What are the Connections Between Jazz and Hip Hop? Vol. 2

Peace yo, and welcome to Jazzmatazz

An experimental fusion of hip-hop and live jazz

I’m your host the Guru

That stands for Gifted, Unlimited, Rhymes, Universal

Now, I’ve always thought of doing something like this, but I didn’t want to do it unless it was going to be done right, know what I’m saying?

‘Cause hip-hop, rap music, is real

It’s musical, cultural expression based on reality

And at the same time, jazz is real and based on reality- Guru,  Jazzmatazz  Volume 1

Quite a few years ago, I had written an article called What Are The Connections Between Jazz and Hip Hop, which appeared on this blog.  The article was quite detailed, explaining the early origins of jazz and hip hop crossovers, and important records in the genre.  Looking at it several years later with fresh eyes, and ears, I realize there could be so much more done with it.  The piece did a fine job looking at the social impact, and musically how it connects with jazz, however there were a few missed opportunities. In all  honesty, trying to quantify how jazz and hip hop as far as genre is futile, because it’s just as Duke Ellington  infamously said “there are only two kinds of music: good and bad”, and that’s  vague and subjective, but that’s the genius of the observation. For example for some Kenny G (who can really play– look for the album Wizard Island by Jeff Lorber as just one example, or a young Mr. Gorelick jamming on  the Freddie Hubbard blues “Povo”, a classic funk vehicle that’s influenced everyone from Christian McBride, Kirk Whalum and Norman Brown for example) but the albums he makes as a solo artist in my view are corny as hell–  Others love it.  

There’s a hilarious jazzmemes short called Kenny G destroys Giant Steps where someone super imposes the chord changes over a poorly shot audience video of him doing circular breathing as a signature party trick, it’s nothing for me compared to Clark Terry, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Nat Adderley and Bennie Maupin  and George Coleman, they just did it better, in my view but I respect the technique in either case because that is quite difficult whether it’s Gorelick or Clark Terry. 

In the context of hip hop for certain folks, Tekashi 6x9ine, Fetty Wap and Cardi B move people because it speaks to them. There’s trap that’s actually really awesome and cool, but late 80’s and 90’s into early 00’s hip hop just speaks to me, especially as an elder millennial. That in itself is startling because hip hop is already 51 years old.  Whereas in jazz  between 1959-1969 the growth on recorded media is stunning. In hip hop it is even faster. According to Chuck D. the incredible art and music scholar who is most known for his Public Enemy and adjacent records, a generation in hip hop is every 5 years– He  bases this  on whatever drugs are  popular at the time and expounded upon in the music.  

However for some hip hop fans, these early jazz and hip hop albums were considered too didactic  for some because they diluted the message of the streets. Musicologist Justin A. Williams argues in his thesis The Construction of Jazz Rap as High Art And Hip Hop Music this very point explicitly.

There are things I missed in the initial article that need discussion,  based on this very concept.  Early albums in the genre, and experiments like Max Roach and Fab Five Freddy’s 1982 collaboration, Miles Davis’ Doo Bop, overlooking critically important albums like 1990’s Back On The Block by Quincy Jones, Greg Osby’s 3-D Lifestyles  from 1993 on  released the same year as US3’s Hand On The Torch, representing the first  examples of this, however these albums also created life changing moments for some fans, but especially within the lens of the white consumers of the music. A huge demographic in the so called “boom bap” era which Williams argues in his thesis is a part of the golden era of hip hop spanning 1989-1993.  This article will focus on that era specifically, however a bit of context before that is required.

Bebop, and hip hop  are inseparable.  In 1983, the notion of this was completely new. It certainly was one of those “ok boomer” moments, which as open as some of these fans were, they didn’t “get it”.  When so-called “bebop” music was created, it was born out of a desire for Black musicians to see the music elevated on the same level as  Igor Stravinsky, Beethoven and tin pan alley standard writers such as Irving Berlin. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine and Max Roach had worked  extremely hard at their craft; simultaneously they kept the music soulful and never far from feeling.

It was reactionary to the timbre of the times, white musicians appropriating and mocking the innovations of Black artists (sounds a lot like current times, doesn’t it well? the more things change they stay the same) borne out of fear of the “other” and jealousy.  Scholars such as Edward Said, Bell Hooks, Greg Tate, podcaster Ricardo Ignacio have observed.  It’s a fear famously imprinted in the film Birth Of A Nation, Blacks portrayed as lazy, horribly stereotyped the same way as every other ethnic group has experienced in the United States.

Jazz purists are a weird bunch as I alluded to in my previous article Why Does Kind of Blue Endure, and I can laugh about it now because I vividly recall when I was 12, 13. and 14  right when these records came out.  I was pretty much a “Wynton Marsalis Jr.” (the young Wynton mind you, who was strongly opinionated about what was and wasn’t jazz, well he is still opinionated, but far more open, and the one time I met him, we clicked right off.   It was  hilarious, if it wasn’t hard bop or didn’t swing, I didn’t want to deal with it.  This personal antidote is fitting in how it connects to jazz and hip hop. 

Fab Five Freddy collaborating with Max Roach sparked the beginning of a beautiful marriage. The jazz purists at the time were miffed that Roach went to collaborate with the early  hip hop pioneer because they felt  playing anything other than bebop was blasphemous.  They forgot that he had also paved the way with similar breadth in relation to the civil rights movement with We Insist!, Drums Unlimited and Members Don’t Git Weary.  For the master drummer and educator, the parallels were clear, hip hop was born as much out of the struggle of  African American people, as jazz was, music and art programs were cut, leading to the necessity of the inner needing a new way to express themselves. 

For Fab Five Freddy, Questlove , Q-Tip and others of that generation the combination of jazz and hip hop was an enlightening moment.  They witnessed their parents favorite jazz musicians collaborating with an early hip hop game changer that represented a melding of styles not heard on that level.

The issue that bothered the older generation who grew up  listening to Roach, was because hip hop artists were conceived as delinquents.   They  defaced property with graffiti as a reaction to the riots in response to the urban decay of the South Bronx in the 1970s.  They were hoodlums as far as both lower and middle classes were concerned. However it really wasn’t as dire as a lot of the older generation thought–  As Chuck D, and Ice-T have both noted in interviews, dance battles were an alternative to violence for gang members to settle differences.

 It was a living and breathing music that told the reality of experience.  Donald Byrd also saw this connection deeply, and in a 1994 interview Guru conducted with the trumpeter/composer and educator sampled in and excerpted in the first Jaźzmatazz album, he expounded on this.  Byrd  stressed that hip hop was a music critically important to discuss issues on the street– poverty, the inability to get a job,  and lack of upward mobility.   For some who ended up on the streets, their parents’ hopes of moving from the south to the north between 1910-1970 were dashed.  Black families who moved into apartments,  settled for jobs backbreaking manual l typical jobs with the hope of providing a better life.  The practice of redlining, limiting geographic areas in which Blacks were able to live, caused much frustration.  The dilapidation of the South Bronx, with a massive population decrease due to an accumulation of factors. As the decade of the 1960’s was winding down– the judicial system mandated that transportation via bus create an equal playing field.  However due to rising racial tension, parents relocated their children to suburban areas, creating a mass exodus away from the city.  This lead to the construction Co-Op City, one of the biggest housing projects in New York.  The demographia article City On A Hill: The South Bronx: From Urban Planning To Victor states:

The city’s decades old policy of rent control left building owners virtually no incentive to upgrade or even maintain their properties. As housing became less desirable, vacancies rose.

In what former Bronx borough president and Congressman Herman Badillo called “the worst mistake of all,” local and state authorities built Co-op City, the nation’s largest multi-family housing development in the extreme northeast corner of the Bronx. Co-op City is comprised of approximately 35 high rise (24 to 33 story) buildings with 15,000 units. At a time when households were concerned about security, Co-op City provided a much safer environment. The attraction of Co-op City further added to the apartment vacancy crisis.

For years, the city had been increasing both business and personal taxes. Among other things, this led to a substantial reduction in manufacturing in the South Bronx.
In the late 1960s, the city adopted a policy of concentrating welfare households in the South Bronx, where vacancies had become the highest in the city.

Lump sum payments of from $1,000 to $3,500 ($4,500 to $15,500 in 2000$) were available from the city for relocation to low income residents. This provided some residents an incentive to burn their own buildings. In 1970, the national per capita income was $3,900.

These events all together led to the denouement– absolute chaos.  Robert Worth states:

… the Bronx began to burn in about 1970. Some of the fires were accidents, the inevitable result of decaying electrical systems. Many were set by landlords who would then collect the insurance money. Often they would sell the building–whether it was still inhabited or not–to “finishers” who would strip out the electrical wiring, plumbing fixtures, and anything else that could be sold for a profit before torching it. “Sometimes there’d be a note delivered telling you the place would burn that night,” one man who lived through the period told me. “Sometimes not.” People got used to sleeping with their shoes on, so that they could escape if the building began to burn. 

From the results of these riots, came the song “The Message” in 1982 from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5. The song was based on the 1980 New York Transit strike, and talked about in detail the challenge of poverty. For Melle Mel, one of the original members of the Furious 5 only before the group disbanded. The song transcended Hip Hop and the voice on the track was Duke Booty,  a percussionist for Sugar Hill Records and it was the first time that his voice was captured on record. 

The first track that broke the dam wide open for jazz and hip hop was “Rockit” from 1983’s Future Shock by Herbie Hancock.  However the album faced a huge problem– each time the keyboardist had explored a new direction, much like Miles Davis; he faced a backlash.  At the time the album was being presented to Columbia, for the second time in ten years, just as they had with Headhunters in 1973 the label threatened to drop him.  From Hancock’s 2005 autobiography Possibilities:

When we finished the first cut of “Rockit,” Tony and I took it to David Rubinson. We played it for him, and he made a face like he’d eaten a lemon. “Oh, man,” he said. “Do you really want “Oh, man,” he said. “Do you really want to do this? Come on—you’re Herbie Hancock!” My mouth fell open. Here I thought this new direction was the hottest thing going in music, and I was lucky to be on board in its infancy. And David thought it was somehow . . . beneath me? I couldn’t even get my head around that. I was disappointed that David and I were so far apart now on our musical vision, primarily because even though he wasn’t producing my records anymore, he was still my manager. so I was really going to need him to support the new record. But David wasn’t the only one who had doubts. One day in the studio I played a couple of tracks for Bryan Bell. Bryan and I were coming to the end of our partnership, too, but he was still working with me as we were recording Future Shock. When Bryan listened to the tracks, he said, “You know, Herbie, your fans might not like this.”

The track was instrumental in creating a new subgenre.  The keyboardist was made aware of the Brooklyn group and production team  Material, lead by the great bassist Bill Laswell, Michael Beinhorn and turntablist Grand Master DXT.  Hancock was initially inspired by the track “Buffalo Girls” by Malcolm McLaren and saw the potential within.  They had sent tapes of the tracks they had created and Hancock added keyboards from his Hollywood home.  The track was also historic for it’s strange, creative video which featured mannequin robots, directed by Godley and Creme of 10cc fame.  MTV did not have Black artists it’s rotation in videos except for Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and “Electric Avenue” by Eddy Grant.  Hancock was only featured on a video screen.

Returning to the subject of Donald Byrd’s 1994 interview with Guru, the trumpeter and emcee discuss the following:

Byrd:

This rap thing

It’s a part of the– the whole Black experience

That when you, like he said, Keith, when you wrapped up and frustrated and you got all this inside, it’s gonna come out

And regardless of what people think

That wha— what you been talking about now, the reason this music is so great and everybody wants do it

And because what, it’s a living music

And what, it’s given the people a chance to express themselves like yourself

You got something to say, you wanna get it out

And this is not just lyrics, you’re talking about literature

You t— you talking about saying to get in a message to people

And that’s what it is and you can’t suppress that

And that regardless if they don’t play it on the radio or they don’t play it like that, it’s still gon’ be heard (Mmm)

I mean, there’s a network

In both jazz and rap, th— there’s been times

In the— in both of the eras of the music that t— the industry tried to change it from its classical roots

Guru:

See like— see like we’re the type of rap group when we rock shows, we rock shows, we don’t use that

Just because that’s came out and all the groups want to use that now

No more turntable, or if the— if the DJ’s up there, he’s not really doing nothing

You know, he’s just scratching over, over the, uh, th— that

And basically what we do is press some instrumental tracks to everything we do

Because when rap started, rap started with—

What they did was so ingenious to create a whole form of urban style music from just two turntables and two microphones

It’s important to go back to Quincy Jones’s 1990 album Back on the Block as far as one of the first jazz and hip hop cocktails to my knowledge that discussed the realities of the street in a hardcore manner. 

The  seminal album was the follow-up to 1980s The Dude and was the first solo album of the producer/arranger/composer since his work with Michael Jackson from 1979 to 1987  when the immortal trilogy of Off the Wall,  Bad and Thriller were created. The objective of the record was to present direct lineage and connect all Black music that has been expressed through West African traditions for two decades centuries prior. The album featured some of the greatest jazz artists of all time including Ella Fitzgerald, Al Jarreau, and one of her last recordings Sarah Vaughan George Benson, Take 6, Chaka Khan, Herbie Hancock, Ice T, Melle Mel, Big Daddy Kane, Siedah Garrett and many others. The title track is legendary for bridging the gap between jazz and hip hop by having the three icons spit barsthe connections between jazz and Hip Hop and also their own stories. 

Iced T’s verse  in particular, was the most interesting because originally the rappers were supposed to have 16 bars each and Ice portion lasted 28 bars.  This can be thought of the same thing as a jazz soloist taking more choruses on a blues or bebop standard because the feeling is so good.  The album is widely considered one of Quincy Jones biggest successes and his own personal favorite album for many years until his passing. It doesn’t quite have the didactic quality because it is such a natural organic integration of all Black music that had come in the previous years and centuries.   Below is Ice-T’s verse:

Ice-T, let me kick my credentials

A young player, bred in South Central

L.A., home of the bodybag

You wanna die, wear the wrong color rag

I used to walk in stores and yell: “Lay down!”

You flinch an inch – AK spray down

But I was lucky cause I never caught the hard time

I was blessed with the skill to bust a dope rhyme

All my homies died or caught the penzo

Lost their diamonds, cops towed their Benzos

Livin that life that we thought was it

Fast lanin, but the car flipped

I’m not gonna lie to ya, cause I don’t lie

I just kick thick game, some people say: why?

Cause I’m back on the block, I got my life back

So I school the fools about the fast track

I get static from the style of my technique

Profanity, the blatant way in which I speak

But the Dude knows the streets ain’t no kiddie game

You don’t know the Dude? Quincy’s his first name

He told me: “Ice, keep doin what you’re doin, man

Don’t give a damn if the squares don’t understand

You let ’em tell you what to say and what to write

Your whole career’ll be over by tomorrow night

Rap from your heart, and your heart’s with the street

Rap on my record, man, Kimiko, send Ice the beat”

The Dude is def no doubt, what can I say?

The man can roll with Ice-T or Michael J

In comparison as great as Guru’s Jazzmatazz is, and albums like Buckshot LeFonque and US3’s Hand On The Torch (the latter in spots they didn’t quite capture the spirit of jazz and hip hop in the ways that fans of either would have expected. For example, Miles Davis had once again wished to capture the vibe of the street with Doobop  much like he wished to capture a new Black audience 19 years earier with On The Corner.  The recording produced by Easy Mo Bee was one of the earliest attempts after Back on The Block to attempt to fuse the two musics together. 

As problematic as the term Fusion is; it is apropos for the fact that in the introduction of which Jazzmatazz Vol. 1 is quoted at the outset of this article. It was definitely something that was a new experience. As Easy Mo Bee  explained in his interview with DJ Vlad that was a creativity in Hip Hop that hadn’t been seen then or now.  Also the producer had considered the work his greatest achievement. At some point in 2015 the producer was to do a remix project of Doobop which featured people like Alicia Keys and and D’Angelo however that project never came to pass. I remember vividly   a lot of controversy surrounding the record and the Jazz community  was feeling as it had since the mid 80s, Miles had just continued to sell out and the hip hop community wasn’t quite sold on the record as it didn’t have the sophistication and grittiness of the street. 

Donald Byrd’s name yet again surfaces from the use of the title trackStreet lady the famous 1973 title  track that was a follow- up toBlackbyrd in 1972 originally intended for trumpeter Lee Morgan. What was interesting about this period  was  that the musicians of this time period  fusing Jazz and Hip Hop together were using the same sample base.  A lot of these came from classic Blue Note, Prestige or Verve albums. As an example Idris Muhammad’s immortal break on “Ode to Billy Joe” by Lou Donaldson on the album Mr Shing-a Ling from 1967 has found its way into so many sources even the Christian rap group Gospel Gangstas and their album 1994’s Gang Affiliated  which is controversial in itself for using the N word on many of the tracks.

A Tribe Called Quest was one of the groups during the era like De La Soul who provided socially conscious rap that integrated the sounds of jazz naturally into its sound. 

Q-tip’s (born Jonathan Davis)  father was a jazz fan and the emcee discovered all these great albums growing up and digging into sampling using the Akai MPC. At that point in the early 90s there were many sought after records that hadn’t seen circulation for many years, for example the Beastie Boys sampling the title track from Jimmy Smith’s Root Down causing a high demand at the time for the record. One of the tracks on the album The Low End Theory,  the smash ”Electric Relaxation”  used a sample of organist/keyboardist Ronnie Foster’s “Mystic Brew” from his 1972 debut Two-headed Freep.   At the time, this was one of the most sought after Blue Note albums for crate diggers. For “Can I Kick It?” The opening drum bars from Idris Muhammad (then Leo Morris) fon Dr. Lonnie Smith’s cover of “Spinning Wheel” from Turning Point.

Ron Carter’s late son Myles, a huge ATCQ fan convinced his father to participate on the record, because a lot of  Mr.Carter’s iconic bass lines have been sampled on hip hop records. One of these basslines is an eight bar break featuring  the bassist’s slippery glissandos, behind a back beat from Jack DeJohnette following  Hank Crawford’s alto solo from the tune Big Sur Suite off the album Higher Ground in 1973. This snippet ATCQ  used in addition to the Beastie Boys and many others. The stipulation that got Carter to participate on the record was that the music had to feature clean language among other things.  This example is critical vis a vis the use of samples because in that era, artists were finally being compensated.  The United States district court case Grand Upright Records, LTD vs Warner Brothers Records, LTD was a landmark in music history following Biz Markie’s unauthorized sampling of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again, (Naturally)”

Below is a post from the Facebook group For The Love of CTI regarding Carter’s involvement with ATCQ:

Ron Carter’s son Myles, who passed away in 2018, “says that he can identify his dad’s bass playing immediately…One such sample was Dr. Dre’s hit tune, “A Ni**a Witta Gun,” from his classic 1992 gangsta rap album The Chronic, where the rapper used Ron’s bass line that opens organist Johnny Hammond’s song “Big Sur Suite” from his 1974 Kudu/CTI album Higher Ground that Bob James arranged.

“Myles heard it on the radio and told me Dr. Dre was an up guy,” Ron said. “So I bought the album and found the track where he sampled my eight-bar bass line that he used over and over as the backbone of the tune.”

Hammond’s tune was owned by Creed Taylor’s publishing company that subsequently contacted Dre, his publisher and lawyer. They negotiated an agreement. “The album sold about 3 million copies, and I believe our share was in the neighborhood of $70,000,” said Alan Bergman, Ron’s lawyer. Ron and Johnny split the proceeds.

“It was Johnny’s song and my bass line, so the bulk of the royalties went to him,” Ron said. “Johnny was in poor health at the time, so it came in handy. While what I received wasn’t huge, the settlement served as an announcement to the rappers.”

Even so, Ron wishes that he could have interfaced with Dre and his fellow hip-hop musicians. “Of all the music available in the world, how did this track get their attention?” Ron asked. “Plus, if they had called me, I believe I could have found something better for them to use.”

This article will continue in the near future with a third installment to cover Roy Hargrove’s contributions to the genre as well as J Dilla, Robert Glasper and DoMi and JD Beck.