Robert Glasper Defends Success

[Roland51]

http://www.usatoday.com/video/robert.../1722765095001

Robert Glasper is one of the my favorite Jazz pianists and his Black Radio album is an enjoyable listen. In this video he states his opinion on Jazz today. Do some of you agree on his sentiment or is it too much of broad stroke on the current Jazz scene.

[Mike Schwartz]

Glasper & Mitt obviously on the same page

[Mike Schwartz]

[S.Eden]

I'd like to know how the Billboard charts differentiate between the Jazz and R&B charts (if at all), since Glasper's album was #1 on the jazz charts at the same time it was #4 on the R&B charts. It's possible he's over-inflating his own importance.

[Lois Gilbert]

I think Robert is spot on. He's not negating the greats, but saying move over and make room. I also think hes saying let's widen our (collective) view of what jazz is today.

[S.Eden]

I also think hes saying let's widen our (collective) view of what jazz is today.

Seeing as his album was #1 on the Jazz charts, wouldn't that be considered a vindication of that point?

[HLJ]

Glasper Black Radio one of my favs of the year.Peace and all that.

[clinthopson]

Hip hop ain't jazz.

[steve(thelil)]

Hip hop ain't jazz.

What an insight.

While true that Hip Hop ain't jazz, throughout jazz's history, great jazz musicians have incorporated elements of other forms of music into their work. Glasper can play "straight" jazz wonderfully, and does at times.

And Glasper's hip-hop influenced jazz is quite good.

And it's jazz.

[Rob Damen]

It's an R&B record!

There's really not that much difference between it and what Jill Scott or Erykah Badu or many others have been doing for years. At least not to the point that I could easily say one is jazz and the other is not. After all, there's a reason Badu fits in well with what Glasper's doing ...

She's already done it.

If some of Bilal's and Badu's cuts from this disc came on the radio many years ago right after a Jill Scott track, and I didin't know ahead of time that Glasper was a jazz player, I question whether you or I would have been able to distinquish between them with the clear labels that this is jazz and the other neo soul, not because Glasper's found some innovative, undefined ground, as many have claimed, but that they really aren't that different from each other in the first place.

If anything "Black Radio" is an extension of that movement and tangentially the Native Tounges upon which it is all based. (Check out the recent Tribe Called Quest doc ... a nice piece of history. We owe more to Q-Tip and the boys than we think.)

It's only jazz because Glasper "happens to play jazz." Short of that, it's roots are incredibly easy to discern.

No harm in saying it. Just being honest about it.

I get the distinct impression that most people here and in jazz aren't that well-versed in the neo-soul movement of the late 90's, early 00's and beyond or hip-hop in general?

Am I wrong about that?

Don't have the 'great' Adele or Amy Winehouse without it.

The sad thing for me is Glasper's doing a version of neo-soul that's about 15 years old or so. I guess that's why it sounds so new to people. Viewed from this perspective, he's taking us back, not forward. Not a criticism, really, just an observation. It doesn't have that much to do with artisitic merit from my view.

Nonetheless, his critique of black radio with the use of an old musical paradigm makes him more like the grouchy, narrow-minded people he's supposedly trying to escape. After all, part of the neo-soul aesthetic 20 years ago was a rejection of black radio, not unlike a certain neo-bop movement that emerged just a few years before. Is it any accident that people like Roy Hargrove, et al, have made inrounds into the neo-soul scene or at least reflect its style in their music? And well before Glasper, no less? Intellectually, he has more in common with them than he thinks. After all, a lot of Glasper's catalog, and "Mood" in particular, are an extension of that movement, too. Dude played with Robert Hurst, which would connect him to ... oh, no ... can't say it.

Besides, the likes of Frank Ocean and Adele have shown that "neo soul" moved on from that sound years ago.

"Black Radio" is actually dated.

Well ... oh, well.

Still enjoying "Black Radio" and will continue to. Good music is good music no matter what it's date or what it emulates.

Cheers,

Rob

[Dr Dave]

Glasper Black Radio one of my favs of the year.Peace and all that.

HL, jeez, where you been?

[Roland51]

Yeah I have to say that his is a neo soul album if anything else. The only instrumental track on the album is "A Love Supreme" and that is the best track on the whole thing because it has that hip hop/Jazz vibe he is striving for.

Now as for his comments, the only thing I strongly disagree with is his notion that nothing new is being made and that it all sounds old. Now as Rob pointed out his album is old, extremely old for anyone who hasn't listened to neo soul when it was getting started this album does tread familiar ground. Not to mention that the European and Japanese Music scene has been producing albums like this for years and have made better albums at that.

[steve(thelil)]

In case I didn't make my ignorance clear enough in my earlier post, I'm unfamiliar with the album everyone's talking about and I was talking about the earlier Glasper stuff I'm familiar with in describing it as jazz with hip hop influences.

[S.Eden]

It's an R&B record!

True enough, and he never makes a substantive mention to the effect of it being a jazz album. I simply brought up the jazz angle because he is so quick to bring up the fact that his album was #4 on the R&B charts, but it was simultaneously #1 on the jazz charts. Which leads me to ask: Which fan base was really buying this album?

There's really not that much difference between it and what Jill Scott or Erykah Badu or many others have been doing for years.

Where do you hear the Jill Scott influence, out of curiosity? I followed you on most everything else but Scott was kind of a surprise.

Badu seemed to be kind of a latecomer to that scene, although she definitely brought up the level of sophistication, IMO. I was looking back more towards Sa-Ra (another conveniently nice fit on the album), Platinum Pied Pipers and Georgia Anne Muldrow. Even Dwele to an extent seemed to be influential on that scene. Maybe that's just my bias towards the prevalence of the new Detroit sound. But as you pointed out, you could go back further.

"Black Radio" is actually dated.

And now we come full circle to how I ended up posting in the Thom Jurek thread...

Black Radio creates an entirely new context for popular music in its near erasure of boundaries. It is the sound of the future -- even if no one knows it yet.

Either his personal catalog is pretty thin on recent R&B or he just really felt like going over the top.

Still enjoying "Black Radio" and will continue to. Good music is good music no matter what it's date or what it emulates.

Agreed, the music is fantastic, even if not a new thing.

[Rob Damen]

S.Eden,

We agree on most things here, but a couple of points to clarify.

On Glasper:

You might be right about him not saying it directly in that interview, but man, he really does imply it pretty strongly. In other interviews, he seems interested in poking people who wouldn't call it a jazz record, that jazz needs to expand its thinking. He's not asking neo-soulers or their fans to expand their thinking toward jazz, I'd say. From that, I'd deduce he's calling "Black Radio" a jazz record. I could be wrong, but that's been my impression.

Beyond Glassper, I don't know of anyone who's called it an R&B album in the way we're openly saying it here. It's been called a jazz record because of what he's played in the past, but not by what he's actually playing on this record. It's a fascinating little irony/enigma, a kind of pigeonholing that Miles, Tony, Herbie, et al, experienced, but I don't think ever quite escaped.

On Jill Scott:

To me, Jill Scott uses many of the elements used in Glasper's music which are akin to a lot of neo-soul: hip-hop beats wedded to jazzier chords couched in song forms. You can call it updated "Quiet Storm" music with hip-hop beats if you like. Like Badu, she uses jazz phrasing, too. Something like "Long Walk" wouldn't be all that out of step with most of "Black Radio," except perhaps for the better more expansive and explicit lyrics.

On Badu:

Badu is a first generation neo-souler. The people you mentioned are more second-generation coming in the 00's. Badu's debut came out in 1997. You're right, you can go further back to people like Prince, Mint Condition or, one of my all-time favorites, Terence Trent D'Arby/Sanada Maitreya. But most of their references are 60's based which I suspect is a big reason why the line is drawn where it is from a generational perspective. (On another note, I've oftentimes wondered why Michael Jackson never quite saw the light and tried neo-soul, if only for a track or two. After all, he had a more direct connection to that classic period than anybody, certainly more than Prince. But that's another topic for a another day and a dream - him being backed by the Roots - that'll never be realized. Might have failed; might have been interesting. Well, we'll never know.)

Jurek ... well, yeah, not much love from me either.

On other matters, we should also bring up the Roots. Perhaps the biggest smiles I've seen Glasper make have come when he's appeared on Jimmy Fallon's show. There's things by the Roots that come close to what Glasper does. No surpise that Badu's made appearances there, too. Then again, the Roots are an off-shoot, in many respects, of the Native Tounges, too. It all fits, I guess.

Cheers,

Rob

[HLJ]

HL, jeez, where you been?

Just hanging Dr.D peep in now and then.Peace and all that.

[Tom Storer]

Glasper's interview is perfectly frank. He's quite clear that his prime motivation right now is building a broad fan base, and he'll use the style that gets him that success. He loves jazz and he loves... whatever you call the other stuff. So why not?

He's very talented, and the bits and pieces I've heard from "Black Radio" sound enjoyable, but it's not really up my alley. I felt the same way about his jazz: sure, he's a fantastic player, one among many. His particular thing never really did it for me.

He came off somewhat self-satisfied in the interview, though, when he said that it was unsurprising and "normal" for him to reach No. 1 on the jazz charts with every new release. Might he be taking things too much for granted?