What are the Connections Between Jazz and Hip Hop? Vol. 3

By the mid 1990’s, jazz and hip hop’s deeper connections to the mainstream blossomed.  Gone were the strange curiosities such as Hand On The Torch, by Us3, a British hip hop duo that through the sample or Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island” created the smash hit “Cantaloop”. 

The late trumpeter Roy Hargrove, in the late 90’s was already the most iconic player of his generation.   What the jazz press called the second generation of “Young Lions” spearheaded by Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Kenny Garrett, Mulgrew Miller, Jeff “Tain” Watts and others.  Wynton Marsalis  heard him at his Dallas, TX high school as a 16 year old and noted his formidable ability. By 1988, the trumpeter had attended Berklee, leaving the following year to go to the New School in New York City.  In 1991, he cut his first album Diamond In The Rough for the RCA/Novus imprint and by 1994 graduated to major label status first Verve album With The Tenors of Our Time.  While the traditional jazz media of the era, DownBeat, Jazz Times and Jazziz heralded Hargrove and his contemporaries such as Kenny Garrett, Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, Larry Grenadier, Mark Whitfield, Antonio Hart, Marc Cary for ushering in a continuation from the previous era of acoustic jazz (a huge flawed statement in itself)– all of these musicians would be exploring the not too distant bridge between jazz, soul, gospel and hip hop.  For example, Branford Marsalis’ classic Buckshot LeFonque project mentioned in the previous blog article, at the peak of the jazz and hip hop movement of the mid 90’s, featured Hargrove contributing to the live playing mixed with loops and samples.

The confluence of major contributors mentioned in this article, Hargrove, J Dilla, Ahmir Questlove Thompson, would convene on 2 major albums of the early 2000’s melding of  the improvisatory fluid nature of jazz, the rooted earth of the funk era, and topical slam and production influence of hip hop. Voodoo by D’Angelo, and Mama’s Gun by Erykah Badu are largely considered  the albums that defined an era for the Soulquarian collective.  It also shows that compared to self serving writing from critics; musicians and hip hop and more open minded jazz fans were ready for new directions, forgetting that musicians like Hargrove had been immersed in the music of the church, Motown, the jazz funk of CTI Records, 70’s soul, funk, R&B and also the hip hop of the era.

Hargrove took part in both the sessions for Mama’s Gun and Voodoo.  The Soulquarians spent a sizable five years at Jimi Hendrix’s famed Electric Lady Studios, in what amounted to a throwback to the days of the 60’s and 70’s where musicians would hang in a studio (or house) engage in overindulgence in substances, sex and God knows what else.  The group would watch old concert footage of Marvin Gaye, Prince, and others.  When the mood struck, the musicians would jam.  Much like the Miles Davis sessions that yielded In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, On The Corner, Get Up With It, and Big Fun copious amounts of tape rolled, and on two inch analog tape– a lot of music was recorded and edited into what would result in those two records Hargrove participated in and provided charts to. Guitarist Mark Whitfield recalled in an Instagram short from a recent interview that he was invited to the studio by the trumpeter to hang, and encountered D’Angelo.  For the track “Smooth”  on the soul crooner’s 1994 debut Brown Sugar, the guitarist and bassist Larry Grenadier, best known as a member of Brad Mehldau’s trio, were part of the rhythm section.  Whitfield, who has played a lot of hip hop-laced funk and R&B in the twenty six years since, credited the track as hugely causing a growth spurt as a musician.

For Badu’s Mama’s Gun, the production work of J. Dilla, (then known as Jay Dee) would pioneer a rhythmic revolution that has defined hip hop and jazz drumming to the present, the Dilla Beat. The beat originated from the late producer’s use of creating a more human feel from a drum machine.  From the Everything is Noise article A Scene In Retrospect: Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun, the Dilla Beat is discussed thusly:

Beyond Dilla’s direct input though, his sound is evident throughout. Questlove spent years recreating Dilla’s timing inconsistencies on his drum kit. He had to unlearn the precision he mastered for hip hop, which relied on machine-precision for its drums. He would delay his snare sporadically to create an off kilter, ‘drunken’ rhythm.  On the live kit, with Pino Palladino on bass, the result is infectiously groovy, and this sound is central to almost everything on Mama’s Gun. 

Ethan Hein’s blog article on Dilla’s sense of rhythm is defined as Dilla Time.  The beat is discussed in a more theoretical manner

“Straight time” means that the rhythms are evenly spaced and metronomic, like a clock ticking. (Think of a Kraftwerk song.) “Swing time” means that the halves of each beat are alternately stretched and shrunk. (Think of a Duke Ellington tune.) “Dilla time” means that there are multiple rhythmic feels simultaneously, some straight, some swung, some on the grid, some ahead of or behind the grid. (Think of, well, a J Dilla track, like the ones discussed below.)

You frequently see Dilla time described as “unquantized” or “drunk.” My favorite description is from the intro to Kendrick Lamar’s song “Momma.” As its heavily Dilla-influenced beat plays, producer Taz Arnold says, “I need that, I need that sloppy, that sloppy, like a Chevy in quicksand, yeah, that sloppy.” Poetic though it is, though, this is not accurate. Dan Charnas makes clear that Dilla was never sloppy in his rhythms, that their deviation from the grid was intended and meticulously executed. Dilla “misaligned” his beats because it sounds good.

Dilla Time has defined the work of Robert Glasper, whose group The Robert Glasper Experiment’s pioneering Black Radio album from 2012, which has had numerous follow ups has done more to create a common bridge between jazz and mainstream hip hop than any other album.  The Grammy winning Blue Note recording, featuring Mos Def (Yasiin Bey Erykah Badu, Bilal, and others connected new fans from the Black community that albums like Doo-Bop by Miles Davis failed to attract to jazz, and gave a window into it’s rich history.  Glasper is, the heir to Herbie Hancock as far as the keyboardist’s unique harmonic and rhythmic language, and his “Dillalude” series of compositions has brought the late producer’s rhythmic innovations to jazz in the most organic way in that  Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Jack DeJohnette, Jeff “Tain” Watts, it’s defined another two generations.

The Dilla flush is maintained today through the Gen Z cadre of drummers, an entire LA scene that is defined by Louis Cole,  his group Knower  the prodigious keyboardist, and drummer Chris Fishman,  DOMi & JD Beck, Nate Wood, it’s pioneer in jazz, Chris Dave and many others.  These will be explored in the next article on the contemporary evolution of jazz drumming.