, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, it's, it's very much like like I always thought of this like as something that they were sampling. It wasn't till we really broke this down and I'm still not even sure.

But it sounds like he's playing throughout the thing, which is I'm sure what they did, they kind of played in the beat and then they were like, these are, you know, it's F#, my F#. Just do your thing over it. But it almost sounds like they left it outside of those places where they where they tapped it out, of course. Yeah, 2 quick things about this 111. It reminds me of another lyric from Q-tip on a track from The Low End Theory.

He says you can find the abstract. That's him. That's his, you know, cognomen. You can find the abstract. Listening to hip hop, My Pops used to say it reminded him of bebop. And that's a cool line because it speaks to the the continuum that these two styles actually exist on as as different expressions of of African American culture at different points in time. And, and then Ron Carter makes me think like if you were in that Miles quintet, that that second quintet, it, it primed you for these kind of collaborations. All of those musicians, Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and, and Ron Carter, they, they, I feel like they learn from Miles to embrace that world of pop and, and rock and eventually hip hop because all

of them went off and, and worked with with people from that world. So. That's a. Great. Maybe there's that like imprint of, of, of miles, you know, genre spanning philosophy on those, on those musicians. Yeah, and Miles had the what was it, the Doo wop do do something, do bop do bop Yeah album, which is right around this time too, early 90s and stuff. Early 90s, yeah, yeah.

That's a great point, Nate. We've spoken on Herbie endlessly and and his playfulness and his willingness to just do anything with and still remain himself. But also, you're right, the rest of that entire band, Wayne is out there on Asia. Like just like weather report with Weather Report with Joni Mitchell. Yeah, incredible.

And and the fact that you mentioned Bebop it, it really leans right into what we're going to talk about next with it, which is a track from. I was just wanting to throw one thing out there because what Nate said about the the lyric, my dad with bebop, the Q-tips set on there. I I think this is a big thing. We we talk about influence, especially in hip hop from jazz. There's a lot of like Jay Dilla, his I believe it was his father, maybe his mother to like he grew up listening to a lot of jazz And of course, the connection with Detroit between the jazz scene, Motown and then hip hop and beat making. That's right, was like a connected line, you know, and there's there's a lot of these

things, of course, is jazz music. I mean, for me, I grew up listening to jazz. He's a classical musician, but he had jazz records records. But like you see that a lot common for sure out of Chicago. He talks about that with I think his mom. So like that's, that's an influence, you know, that's. That's huge. A lot of you know hip hop artists might have some some some neighborhood or familiar familial connection to to the jazz world.

I think FlyLo and I, I believe his like aunt, great aunt or something is Alice Coltrane who was married to John I. Didn't even know that that's. He's got a relationship there. Yeah. Incredible. Well, Peter, you mentioned Common and we've talked about before the incredible trumpeter Roy Hargrove. We did an episode on D’Angelo's Voodoo, which Roy is all over that and actually adds so much melodic and harmonic content to that album.

And one of the one of the hip hop albums that we have queued up here is Commons Cold Blooded from his album Like Water for Chocolate. Same year as Voodoo released and you're here four years but. And Roy again, yeah, all over this. Yeah yeah my little daughter started nursery school brother calm God make I moved through silence and violence with vibrance society times with this time my this terrible thing spirit rap pipes like dreams seems real and then wake up with no acres out there traveling the world to see babies jazz paper streets take back and forth like Shaker I'm a slave to the rhythms breaking off I get the job done. Some days I want to take off DB like we ain't got no time for that.

So to me this is like you talk about jazz influencing. I'm so glad you said the word bebop, Nate, and highlight that because to me this is all about like, it's very much like the James Brown, the parliament connection in terms of the beat. Yeah, it's 2:00 and 4:00, but it's more boom. It's on the one and one. Yeah.

And then all this stuff common and for sure, Roy, obviously with the but it's all like pick it, dip baa ba hooba, hoba dooba, dooba, dooba. Like all. It's so connected with the swing of bebop of, of the lilt to, to, to the way he's delivering those lyrics, you know, and then Roy is doing some, I mean, 'cause it's like a minor.

It's kind of just, what is it like 1:00 to 5:00? But Roy's like he's giving it that, that jazz hormone, you know, that minor, minor 11 kind of sound, throwing that kind of flavour in. There voodoo vibes. Very voodoo. I mean, yeah, this is. Right. I think this is an extension of those D'Angelo voodoo sessions. I I don't know where if it was a predecessor or successor exactly, but.

But I think there was overlap. Yeah, those, I think that group of musicians, Amir Questlove, Thompson, D'Angelo, Roy Hargrove, they, they called themselves the Soulquarians and, and they, they did a lot of projects and, and clearly they had a lot of fun working together. And I, I, I agree this I haven't heard this song since it came out. And it, it's, it sounds really good. Yeah.

And it's got that parliament sample on there, I think, which sets it up, which is not a very, you know, Funkin for fun. Like it's not a super like, you know, known parliament kind of a groove, but they almost put the, oh, you've got to. Piss, I got to go. When's the Parliament episode dropping? Yeah, we gotta do that.

Gotta do that. Who's? Who's giving us that chicken scratch on the guitar? Those albums sound so good. Wow. Incredible. I think to Jay Dilla, like we got it like he's this is going to be a through line in here to who I I can never like I'm never. I'd love to hear you guys opinion. Is he like the ultimate jazz musician of the MPC or does he have nothing to do with jazz? I have no idea, but he fits in with this kind of stuff and is such a he's such an influence even when he's not like I know famously on voodoo, I don't think he's credited on anything but everybody.

And I know Roy told me like he was very involved with that, but like just the the the kind of like meteoric rise and then and then fading away because we lost him so soon. But like on how we how the beat was interpreted, which has always been a big thing in jazz. And far as you're going to pull back, are you going to push? And his kind of, you know, his concept on that was like actually way above jazz musicians, I think in a lot of ways because he was so conscious of it and like playing around like what that did.

I think for us as jazz musicians, we just sort of play behind the beat or play ahead of the beat, sometimes sort of a little bit randomly. Oh, is that what you do? That's kind of what I know. Well, let's move on here. I'm going to skip ahead just a little bit, and I want to cover just a couple of of the newer, very, very new things that I thought would be cool to talk about.

The first one was a recommendation by by you guys, and that's this track from Cautious Clay called "Another Half" that features incredible jazz guitarist Julian Lage. Yeah. I need another half like I need you. Not too many sober nights and wounds outside. You're the answer. You want a good life in a little school to change your mind.

The bulb is bright. You're the answer. We revel in the silence on our own little islands. But we can't be alone. We didn't get here intentionally. Yeah, and the weight won't give, but it's giving me something. How good is that? I'll meet another half like I need you. So this is a Blue Note album. This is from an album called Karpeh. And this is, again, Julian Lajeon guitar, but it's a lot of Blue Note recording artists here. Ambrose Akinmusire is on trumpet, Immanuel Wilkins on saxophone, Joel Ross on the vibes. I think all of those people we've talked about on the show before, Julius Rodriguez, you guys on the keyboard guys, What's your thought on this?

One thing that immediately stands out is that one reason that we bring jazz musicians into the studio to record more popular songs is that they're excellent and that they can, on the one level, you can bring a Ron Carter in and you're going to get like Ron Carter vibes. What I think is really interesting here is that Julian is an unbelievable virtuoso.

His level of harmony, his speed, all of his stuff, whatever. He can play anything, but I think that's part of why you might bring him in it. And, and I think he's incredibly adaptive to what this track needs. He's playing sort of neo-soul and like a lot of actually sort of Hendrixy licks, which is not something you're going to hear on a Julian Lage record. You're hearing him play for what the track needs. And that's why so many great jazz musicians, jazz musicians make great studio musicians.

They can serve the song. Right, right. That's right. You had mentioned Motown earlier, and let's not forget that that rhythm section was a bunch of Detroit jazz musicians. Absolutely. For the same reason. Yeah. They're flexible, they're versatile, and they're excellent. I like that. I think this, this album also I, I first of all, I, I think it's just a really exciting listen and I encourage people to check out the rest of it because there's, there's other jazz elements that that kind of take you by surprise throughout, throughout the the album. And it, it probably also speaks to the fact like, like Charlie was saying that we also have a generation of jazz musicians right now who don't necessarily

see the same boundaries between jazz and R&B, hip hop, pop. That, that maybe we're, we're, we're, we're kind of stronger in the past. Those, those walls between these, these genres and, and, and, and, and maybe even even more importantly, that I, I don't sense that there, there a lot of contemporary jazz artists don't have like don't look down their nose at pop, which, which was the thing when I was growing up and I was, I was like taking jazz jazz classes and doing and doing jazz programs. It was like we were all kind of in in unison being like, yeah, that that pop world, that's not for us, you know, it's. Like a badge.

Model. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's harmonically simple. It's it's structurally predictable. It's it's only it's corporate, it's commercial. I, I, I don't, I, I think there's a, a, a more sort of holistic approach to music making now from, from a lot of young jazz musicians is, is my general sense. I think you're absolutely, absolutely right. And like, because I came up in that Young Lions period, I that's why I like, I think Roy Hargrove, but others too, you know, Branford Marsalis, Brad Mehldau, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, like that was a big deal when they broke out of that Young Lions kind of like, no, no, no, that's not for us. We we, you know, it's the number of notes, it's the number of chord extensions that make

something great. Is it swinging or whatever things that what I think the younger players now just take for granted. Like, no, we can float into these other things. And like Charlie, what you're saying like we're not just bringing a jazz player because they're going to play bebop line on top of something, you know what I mean? Like because they're skilled in a number of different almost the way like the occasional classical musician can come in, if they know how to play like with different crews and stuff, you know, they're going to bring a certain skill level to the party, right?

And and like maybe jazz trained musicians have kind of become that, you know, those cogs that you can really put in and know are going to get executed well. Well, the the training that is required to become a great jazz musician requires you to study an immense repertoire. And we're not talking when we say jazz. It's such a loaded and complicated term because what are we talking about, right?

We've, we've got over a century of music that we're talking about. Right. Right. So like a great pop producer, when they're coming in to produce a record, they're thinking about what, what are we trying to evoke here? What is the emotion? What is the feeling? In order to get that feeling, what references do we need to pull from, what eras, what sounds?

And so a great jazz musician is going to have lots of different eras and sounds to be able to pull from, to find the proper grammar to make a song come alive. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and it it's a great lead into what we have coming up next, because one of the greatest artists, I think alive on earth today did exactly what you're talking about, Charlie.

They wanted a flavor. And so they brought in one of the greatest jazz pianists alive on earth today and have them do this. Yeah. So this is a huge hit album. Yeah. This is Kendrick from Kendrick Lamars to To Pimp a Butterfly. So what A Butterfly. To Pimp a Butterfly. That's Robert. How do you pimp a butterfly?

Well, that's you got to listen to the album. Pulitzer Prize winning. That's right, pimping here. 100% that's of course Robert Glasper, who we just talked about his Black Radio album and how influential that was. And I think speaking to just exactly what we were talking about here, Robert Glasper, who is I think either either young Gen. X or old millennial, but of the generation where the the sort of barriers between jazz and everything else have certainly come down.

Yeah. And that's also Terrace Martin on the Alto saxophone, who is hugely influential in in sort of the behind the scenes for a lot of the things we're talking about here. Producer. Produced this track. He did I think produced several the jazzy and and otherwise tracks on this album. So I I'd say like the sound and concept.

I don't know exactly what was discussed between him and Kendrick. I know was obviously very involved with this being his album. But but Terrace, who's a major pop hip hop producer, was producing this track and and Robert Glasper talks about when he came into the studio, he said, what kind of vibe do you want? And Tara said straight up Kenny Kirkland, Branford Marsalis, late 80s like knew exactly the reference. And, and Glasper, by the way, nailed that shit Like, Oh yeah, just.

Like that was, if his wheelhouse had a wheelhouse, it would have been what was asked of him. It's great and it's just so an expensive second track I took. I took the vocals out, by the way, but it sounds amazing. It's a family show. My mom listens. The. Show but it's an incredible recording and the Hammond Glasper came in to just do that but did several other songs on the album which we can talk about but yeah guys to build a butterfly maybe the the prime example of this.

I think we've done a little disservice by not playing the lyrics here because I, I think this is actually a really great example of what musical grammar are we going to use to evoke what feeling, right? And this song is basically this, this argument between two people who are just going nuts at each other, right? And choosing a sort of language of free jazz has this sort of feel like everyone's talking over each other. It's intense.

It's like it's discordant there. It it feels very like an appropriate marriage between what he's trying to say. Right. For sure you want to play a little bit with the lyrics. Mom, stop listening. Adam's mom. Fuck you motherfucker, you a hoe ass *** You trying to go big *** you ain't shit. Walking around like you. God's gift to earth *** you ain't shit. You ain't even buy me no outfit for the 4th. I need that Brazilian WAVY 28 inch you playing. I shouldn't be fucking with you anyway. I need a baller ass boss ass *** You the all brand ass *** Everybody know it, your homies know it, everybody fucking know. Fuck you *** don't call me no more. Oh no, you gonna lose on the good bitch. My other *** is on you off.

What the fuck is really going on? This Dick ain't. Free you looking? At me like it ain't like it's me eating your I. Gotta, sorry, I gotta jump in here, this Dick, Charlie, you know, you know, I, I love everything you do, but I, I do feel like you've mischaracterized this. This track. Oh, thank you.

I'm I'm not the jazz head. Please correct me. Well, it's not even about no about the lyrics. I mean, this the, the, the, the, the, the female character in this I, I've always heard is representing the like the Voice of America, essentially the voice of the, of the United States history. Even though she's like just talking smack at Kendrick, she is actually like standing in for American history. And Kendrick is coming back at her and being like, Hey, you've mistreated me and my people throughout our existence here and now I'm going to take what's mine, you know, like the last, if we if we Fast forward to the very end of of his of his flow, he says, you know, I I pick cotton and made you rich. Now my Dick ain't free.

So it's like it's very profane and in your face and angry. But it's ultimately, I think a a really, really a commentary on like, you know, racial injustice throughout American history. What? What is? What are the jazz references in the track doing for you? Yeah, Yeah. Great. I mean, when he comes in and the way the way, the way he says that first line, this Dick ain't free.

It's like he's he's referencing this tradition, even though the language is very different. I think he's referencing this tradition of like jazz poetry, slam poetry. I feel like he's channelling for sure. Gil Scott Heron and the The Last Poets and and and other kind of spoken word slam jazz poets. Love Jones.

And it's it's, it's a medium that allows you to, to project that, that subversive countercultural put political language, I think. Improvised well and and musically Peter when you think of late 80s Kenny Kirkland. Oh, it's C minor too. Yeah, well, that's the C. Minor burnout. What's the album that comes to mind? Wynton's Black.

Codes From the Underground. Black Codes from the Underground. Yeah, Wynton Marsalis is Black Codes From the Underground, which sounds exactly what what glass for in this rhythm section. Who I just want to shout out real quick, Brandon Owens on the bass and Robert “Sput” Searight on the drums. And The thing is too like underneath, like once they go, once the brakes stop and they just start going and they're going with the back and forth between Kendrick and the other voice. That's all a Blues underneath.

Like it's a very it's AC minor Blues, which is like the most typical key that that would be done very Coltrane influence certainly up to. C Minor burnout. C minor burnout, but I think the fact that it's a Blues to, you know, filtering and now your commentary, Nate and you're you're kind of that lens with which you're looking at it is interesting that it's a Blues underneath, but it's not the kind of Blues most people would be like.

That's not blue Z, but the form is straight up Blues. There's one moment that I would love to listen to together that I mean, I, I remember listening this this album came out 2013, I think, and 2015. I remember 2015, thank you. And I remember listening to it straight through and the I mean, the first track is is stunning. There's, I think George Clinton introduces it and. Thundercat's on it.

Yeah, Thundercat's on it and it's. And you're like plunged into this kind of psychedelic sound world. And so first track I'm like, wow, this is really this is really something. And then the second track is this, you know, yeah, Kenny Kirkland burning jazz. And I was like, this is this is the greatest thing I've. Ever.

It's like I'm in. No, me too, I remember. There's this moment, I'm sorry, I don't know exactly where it is, but basically Kendrick and and the drummer kind of lock into this. Yeah, I know where you're talking. About Hemiola rhythm, they're they're dividing the the the beat into rows of three one and they start doing these hits across the the measure.

People less fortunate like myself. Every dog has his day now. Doggy style show help. This Dick ain't free. Matter of fact, you need interest. Matter of fact. It's 9 inches. Matter of fact, see your friendship based on business. Bitch, you're more bitching your bitch, your moccasins. It's been relentless.

Fuck, forgive me, fuck you friends. Fuck your sauce. It's all distortion. If we fuck, it's more abortion, more divorce course and portion my check with less endorsement. Let. Me price pressure busting choice choices devastated decapitated divorce me. Ohh America you bad bitch. I pick cotton there, makes you rich.

Now my Dick game. Free. I'm gonna. Get my Uncle Sam to fuck. You up, get my Uncle Sam to fuck you up. Man, shout out Robert. Very cool moment. Oh, sorry, Peter. No, no, I, no, please go ahead 'cause that that was. Just so, yeah. So they're like, so we're in 44123, but they're going 12131. Yeah, they're flowing. The three over the four, which is and and Kendrick is locked into it too, which makes it so cool. And it's, it's a nice reminder of how MCS like to play with with rhythmic displacement like like this. And something we've talked about on the podcast actually is what's sometimes called the, the triplet flow in, in hip hop groups like Migos, for instance, they created, they didn't, they didn't create the style, but

they, you know, popularized this, this style of, of rapping where you divide the beat into triplets a lot like a jazz musician that one of their best known songs is Versace and the chorus of which is just this, this triplet Versace, Versace, Versace, Versace, Versace, Versace. That's something that Kendrick does a lot too.

He'll drop these triplet flows in into the middle of a verse. It's it feels, I just feels very jazz coded to me. Totally and I think too like that he goes to some lot some bigger triplets too sometimes like some half-note triplets over a bar. You know that almost feel free and then he on this, he's very much soloing like a jazz musician over this in that you're going like there's almost a syncopation between when he's going out of time and then going like locking into the time. It's like a thing that that's used as like to kind of get you off and even like that part that that that you just highlighted with with drums and him and then you just deck them bang right at the top of the chorus.

You know, it's like everything is off kilter and then it lines up, but then you're starting on the next 12 bar journey of like, where is it going to go? It's it's super, super compelling and like just sets up the storytelling even without the lyrics. I mean the the lyrics takes it next level of course. A Pulitzer level.

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I would say that even if this, if you would just sort of represent what he's doing and as in terms of a solo rhythmically with the way they're playing in the rhythm section, it'd be very musically compelled. Totally. And we talk about here, you know, learning rhythmic vocabulary and transcribing snare drum solos.

Shout out Open Studio. You know what I'm saying? And you can easily transcribe Kendrick's rhythmic solo here as a snare drum, Yeah, with maybe one or two pitches and learn a lot about, like, Nate, what you were talking about, these hemiolas that he puts over. Yeah, 443 or 4. But you know, when you make art at this level, it has so many ripples. Obviously this was such a incredibly impactful and influential album and it influenced even some people that are not in in the same genre as this or even close so. I just got to throw out one thing on this. I just put this connection together. Maybe Nate, you and Charlie might know about this, but here in this background that they were asked to do the Kenny Kirkland kind of thing.

Sting had a record called Dream of the Blue Turtles in like 83 or it was his first solo record after the police broke up. Branford and Kenny were on that. Ran from ourselves on it, Kenny Kirkland's on it, Omar Hakim on drums. It was kind of Sting's first sort of, I'm putting a jazz band together. Well, not it was.

No, it was actually, it was basically I'm going to get kind of what Charlie was saying earlier in terms of like bringing in really skilled musicians to do a number of things 'cause they didn't do a lot of jazz. But there was one track on that record, I can't, can't remember what it's called, but they just start swinging out.

It's slower than this, but same thing. And of course, Kenny Kirkland, no one had to tell him to do his Kenny shit because he's Kenny Kirkland. And they just, oh, it's Doo did lit Doo did lit Doo did it? Sting's not even on it. Or maybe he's playing guitar or something. And then they're like bop, bop, bop bop. It's this kind of weird British.

And then all of sudden they're like spang Bang Bang, and they just start. Yeah. And then Kenny's just sort of going crazy like this. So that's a little, I don't mean, I don't know if Kendrick had heard that or if Terrace Martin for sure would have known it. So that's kind of like dropping that in there into it, you know, an instrumental thing.

Well, yeah. And it's funny because then this goes on to influence musicians like David Bowie. So David Bowie's producer Tony Visconti says he and Bowie were listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar, particularly To Pimp A Butterfly, as they were making his last. Album Blackstar. We loved the fact that Kendrick was so open minded and he didn't do a straight up hip hop record.

He threw everything on there and that's exactly what they wanted to do. So one night, I believe on the recommendation of Maria Schneider, I could be wrong about it, but I think I heard this, that Bowie went down to the 55 bar and for any New York dusty jazz positions. The dustiest of the dusty. RIP 55 bar, but the the quartet that was there that night was saxophonist Donny McCaslin, keyboardist Jason Lindner, incredible piano player.

Tim Lefebvre. Say, say again. Tim Lefebvre, I just got him to save you because I know that's a hard. Tim Lefebvre and then Mark Giuliana, a friend of the show Mark Guiliana on the drums. And that was really the beginnings of them starting to make this album, which is always, you know, final masterpiece.

Incredible album, actually. Blackstar about his own death that that dropped I think two weeks after he passed away. Stands a solitary candle in the center of it all in the center of it. All. Then monitor guitar. It's like a. 76 year old man's album. Yeah, Unbelievable. 76 something. Yeah, wow, Wow.

But yeah, those are some really heavy jazz musicians on that album, on Bowie's last album. And I I think again, to your point, like a lot of excellence. Marc Giuliana, one of the greatest drummers in the world, and all of them all, everybody in that quintet, you said, who is the. Guitarist Ben Monder. Yeah.

Who wasn't part of the quartet. But I mean, I, I wonder how is this unusual? You guys think that a pop star, a pop icon like a David Bowie or, or you know, anybody that would bring like we've already shown not to bring a jazz musician into either fill a, a, a, a specific need like a Ron Carter or to bring in highly skilled musicians or Roy Hargrove to layer wonderful horn lines.

But to bring a whole working because I believe they were working group at that time. I remember seeing them, the Donny McCaslin like that, that quartet, they were associated to bring a whole band in to kind of craft a concept record around that, a whole jazz group. I wonder if that's been done before.

The one example that comes to mind is there's this group called Bad, Bad, Not Good from Canada, and they have they've been enlisted by a few pop artists like. Like Kali Uchis, I, I believe the, the Colombian American singer and, and a few other pop artists to, to come in and, and sort of, you know, create a track together on on the fly and, and, and I think that's a good point.

What, what, what you just said, Peter, and, and, and going back to what Charlie said earlier, I, I, I, I imagine for an artist like Bowie, there's a real joy in being able to go into the studio and, and just, you know, improvise and, and jam and have this group of musicians who can respond in real time to your ideas and generate things on the fly because that's what they've trained for and that's what they're used to doing.

And. Yeah. And and not not to say that pop studio musicians can't do this as well, but but I think there's a certain maybe another level of freedom or or maybe pop musicians are more used to being just told what to play and playing it. No, I actually think, Nate, there's there's so much commonality between how contemporary pop writing happens and the improvisatory nature of jazz that that, you know, we get to talk to a lot of pop stars. I just interviewed Zara Larsson just before this, just, we just popped Pop star.

And, you know, the Swedes are particularly known for, you know, having this sort of like, sense of melodic math is like, there's a lot of perfection that goes into the work. But she's describing the processes so often, you know, four people getting in the room, talking about, figuring out what are they all equally into? And then a lot of intuitive freestyling, trying things out. A lot of melody is written entirely through freestyle improvisation and then composed together. And then lyrics are put on top of them. Clearly, when you have amazing musicians, that whole process just goes faster, right?

And the whole goal is working with a team of people that bring different things and they they balance each other so, so that you get some kind of unique kind of outcome. That is so much of how pop records are made today, actually, that that that has a lot in common with, with a great quintet. You're like, you get something unique with that, with that set of players.

Yeah. And I think the thing, you know, even as technologies has changed and the industry has changed and everything, one thing with jazz musicians, I think we've always had this as part of our DNA is to not be highly produced in the way pop artists would be. Because we're used to going in and doing a record in one day or maybe 2 days.

So I remember like I remember the early the mid 90s when like stuff like we have three days to do it. That was a big budget thing. So it's like how much you know, how much like you had to come in the leader or even if it was a group. I mean I remember making records with Joshua, remember where he come up with the charts and everything. And we'd already not really rehearsed but played it on the gigs.

And this was just about like, let's see how quickly we can, not to rush through it, but just to see how fresh we could get a complete take. And if we have to add a little bit, we will. Whereas if you bring in, I'm sure even with Bowie, with bringing in these great jazz musicians who had done some pop stuff, I mean, all of them.

But it's like, OK, let's sit. And I don't know how quick they did it, but like, it's uncomfortable. Uncomfortable for a jazz musician to sit for two or three months making like we don't know what to do after the first it's. Unnatural Well, I think there's a technical reason for the two or three take thing is because when you're improvising and the majority of the music that you're making is improvised, it gets stale very, very fast. So anything over 5 takes and you're just you said all you can say and it's very hard to just keep going and keep going. And so it's a lesson you have to learn when you start recording jazz in a studio.

Like I'm ready on take one to to just be fresh. And usually that's going to be the best take. Maybe not as far as like cohesiveness, but for the vibe and the energy of the band. Everybody's fresh and in the moment. And it that gets harder and harder with each additional take. And I, I wonder if this is like maybe we've, we've kind of hinted at jazz musicians overplaying, but it is something we're trained to do to respond and react.

We're not sensitive about that, are we? I mean, you're the one who insisted on the keyboard on the podcast Noodles. Well, but think about it like this record, it was recorded very differently than they typically like even like bringing Ron, like Ron Carter I can guarantee you was in the studio for about an hour and a half laying that and he might have laid that down in the the 1st 6 minutes. We know that from our own experience. Yeah, yeah.

We've worked with with, but I'm like, that's typically that's sort of the the usual way of using a jet. Like they can come in and do it quickly, They can hear it, they can lay down their part. I mean, Roy Hargrove was like lays down and layers up those horn lines so fast, you know, not to say that he can't sit around and create more stuff after that.

Yeah, I mean. While though is I just feel like you're talking about a great pop singer laying their vocals down. It's the same thing, really. It's a great point. If you don't do it in the first five takes, you're going to blow your voice out. You kind of will have lost all the the great unique emotion that each phrase has.

That's right. The, and then it, you know, you watch them like Ariana Grande layer her vocals. She's just like, great, I need this note, this note, this note, and she's just punching each one in super, super fast, super intuitive. And that's just, it feels like there's so much in common. Really the big difference here is going to be that a pop vocal is going to be comped together and you're going to get, of those 7 takes, you're going to take one phrase, then another phrase, another phrase.

So you get this sort of more pristine perfect presentation, but the process is actually very similar. For sure, and even Charlie that that doesn't not happen on some jazz rap records as well where they come together a solo if they can. I was, I, I'm reminded here of this part of, of what we're talking about here, of, of we did an episode recently on Stevie Wonder's Innervisions where Stevie's playing most of. The instruments.

We really broke news on this record because we felt like the world didn't know it. We talked about how great it is, how Stevie wrote these. It's a concept record. We really nailed it. We went outside the box. 2 middle-aged jazz pianist talking about Stevie Wonder, but. What's still the same episode? But what's so great about that music? And I think what's so great about like Ron Carter on The Tribe Called Question about Robert Glasper on the To Pimp A Butterfly is that we talked about the sort of wabi-sabi nature of Peter, of Peter of Stevie playing the Moog bass, playing the drums and not doing the same thing. Every verse around is different, every chorus is different, and there's something special.

And I think the best pop producers and musicians recognize that. I think we have our own prejudices as jazz musicians of like, well, it's robotic and it's programmed and it's on a grid and it's, you know, this than that. But I think that's, you know, Charlie, yeah, that's not the case. It has. Well, it often, yeah.

It has its own aesthetic preferences, which often can be at odds with what jazz musicians might want. But there often is more common language than you might expect. Which makes me. I actually would like to go back to Blackstar for a second, if you don't mind, because I was surprised when I think, Nate, you recommended this album.

And I've loved this album. I had never gone deep into who was playing. There was not one moment of me that had ever thought, oh, this is a jazz record. These are these are jazz musicians. So I'm especially curious for you guys are open studio friends, like, yeah, what, what What is your impression of this music? Does does it feel like the language of jazz? What's happening here?

So I think especially like the key piece to this for me is drummer Marc Giuliana, who has been on some real landmark modern jazz recordings in the last 1520 years. And it feels like his playing. He made an album, a duo album with Brad Meldo called. It's a great album. But to me, there's not much difference between what happens there and what happens here. He's a little more restrained, and it's not this through like this through composed kind of thing, but it's the same style of playing.

It's the same, it's the same rhythmic sensibility that's going out these like incredibly syncopated and broken down rhythms where you can hear like just in that in the Blackstar, we hear the the beat come in that, that, that, that, that, that, that that there's this like offbeat 16th note thing that's happening throughout. That to me is like a hallmark of marks playing and how precise it is.

You know, like you mentioned Charlie excellence. It's like that is the precision of someone who's. But I think I, and correct me if I'm wrong, Charlie, I think what Charlie's saying is like, if you didn't know Mark Guiliana personally, would you didn't know his work? Would you think, oh wow, these are some jazzy guys playing behind? The way?

Not necessarily. Yeah, yeah. I would say partially. Certainly how it's produced, how it's mixed, the the the prominence of the snare is much more a sort of rock pop kind of thing for sure where the snare really takes a back seat in so many styles of jazz. Probably not in marks playing, but amongst many jazz drummers, you know they're playing top down, right?

It's not all kick snare. For sure, yeah. The only thing that might pop out is if I hear a tenor saxophone. I mean, just like with Terrace Martin, I'd be like, who's that? Because there's just not a lot of saxophone. Sure, in. But but Castle. Nearly enough. We need more by the way. 80s style saxophone breaks.

Right. But Castle on this record is, I don't know about purpose. Like he's playing less for sure jazzy than almost anything I've ever heard him on. And Tim Lefebvre is a great base player, but I mean, he's not really. He can play jazz, but he's not a jazz. I know Tim, and like, he's there. It wasn't going to be like Rudy.

Rogers or something? Yeah, no one had to tell him like I'd he's off the, you know, the Ron Carter lines or whatever. So I almost wonder if, like now that I'm thinking about that Sting record, it was as simple because like Branford Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland were both playing in the same band when Sting took that, but the rest of it was not like this. Where was the whole band?

Omar Hakim was really more of AI mean. He's not. He never was really a jazz first drummer. He could play jazz, but that wasn't his thing. And Daryl Jones was playing bass on that with that record. So it was kind of like a combination. Certainly a couple of guys that could go. I wonder if Sting and if Bowie too were like, all right, I'm going to get jazz players, but I'm going to get at least a couple of them that are not like jazz first kind of players, you know all.

Right. Hold on. I just want to find what you're talking about here. That's not the one I was talking about. That's that's that's Jazzy. That's what he was like. He got a little too confident. Shut up, Sting. Love you Sting. Or My Funny Valentine. I've Yeah, But. Yeah, it's it's dangerous for a pop artist to get too jazzy, honestly.

I mean these these if I think of a like a big pop artist who who who made a a fully fledged jazz album, one of the things that comes from my mind is Andre 3000, formerly of Outcast. 100%. Who who a few years ago released this instrumental album anchored by his improvised flute playing called New Blue Sun.

And it's very, to me, it's, it reminds me of like Hubert Law's CTI records from the 70s or, or maybe even Youssef Latif or, or kind of mystical exploratory jazz. And, and that was a huge, you know, for him to do that was a huge swing for the fences and, and it actually paid off remarkably. And he got a lot of, you know, acclaim for. What album of the year at the Grammys? Yeah, it was his first album in how many years too? Or like sense. 20 years, yes.

Yeah, 20. Years. But would you consider that a jazz album? No, Look, I'm gonna go back to my online. Get on yourself. Box mid mid 80s. Yeah, I mean, more certainly those those people he were playing with are a lot of them are from the jazz world, Carlos Nino and and Nate Mercer or have jazz training.

But yeah, I would I wouldn't fire. I wouldn't put it in in Tower Records under jazz necessarily. But but I'm, I'm bringing, I think I'm bringing it up as an example of, you know, take it would take a lot of a lot of Hutzpah for, for a big pop star to say, I'm going to, I'm going to make an album that's that's like truly a jazz record.

It would, it would it would require a lot of faith for your for your audience to go there with you. So I think it's more frequent for people to do their sound and have it be enlivened by by jazz musicians. People who try to go and really cite jazz from being like a bigger pop star in another genre, that that approach has been tried many times and it often backfires.

Like I think about Christina Aguilera had a record in 2006 called Back to Basics and, and the title tells you exactly what you're going to get. You're going to get some swing. And I actually think there's some really cool stuff on that record, but. She is like an Andrew's Sisters inspired track. Way back to basics.

Yeah, you never want to go full. Rod Stewart Exactly. There's a certain amount. It's like, oh, so now you're like, now you're doing like Vegas lounge singing. Is is the the translation that can happen? Well, everybody should check out Switched on Pop, one of the great music podcasts there is. OG and leader in our field.

So inspiring guys. Thank you, Nate. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you guys for chatting with us. See you in seven years, no. No, please don't. Thanks guys. Cool.

Why Jazz Musicians Love Hip Hop (ft. Switched On Pop)

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