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>I know I'm in the minority but I wish he would do more trio
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disclaimer: this article slays me. hurts when breathe.
http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/music/robert-glasper-jazz-is-my-jilted-ex-9175952.html
Robert Glasper: 'Jazz is my jilted ex'
Pianist Robert Glasper was on his way to becoming a jazz great but wanted to be bigger than that, he tells David Smyth so hes made R&B his groove
Crossing over: Robert Glasper
David Smyth
Published: 07 March 2014
Updated: 10:52, 07 March 2014
Is Robert Glasper a jazz genius or an R&B softie? The Texan pianist has been straddling the two very different worlds of chin-stroking and love-making music for several years now, but its looking increasingly like hes picked a side and it wont please the jazzheads. I wanted a younger audience. I want to get global, I want to get bigger, he tells me. He hasnt just crossed over it sounds more like hes jumped ship, and thats rubbed a few people up the wrong way.
Im a musician reads his black, rapper-style hoodie as he lumbers over to meet me in a swanky Marble Arch hotel, as though that ought to be classification enough. The 35-year-old from Houston has just woken at lunchtime, hungover after a night out during which hed popped into Ronnie Scotts just to watch, and then one thing led to another. Somebody said, Is that Glasper? so I had to get on the stage, he says. Its a little surprising to hear that he still has his feet firmly under the table at Londons jazz epicentre, however, because in most other respects hes left that world behind.
It should be noted that as his interviewer, Glasper has chosen to take me, the lowly pop critic, away from Miley and Kylie duties ahead of his biggest London show yet. On his most recent albums, Black Radio and last years Black Radio 2, he has shifted from making complex piano trio albums to lustrous, smooth R&B, which sees him covering David Bowie and Nirvana and featuring the vocals of soul singers and rappers including Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Common and Lupe Fiasco.
He seems much happier making this kind of music and its not hard to get him talking about what he feels is wrong with the jazz world. Hes complained before about being knocked off the No 1 spot by Miles Davis, 22 years dead. When you play jazz you only reach a certain select audience and its the same audience every time, he says. Its like a secret society. The jazz audience doesnt get much bigger, theres a certain point where it just stops and thats pretty much it for the rest of your life.
Even before he changed his sound he was never a natural fit for jazz. A late starter on the piano at 12, with a gospel-singing mother, he was educated at Houstons High School for the Performing and Visual Arts alongside Beyonc. She was pretty quiet, I never really heard her sing at school, Glasper says. Despite winning a scholarship to attend Bostons prestigious Berklee College of Music, he then chose to study piano at the New School in New York, where he became best friends with the soul singer Bilal. Before he signed a record deal with Blue Note in 2005, the first new jazz musician on the label since Norah Jones, he was working as musical director for the rapper Mos Def.
I could have done Black Radio years earlier. It was on the cards, but I decided to wait. Now I think Ive proven myself musically, people respect me as a piano player, so now I can do what I want creatively. Nobody questions my ability.
The purists may not care for the new music, however, on which the players formidable piano ability willingly takes a back seat to a hazy, late-night sound thats strongly reminiscent of the neo-soul that Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and DAngelo made popular in the late Nineties. The piano hovers in the background for atmosphere, which is fine by Glasper.
Ive got to be honest, I dont necessarily have the need to solo at the moment. Ive been doing that so hardcore for 12 years. Now its refreshing that I can just groove and the audience is OK with it. Theres a time for showing chops, and then theres a time for groove. Thats the problem with a lot of musicians today they dont know how to sit back and chill. They think if you have it, you gotta use it no you dont. Its like if I was a black belt in karate, Im not going to go around knocking everybody out.
In concert, he now appeases the jazz fans with 20 minutes of chop-showing at the start of the show, followed by an hour-and-a-half of real songs for everybody else. Everybody else is the majority of his crowd these days. Im getting a different type of young person now. Before it was the artsy young person coming to the jazz show. Now its the young girl who would normally go and see Chris Brown or Lil Wayne, the regular people who dont know anything about jazz. I think when you start reaching the regular people, your music is really doing something. My goal is to be like Stevie Wonder, to make music thats on everyones iPod.
He compares his recent albums to Quincy Joness Back on the Block and Qs Jook Joint, from 1989 and 1995, which featured a mixed array of guest stars including Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Ice-T and Funkmaster Flex.
Hes great company despite his tiredness, often hilarious on the problems of the jazz world (Jazz is like this jealous ex-girlfriend Hey, where you going?) and happy to justify his musical choices all day. The way he speaks reminds me of Larry Davids fantastically blunt lodger Leon, played by JB Smoove, in Curb Your Enthusiasm.
When I ask him what he thinks Miles Davis would be doing if he were alive today, he says Collaborating with me! before Ive got to the end of my sentence. He gripes at excessive length about how long he had to wait to be the cover star on a jazz magazine, but seems much more content in this new world.
So much so, in fact, that at the 2013 Grammys he entered Black Radio in the Best R&B Album category, rather than Best Jazz album, and won. I had to choose one, you couldnt do both. Only certain people in the jazz world understood Black Radio. I chose R&B because the R&B world embraced it. It was something new for them and they loved it.
I speculate that the two albums arent considered jazz because of a lack of improvisation, yet he confirms that they were recorded in five and seven days respectively and largely grew out of jam sessions with the various guests. So if I didnt improvise, its not jazz? What about the hundreds of Billie Holiday tunes that have no solos in them? Wheres the line?
For Glasper, jazz simply means freedom. Its supposed to be the freeest music, yet its the most shackled. I think jazz is more of a spirit. His decision to use jazz as a springboard to go somewhere else might have made him a handful of enemies, but as he gazes out over a huge crowd at the Hammersmith Apollo, I doubt hell be dwelling on that. Im an outcast to a lot of people. But the fact of the matter is I dont mind being an outcast because youre going to respect me. You cant say Im not one of the top piano players. All you can say is you dont like what Im doing, and Ill take that any day.
The Robert Glasper Experiment are at Apollo Hammersmith, W6 (0843 221 0100, hammersmithapollo.net) on Wed Mar 12.
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