“Peace, yo, and welcome to Jazzmatazz, an experimental fusion of hip-hop and live jazz,” proclaims Guru in his trademark suave monotone on the outset of the MC’s 1993 solo album. On the time, a wave of hip-hop artists headed up by A Tribe Referred to as Quest, Digable Planets, and Guru’s personal group Gang Starr (alongside producer DJ Premier) have been receiving essential popularity of unearthing and flipping jazz samples into their hip-hop tracks. In Guru’s thoughts, the subsequent logical step was to formalize the association by reaching out to unique artists whose music they’d been sampling – Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd, and Lonnie Liston Smith – and getting collectively within the studio.
Take heed to Guru’s Jazzmatazz Quantity 1 now.
Anchored by clean, rolling boom-bap drums, Jazzmatazz spotlights a roster of sax giants, trumpet maestros, and piano gamers who purchased into Guru’s idea by offering sample-worthy riffs that change into the melodic thrust of the album’s 12 tracks. (Most often, the musicians are additionally granted just a few prolonged bars on the finish of every outing to stretch out, improvise, and showcase their chops.) Early on, saxophonist Branford Marsalis infuses Guru’s “Transit Ride” information to navigating the New York Metropolis subway system with a fittingly taut high quality; the singers N’Dea Davenport and Dee C. Lee deliver an acid jazz sheen to “When You’re Near” and “No Time To Play” respectively (with the latter that includes vibes work from Roy Ayers); and Lonnie Liston Smith’s piano traces add the lonesome aura of the blues to “Down The Backstreets.”
A convincing concord emerges between Guru and the varied musicians, aided by the MC’s brilliantly economical move. Whether or not laying down compact braggadocio bars or quick cautionary character-based vignettes, the all the time unruffled Guru lets his voice change into a part of the observe’s temper. “Many legacies of brothers who get busy/ And I do it fluid ’til the suckers get dizzy,” raps Guru on “Loungin’,” backed by Donald Byrd’s overlapping trumpet traces. Nodding to the sensation of mutual respect that permeates Jazzmatazz, Guru shouts out “peace to the pioneers” and celebrates Byrd and himself as “the horn player and the dope rhymesayer/ Quite emotional and inspirational.”
Launched in 1993, Jazzmatazz made plain the potential of jazz-rap. Including weight to the concept, later that 12 months the UK group US3 have been granted carte blanche to pattern picks from the long-lasting jazz label Blue Observe’s deep vaults. (Blue Observe additionally repackaged its most sampled wares into the Blue Break Beats compilation collection, full with liner notes documenting exactly which hip-hop producers had repurposed the dusty grooves.) However hip-hop strikes at mild pace. By the point of Jazzmatazz‘s release, Dr. Dre was moving hip-hop toward a sleek G-funk zone with The Chronic and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle, whereas RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan striped New York Metropolis hip-hop all the way down to a fantastically grungy essence. Likewise, Gang Starr’s personal upcoming launch, 1994’s Laborious to Earn, changed the smoky jazz samples of 1992’s Every day Operation with an emphasis on weighty crunching drums and extra angular and summary chopped samples. These developments conspired to take some shine away from Guru’s experiment, however three a long time later, Jazzmatazz endures as a extremely listenable timepiece that nods warmly to an period when trendy rap cats and veteran jazz figures broke bread and have become musical kinfolk.
Take heed to Guru’s Jazzmatazz Quantity 1 now.
