You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Why Jazz Musicians Love Hip Hop (ft. Switched On Pop)

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

We're talking jazz influences in hip hop today with Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding from Switched On Pop. We dig into tracks from Kendrick Lamar (there's that TPAB acronym!), Common, Cautious Clay and David Bowie to surface the musical qualities that explain why jazz musicians love these artists. Plus - we explore the striking similarities between jazz and hip hop, especially in the recording booth, and why we don't hear more jazz in the popular music canon.Check out our Robert Glasper episode: https://youtu.be/hsJpuqtNH9oGet our newsletter for bonus stories that didn't make the pod: https://youllhearit.com/newsletter Start your free Open Studio trial for ALLLLL your jazz lesson needs: https://osjazz.link/yhi

I'm Adamanis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Music Explore. Explored. Brought you today by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio. You know your jazz lesson needs, Peter.

Yes. Special day today. Very special. A Vec guests. We've got some... Con guests. With the guest. And actually, these are...

Are these our first returning guests ever? I think they might be. Does it count returning if it's been seven years between... Absolutely. Yeah. Today on the show, we have Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding from the incredible Switched-on Pop podcast. Nate, Charlie, welcome.

Welcome. Thank you guys. It's great to be here. I'm honored. Seven years. We're back. We're older. We're wiser.

Look at us. Look at how far we've done. Throw down with you all. Yeah. Actually, I think they might be the second returning guest. The only other person we've had on twice is actually Ron Carter, who we're going to talk about in a minute. A nice little connection there. That's right.

All company. Nate Charlie and Ron, we call it. But when we were talking. to you guys about what we wanted to talk about on the show. We started talking about jazz musicians and being on... Well, let's be honest. We started talking about jazz because we got... Whenever we're talking to Nate and Charlie, we start getting nervous.

We don't want to talk about... Like, we revert back to... Let's talk about jazz. Let's talk about jazz. Like, come on. Minor, major sub, you know, like, we got to go back to our wheelhouse real quick. Because these are two of the most knowledgeable, it's true. Interesting and nuanced commentators on music, so it's super exciting.

But we did want to talk about... something that both of us might have some purchase in. And so we started talking about maybe when jazz musicians come into big recording sessions, big albums, and really leave their mark, a lot of what we're going to be talking about today is hip-hop, but we're going to go a little bit beyond that into some other areas. But yeah, I don't know, guys, maybe talk about your relationship to jazz musicians in the pop music that you love. Yeah, well, I think this is such a cool topic because it personally, it bridges my, two interests. I grew up listening to and playing jazz. And then 10 years ago, Charlie and I started

this podcast about pop music at the time. We were not familiar with pop music at all. And 10 years later, we've both become sort of recalcitrant experts in the field of top 40 pop. And this idea of these two worlds, which you think of as being so separate and so many. many ways, right? Jazz and pop. It's like they, they, they, I think are perceived as not having any overlap, but, but actually, when you think about, um, albums from Van Morrison to Joni Mitchell, to seey Dan, to, uh, to tribe called Quest, to Kendrick Lamar, uh, to even Miley Cyrus's most recent release. It's like all of these big pop albums have been shaped by the, the sound and, and, and, and, even more significantly like the philosophy of jazz.

So I'm excited to dig into this. Yeah. I feel like I'm here to, why am I here? I candy. Thank you. Why are we all here? I candy primarily. I honestly probably could answer that question better than what I'm doing on a jazz

podcast because I'm a pretty lapsed jazz musician as in I've played guitar for the longest time. and I did my high school jazz ensembles and I remember going to my first college jazz ensemble and getting a side eye from the drummer who was just like, you don't belong here. The last time I saw that guy, which was like 20 years later,

he gave me a side eye again. And you know who it is, but I'm not going to name names. I really like this person. So, yeah, I think I'm here to be the person that needs to be educated the most on my jazz harmony and to be the pop guy. Yeah, you know, if there's one,

thing that the jazz musicians are truly virtuastic at, it's gatekeeping. Right. Gatekeeping and then once we do get an opportunity to get into the pop roll overplaying and overplaying our hand and overplaying the notes. Well, as a guitarist, I'm really good at overplaying, so I can realize. I mean, not to get too professorial off the bat, but there's there's that inflection point where right around the end of World War II, where prior to that jazz and popular music were synonymous. They were in inseparable. Jazz was in many ways the first popular music, the first mass media.

And then there's this shift with the rise of bebop and this desire to create this art discourse and to create something that's like separate from the commercialism of the pop music world. And that sort of splinters those two styles. But then there are all these moments when they do come back together and they connect through these incredible musicians

and these incredible collaborations. Yeah. Well, one of the, I think, brightest moments, especially in my lifetime, was for that collaboration, was the early 90s. And specifically with Tribe Called Quest, we were talking about how influential Q-tip from Tribe Called Quest has been on the music of our life. I mean, it goes way beyond just tribe. It reaches well into our lives now with his production. But this is very special for us because like we mentioned we've had Ron Carter on the show before. Ron Carter, if you've been under a rock as a jazz fan, is on the Mount Rushmore of jazz basis. There might be three Ron Carter's on Mount Rushmore. And then Paul Chambers. And Paul Chambers.

No, but he is truly one of the most iconic. He's, I think he's in the Guinness Book of World Record for being the most recorded musician in history. He's on a lot more recordings than just straight ahead jazz recordings. And what makes, I think, Tribe and specifically Q-Tip as a producer so special is their willingness to incorporate all kinds of musicians into what they're doing and take risks. And so we're going to start the show here

with the track verses from the abstract from Tribes, one of their, I think, two incredible early 90s masterpieces, the low-in theory. This features Ron Carter, and this isn't a sample. They had the maestro himself come in and record it, and we'll hear a little bit of that. I had a dream about my man last night.

And my man came by the studio. And his name is Buster Rhybs in effect. Shaheed is in effect. Fife did all is in effect. Check it out. And give me my spec. There is. I'm moving and some moving because my mouth is on the motor.

Use the coast of the morning to avoid the funky odor. Damn, they brought him in on half sharp. He's going an F-H4 chord, man. Yeah, he's going to put some booty. Now I'm getting a funky and that's my duty. So again, that's not a sample. I mean, there are samples in there. The drums are a sample.

The guitar is a sample. But the bass is Ron Carter playing. And you can hear, if you isolate some of this, you can hear how organically he's playing. Here we go. Going down to that low E. Yeah. He anti-sampled him.

They're breaking up what he played. Which is a Q-tip thing, too. And he's doing all of those Ron Carterisms, too. What we've talked about timeless times here with the man himself about his signature styles. And then, you know, my favorite part actually of this whole thing is that he gets famously a shout out at the end. Many answers. Yeah. He gets called out on a song that half of the lyrics are callouts to just everybody who's in it.

It's like, Fife Diddle, Bob Power, the mixing engine. He's just like calling everybody out. But then Ron gets his own little section at the end. It's great. It makes me wonder about how this was even put together. I mean, oftentimes hip-hop tracks are going to be less live in the room. But there was this conversation that just happened. I mean, obviously those drums are sampled.

So are they like playing an MPC in the room and Vron's playing? and they're also doing the rap at this. I think it's a beautiful little compositional moment or improvisational moment that feels live, whether it is or not. Yeah, you know, I actually asked Ron Carter about this because I've always loved this track so much, and he, all respect to Sir Ron Carter,

proff Ron Carter, but he kind of gave me two conflicting versions of that. Yeah, we played together and you're like, no, no, no, I just came in and laid everything down already. How could he even remember? He's been on too many things. That's what I'm saying. I wouldn't expect it. Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, it's very much like, like I always thought of this, like, as something that they were sampled. It wasn't until we really broke this down. And I'm still not even sure, but it sounds like he's playing throughout the thing, which is I'm sure what they did. They came and played in the beat,

and then they were like, you know, it's F sharp, just do your thing over it. But it almost sounds like they left it outside of those places where they tapped it out, of course. Yeah, two quick things about this one. one it reminds me of another lyric from Q-tip on a track from the low-end theory he says

you can find the abstract that's him that's his yeah you know cog cogniment you can find the abstract listening to hip-hop my pops used to say it reminded him of bebop yeah and that's a cool line because it speaks to the the continuum that these two styles actually exist on yes as as different expressions of African-American culture at different points in time. Yep. And then Ron Carter makes me think, like, if you were in that Miles quintet,

that second quintet, it primed you for these kind of collaborations. All of those musicians, Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Ron Carter, I feel like they learned from Miles

to embrace that world of pop and rock and eventually hip-hop, because all of them, went off and worked with people from that world. So maybe there's that like imprint of Miles, you know, genre spanning philosophy on those, on those musicians. Yeah, and Miles had the, what was it, the doo-wop, do something. Du-op.

Dub-a-huh, yeah, which is right around this time, early 90s and stuff like that. That's a great point, Nate. Cool MoD. We've spoken on Herbie endlessly and his playfulness and his willingness to just do anything with and still remain. himself but also you're right the rest of that entire band wayne is out there on asia like you're just like weather report oh with weather report with jony mitchell um yeah incredible and the fact

that you mentioned bebob it really leans right into what we're going to talk about next with it which is a track from well i was just wanted to throw one thing out there because what nate said about the the lyric my dad with bebob the q-tip set on there i i think this is a big thing we we talk about influences, especially in hip hop from jazz. There's a lot of, like, Jay Dilla, his, I believe it was his father, maybe his mother, too. Like, he grew up listening to a lot of jazz. And of course, the connection with Detroit between the jazz scene, Motown, and then hip hop and beat making was like a connected line. You know, and there's a lot of these things.

Of course, his jazz music. I mean, for me, I grew up listening to jazz. He's a classical musician, but he had jazz records. But, like, you see that a lot, common for sure out of Chicago. He talks about that with, I think, his mom. So, like, that's an influence, you know, that's huge. A lot of, you know, hip-hop artists might have some neighborhood or familial connection to the jazz world. I think flying low, and I believe his, like, aunt, great-and or something is Alice Colstrain.

Oh, wow. I didn't even know that. He's got a relationship there. Yeah. Incredible. Well, Peter, you mentioned Common, and we've talked about before the incredible trumpeter Roy Hargrove. We did an episode on DeAngelo's Voodoo, which Roy

is all over that, and actually adds so much melodic and harmonic content to that album. And one of the hip-hop albums that we have queued up here is Commons, cold-blooded, from his album, Like Water for Chocolate. Same year as Voodoo

released. I don't know if it took four years, but... And Roy, again, all over this. I think it's good. I think it's good. How you digging, Ph. Man, that that's a chick right there, I'll tell you. What you say?

There is. Cold blood and cold, rough, rugged, rugged, raw. For you at york, y'all. You got the sea to the, huh, cold life, baby. Come on. All right.

There is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My little daughter started, nursery school, Brother Kahn, gotta make I move through silence and violence with

vibrance and violence with vibrance, And sign the time's with rhyme shit, this is timeless. Mind is a terrible thing to spill. Rap lives like dreamers seem to real. And then can wake up, superstar, with no acres out of. Travel in the world to see, baby, jazz paper. Streets take you. Back and forth like a shaker.

I'm a sleigh to the rhythms breaking off. I get the job done. Some days I want to take off. D.B., like, we ain't got no time for that. So to me, this is like you're talking about jazz influence. I'm so glad you said the word bebop, Nate, and highlight that because to me, this is all about, like, It's very much like the James Brown, the parliament connection,

in terms of the beat. Yeah, it's two and four, but it's more, boom. It's on the one. Yeah, and then all this stuff common, and for sure, Roy, obviously, but it's all like, pick it, dipa, da, ba, bo, bo, do, but do ba, da, da, do. Dili, it's so connected with the swing of bebop, of the lilt to the way he's delivering those lyrics, you know?

And then Roy is doing some, I mean, because it's like A minor, it's kind of just, what is it? like one to five. But Roy's like, he's giving it that jazz harmon. You know, that minor, minor 11 kind of sound throwing that kind of flavor in there.

Voodoo vibes. Very voodoo. I mean, this is, right. I think this is an extension of those DeAngelo voodoo sessions. I don't know where if it was a predecessor

or successor, exactly, but I think there was overlap. Yeah. I think that group of musicians, Amir Questlev Thompson, DeAngelo, Roy Hargrove, they called themselves the Sulkquarians.

Socrates. And they did a lot of projects. And clearly they had a lot of fun working together. And I agree this. I haven't heard this song since it came out. And it sounds really good. Yeah. And it's got that parliament sample on there, I think, which sets it up,

which is not a very, you know, funk and for fun. Like, it's not a super, like, you know, known parliament kind of a groove. but they almost put the... Oh, you've got it there. Oh, we've got to go. Went to the Parliament episode dropping. Yeah, we've got to do that.

Who's giving us that chicken scratch on the guitar? Those albums sound so good. Wow. Incredible. I think, too, Jay Dilla, like, we got it. This is going to be a through line in here, too, who... I can never, like, I'm never... I'd love to hear you guys' opinion.

Is he, like, the ultimate jazz musician of the MPC? or does he have nothing to do with jazz? I have no idea. But he fits him with this kind of stuff and is such a... He's such an influence even when he's not... I know famously on voodoo,

I don't think he's credited on anything, but everybody... And I know Roy told me, like, he was very involved with that. But, like, just the kind of, like, meteoric rise and then fading away because we lost him so soon. But, like, on how the beat was interpreted,

which has always been a big thing in jazz and far as you're going to pull back or you're going to push. And his kind of inner... You know, his concept on that was like actually way above jazz musicians, I think, in a lot of ways. Because he was so conscious of it and like playing around, like, what that did. I think for us as jazz musicians, we just sort of play behind the beat or play ahead of the beat sometimes sort of a little bit randomly. Oh, is that what you do?

That's kind of what I do. Well, let's move on here. I'm going to skip ahead just a little bit. And I want to cover just a couple of the newer, very, very new things. that I thought would be cool to talk about. The first one was a recommendation by you guys, and that's this track from Cassius Clay called Another Half, that features incredible jazz guitarist, Julian Lodge.

Yeah. Need another half like I need you. Not too many sober nights. I'm wound up tight, but you're the answer. You want to. good life and a little screw to change her mind the bulb is bright you're the answer they revel in the silence but we can't be alone we didn't get here intentionally yeah

how good is that so good? is a blue note album. This is from an album called Carpe, and this is, again, Julian Lajon guitar, but it's a lot of blue note recording artists here. Ambrose Akan Musayr is on trumpet. Emmanuel Wilkins on the saxophone. Joel Ross on the vibes. I think all of those people we've talked about on the show before, Julius Rogga, is on

the keyboard. Guys, what's your thought on this? One thing that immediately stands out is that one reason that we bring jazz musicians into the studio to record. more popular songs is that they're excellent and that they can, on the one level, you can bring a Ron Carter in and you're going to get like Ron Carter vibes. What I think is really interesting here is that Julian is an unbelievable virtuoso. His level of harmony, his speed, all of his stuff, whatever.

He can play anything. But I think that's part of why you might bring him in. And I think he's incredibly adaptive to what this track needs. He's playing sort of Neo-Soul and like a lot of actually sort of Hendricks which is not something you're going to hear on a Julian Lodge record.

You're hearing him play for what the track needs and that's why so many great jazz musicians make great studio musicians they can serve the song. Right, right. That's right. You had mentioned

Motown earlier and let's not forget that that rhythm section was a bunch of Detroit jazz musicians for the same reason. They're flexible, they're versatile and they're excellent. I like that. I think this album also i i first of all i i think it's just a really exciting listen and i encourage people to check out

the rest of it because um there there's other jazz elements that that kind of take you by surprise throughout the the album and it probably also speaks to the fact like like charley was saying that we also have a generation of jazz musicians right now who don't necessarily see the same boundaries between jazz and R&B, hip hop, that maybe were, we're kind of stronger in the past, those walls between these genres and maybe even more importantly,

I don't sense that a lot of contemporary jazz artists don't look down their nose at pop, which was the thing when I was growing up. 100% correct. I was like taking jazz, jazz classes and doing and doing jazz programs. It was like we were all kind of in unison being like, yeah, that pop world, that's not for us.

Right. You know, it's simple. Yeah, yeah. It's harmonically simple. It's structurally predictable. It's only, it's corporate, it's commercial. I think there's a more sort of holistic approach to music making now from a lot of, young jazz musicians is my general sense.

I think you're absolutely, absolutely right. And like, because I came up in that young lions period, that's why, like, I think Roy Hargrove, but others too, you know, Brand for Marcellus, Brad Meldow, Brad Meldow, Christian McBride, like that was a big deal when they broke out of

that young lions kind of like, no, no, that's not for us. We, you know, it's the number of notes, it's the number of court extensions that make something great. Is it swimming? or whatever, things that I think the younger players now just take for granted, like, no, we can float into these other things.

I'm like, Charlie, what you're saying? Like, we're not just bringing a jazz player because they're going to play bebop line on top of something. You know what I mean? Like, because they're skilled in a number of different, almost the way, like, the occasional classical musician can come in if they know how to play, like, with different grooves and stuff, you know they're going to bring a certain skill level to the party, right? And, like, maybe jazz trained musicians have kind of become that.

you know, those cogs that you can really put in and know are going to get executed well. Well, the training that is required to become a great jazz musician requires you to study an immense repertoire. And we're not talking, when we say jazz, it's such a loaded and complicated term because where are we talking about? Right. We've got over a century of music that we're talking about. Right. So like a great pop producer, when they're coming into producer record, they're thinking about what are we trying to evoke here? What is the emotion?

What is the feeling? In order to get that feeling, what references do we need to pull from? what eras, what sounds. And so a great jazz musician is going to have lots of different eras and sounds to be able to pull from to find the proper grammar to make a song come alive. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and it's a great lead-in to what we have coming up next

because one of the greatest artists, I think, alive on Earth today did exactly what you're talking about, Charlie. They wanted a flavor, and so they brought in one of the greatest jazz pianists alive on Earth today and had them do this. Ah. Yeah. Huge hit album.

Yeah. This is Kendrick from Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. To what a butterfly? To Pimp a butterfly. That's Robert... How do you pimper butterfly? Well, that's...

You got to listen to the album. Pulitzer Prize winning. That's right. That's right. Pimping here. 100%. That's, of course, Robert Glasper, who we just talked about

his Black Radio album and how influential that was. And I think speaking to just exactly what we were talking about here, Robert Glasper, who is, I think, either young Gen X or old millennial, but is of the generation where the sort of barriers between jazz and everything else have certainly come down. Yeah.

And that's also Teres Martin on the alto saxophone, who is hugely influential in sort of the behind the scenes for a lot of the things we're talking about here. Well, I think he produced this track, actually. I think he produced several of the jazz and otherwise tracks on this album. So I'd say like the sound and concept. I don't know exactly what was discussed between him and Kendrick. I know was obviously very involved with this being his album. But Terris, who's a major pop hip-hop producer,

was producing this track. And Robert Glasper talked about when he came into the studio, he said, what kind of vibe do you want? And Teres said straight up, Kenny Kirkland, Branford Marcellus, late 80s, like knew exactly the reference. And Glasper, by the way, nailed that. that shit.

Oh, yeah. Well, that was, if his wheelhouse had a wheelhouse, it would have been what was asked of him. It's great. And it's just so unexpected. It's a second track. I took the vocals out,

by the way, but it sounds amazing. It's a family show. My mom listens to show. But it's an incredible recording, and apparently Glassburg came in to just do that, but did several other songs on the album, which we can talk about. But yeah, guys,

to build a butterfly may be the prime example of this. I think we've done a little disservice by not playing the lyrics here because I think this is actually a really great example of what musical grammar are we going to use to evoke what feeling, right? And this song is basically this argument between two people who are just going nuts at each other, right? And choosing a sort of language of free jazz has this sort of feeling everyone's talking over each other. It's intense. It's like it's discordant. It feels very like an appropriate marriage between what he's trying to say. Right.

For sure. You want to play a little bit with the lyrics? Yeah. Mom, stop listening. Adam's mom. Like you God's gift to earth. Nigga, you ain't shit. You ain't even buy me no outfit for the fourth.

I need that brazil. I need a baller-ass ass ass nigga. Use a brand-ass nigger. Everybody know it. Your homies know it. Everybody fucking know. Fuck you, nigga, don't call me. This dick ain't free.

You're looking at me like it ain't a rest. Swin. Yeah. All right. I got to jump in here. Charlie, you know, I love everything you do, but I do feel like you've mischaracterized this track. Oh, thank you. I'm not the jazz head.

Please correct me. Well, it's not even about, no, about the lyrics. I mean, this, the, the female character in this, I, I, I, I've always heard as representing the voice of America, essentially, the voice of the United States history. Even though she's like just talking smack at Kendrick, she is actually like standing in for American history. And Kendrick is coming back at her and being like, hey, you've mistreated me and my people throughout our existence here. and now I'm going to take what's mine. You know, like the last,

if we, if we fast forward to the very end of his, of his flow, he says, you know, I pick cotton and made you rich. Now my dick ain't free. So it's like,

it's very profane and in your face and angry, but it's ultimately, I think, really, really a commentary on like, you know, racial injustice throughout American history. What is,

what are the, jazz references in the track doing for you? Like, why is using this language? Yeah, yeah, great. I mean, when he comes in and the way, the way, the way he says that first line, this dick ain't free. It's like he's, he's referencing this tradition, even though the language is very different, I think. He's referencing this tradition of like jazz poetry, slam poetry. Yeah. I feel like he's channeling. For sure. Gil Scott Herron. and the last poets and other kind of spoken word slam jazz poets.

Love Jones. And it's a medium that allows you to project that subversive, countercultural, political language, I think. Improvised. And musically, Peter, when you think of late. 80s, Kenny Kirkland. Oh, it's C minor, too, yeah. That's a class C minor burnout. What's the album

that comes to mind? Winton's. Black codes from the underground. Black codes from the underground, yeah. Wynne Marsalis is black codes from the underground. Which sounds exactly what Glasper in this rhythm section. I just want to shout out real quick. Brandon Owens on the bass and Robert Spots, you're right, on the drums. And the thing is, too,

like underneath, like once they go, once the brakes stop and they just start going and they're going with the back and forth between Kendrick and the other voice, that's all a blues underneath. Like it's a C minor blues, which is like the most typical key that that would be done.

Very Coltrane, influence, certainly up to... C minor burnout. C minor burnout. But I think the fact that it's a blues too, you know, filtering and now your commentary, Nate, and you're kind of, that lens with which you're looking at it is interesting that it's a blues underneath. But it's not the kind of blues. Most people would be like, that's not bluesy,

but the form is straight up blues. There's one moment that I I would love to listen to together that, I mean, I remember, this album came out, 2013, I think. And, uh, 2015. I remember, 2015, thank you. And I remember listening to it straight through. And the, I mean, the first track is, is stunning. There's, I think George Clinton introduces it and, uh, Thundercats on it. Yeah, Thundercats on it. And it's, and you're like, plunged into this kind of psychedelic sound world. And so first track, I'm like, wow. this is really, this is really something.

And then the second track is this, you know, yeah, Kenny Kirkland, burning jazz. And I was like, this is the greatest thing I've ever. It's like I'm in. No, me too, I remember. There's this moment. I'm sorry, I don't know exactly where it is. But basically, Kendrick and the drummer kind of lock into this. Yeah, I know where you're talking.

Hemiola rhythm. They're dividing the beat into rows of three. one, and they start doing these hits across the measure. I'm trying to do. What people that's fortunate like myself. Every dog has his day. Now doggy style shall help. This dick ain't free.

Matter of fact, you need interest. Matter of fact, it's nine inches. Matter of fact, see your friendship based on business, bitch, more bitch and your bitch. It's been relentless. Fuck forgiveness. Fuck your feelings. Fuck your sources.

All distortion. If we fuck, it's more abortion. More divorce. Cost of portion. My check with less endorsement. Let me go and resolve at the top of the room for. What you fix. Yeah.

I'm gonna puttin price pressure, bust him twice choices, devastated, decapitated the horseman, old America, you bad bitch, I pick cotton that made you rich, now my dick game free. I'm gonna get my Uncle Sam to fuck you up. I'm gonna get my Uncle Sam to fuck you up. Man, shout out Robert. Very cool moment.

Oh, sorry, Peter. No, no, no, please go ahead, because that wasn't clear. Yeah, so they're like, so we're in 4-4-1-2-3, but they're going one, two, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, for one, two, three, yeah, they're floating the three over the four.

Yeah, they're floating the three over the four. Yeah, they're floating the three over the three over. the four, which is, and Kendrick is locked into it too, which makes it so cool. And it's, it's a nice reminder of how MCs like to play with, with rhythmic displacement like this. And something we've talked about on the podcast actually is what's sometimes called the triplet flow in hip hop. Uh, groups like megos, for instance, they created, they created, they, they, didn't create the style, but they popularize this style of rapping where you divide the beat into triplets, a lot like a jazz musician. One of their best known songs is Versace, Versace,

and the chorus of which is just this triplet Versace, Versace, Versace, Versace, Versace, Versace, Versace, that's something that Kendrick does a lot, too. He'll drop these triplet flows into the middle of a verse. It just feels very jazz coded to me. Totally. And I think, too, like that, he goes to some bigger triplets too sometimes like some half-note triplets over a bar that almost feel free and then he on this he's very much soloing like a jazz musician over this

in that you're going like there's almost a syncopation between when he's going out of time and then going like locking into the time it's like a thing that's used as like to kind of get you off and even like that part that you just highlighted with drums and him and then you just deck him bang right at the top of the chorus.

You know, it's like everything is off kilter and then it lines up. But then you're starting on the next 12-bar journey of like, where is it going to go? It's super, super compelling and like just sets up the storytelling even without the lyrics. I mean, the lyrics takes it next level, of course.

A Pulitzer level. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I would say that even if this, if you would just sort of represent what he's doing as terms of a solo rhythmically with the way they're playing in the rhythm section, it'd be very musically compelling. Totally.

And we talk about here, you know, learning rhythmic vocabulary and transcribing snare drum solos. Shout out Open Studio. You know what I'm saying? And you can easily transcribe Kendrick's rhythmic solo here as a snare drum with maybe one or two pitches and learn a lot about, like, Nate, what you were talking about, these hemi-olos that he puts over. Yeah.

What'd you call me? I was right. But, you know, when you make art at this level, it has so many ripples. Obviously, this was such an incredibly impactful and influential album. And it influenced even some people that are not in the same genre as this or even close. I just got to throw out one thing on this. I just put this connection together. Maybe Nate, you and Charlie might know about this.

But hearing this background that they were asked to do the Kenny Kirkland kind of thing, Sting had a record called Dream of the Blue Turtles in like 83 or it. It was his first solo record after the police broke up. Brantford and Kenny. We're on that. Ran from Marsalis on it. Kenny Kirkland's on it. Omar Hakeem on drums.

It was kind of Sting's first sort of, I'm putting a jazz band together. Well, not, it was, no, it was actually, it was basically I'm going to get kind of what Charlie was saying earlier in terms of like bringing in really skilled musicians to do a number of things because they didn't do a lot of jazz.

But there was one track on that record, I can't remember what it's called, but they just start swinging out. It's slower than this, but same thing. And of course, Kenny Kirkland, no one had to tell him to do his Kenny shit because he's Kenny Kirkland. And they just, oh, it's do did lit,

do did lit, do de, Sting's not even on it, or maybe he's playing guitar or something. And then they're like, bab, bab, boop, boop, pop, pop. It's this kind of weird British. And then all of a sudden, they're like, spang, bang, bang.

And they just start to... Yeah, and then Kenny's just sort of going crazy like this. So that's a little... I don't mean, I don't know if Kendrick had heard that or if Teres Martin, for sure, would have known it. Probably. So that's kind of like dropping that in there into it, you know, an instrumental thing.

Well, yeah. And it's funny because then this goes on to influence musicians like David Bowie. So David Bowie's producer, Tony Visconti, says he and Bowie, Bowie were listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar, particularly to Pimp the Butterfly, as they were making his last album,

Black Star. We loved the fact that Kendrick was so open-minded and he didn't do a straight-up hip-hop record. He threw everything on there, and that's exactly what they wanted to do. So one night, I believe on the recommendation of Maria Schneider, I could be wrong about it,

but I think I heard this, that Bowie went down to the 55 bar, and for any New York dusty jazz musicians... The dustiest of the dust. R-I-P-55 bar. But the quartet that was there that night was saxophonist, Donnie McCaslin,

keyboardist Jason Linder. Incredible piano player. Tim Lefebvre. Say again? Tim Lefebvre. I'm to save you because I know that's a hard one. Tim Lefev. And then Mark Giuliana.

A friend of the show, Mark Giuliana on the drums. And that was really the beginnings of them starting to make this album, which is always, you know, final masterpiece, incredible album actually, Black Star, about his own death that dropped, I think, two weeks after he passed away. Yeah, yeah.

In the filler of all men, in the villa of all men stands a solitary candle with a huge. It's like a 76-year-old man's album. Yeah, unbelievable. But yeah, those are some really heavy. jazz musicians on that album on Bowie's last album and I think again

to your point like a lot of excellence Mark Giuliana one of the greatest drummers in the world and all of them everybody in that quintet you said who is the Ben Monda. Ben Monda. Ben Mondaard. Who wasn't part of the quartet

but I mean I wonder how is this unusual you guys think that a pop star a pop icon like a David Bowie or you know anybody that would bring we've already shown not to bring a jazz musician into either fill a specific need like a Ron Carter or to bring in highly skilled musicians

or Roy Hargrove to layer wonderful horn lines but to bring a whole working, because I believe they were a working group at that time. I remember seeing them in the Donnie McClassian. Like that quartet, they were associated to bring a whole band in to kind of craft a concept record around that, a whole jazz group.

I wonder if that's been done before. The one example that comes to mind is there's this group called Bad Bad Not Good from Canada and they have they've been enlisted by a few

pop artists like like Caliuchis I believe the Colombian American singer and a few other pop artists to come in and sort of create a track together on the fly and

and I think that's a good point what you just said Peter and going back to what Charlie said earlier, I imagine for an artist like Bowie, there's a real joy in being able to go into the studio and just improvise and jam and have this group of musicians who can respond in real time to your ideas and generate things on the fly because that's what they've trained for and that's what they're used to doing.

and not to say that pop studio musicians can't do this as well, but I think there's a certain, maybe another level of freedom or maybe pop musicians are more used to being just told what to play and playing it. No, I actually think, Nate, there's so much commonality between how contemporary pop writing happens and the improvisatory nature of jazz that, you know, we get to talk to a lot of pop stars. I just interviewed Zara Larson just before this,

you know, we just pop star. And, you know, the Swedes are particularly known for having a sort of sense of melodic math. There's a lot of perfection that goes into the work. But she's describing the process is so often,

you know, four people getting in the room, talking about, figuring out what are they all equally into. And then a lot of intuitive freestyling, trying things out. A lot of melody is written entirely through freestyleed improvisation and then

compose together. And then lyrics are put on top of them. Clearly, when you have amazing musicians, that whole process just goes faster, right? And the whole goal is working with a team of people that bring different things and they balance each other so that you get some kind of unique kind of outcome. That is so much of how pop records are made today. Actually, that has a lot in common with a great quintet. You're like, you get something unique with that set of players.

Yeah, and I think the thing, you know, even as technology has changed and the industry has changed and everything, one thing with jazz musicians, I think we've always had this as part of our DNA is to not be highly produced in the way pop artists would be because we're used to going in and doing a record in one day or maybe two days. I remember in the mid-90s when stuff, like we'd have three days to do it. That was a big budget thing.

So it's like how much, you know, how much, like you had to come in, the leader, or even if it was a group. I mean, I remember making records with Joshua Remmer where he'd come up with the charts and everything, and we'd already not really rehearsed, but played it on the gigs. And this was just about like, let's see how quickly we can.

Not to rush through it, but just to see how fresh we could get a complete take. And if we have to add a little bit, we will. Whereas if you bring it, I'm sure even with Bowie would bring it in these great jazz musicians who had done some pop stuff. I mean, all of them. But it's like, okay, let's sit. And I don't know how quick they did it. But like, it's uncomfortable for a jazz musician to sit for two or three months making, like we don't know what to do after the first thing. It's unnatural. Well, I think there's a technical reason for the two or three take thing is because when you're improvising in the

majority of the music that you're making is improvised. It gets stale very, very fast. So anything over five takes and you're just, you said all you can say, and it's very hard to just keep going and keep going. And so it's a lesson you have to learn when you start recording jazz in a studio, like, I'm ready on take one to just be fresh. And usually that's going to be the best take. Maybe not as far as like cohesiveness, but for the vibe and the energy of the band, everybody's fresh and in the moment. And that gets harder and harder with each additional take. And I wonder if this is like, maybe we've kind of hinted at jazz musicians overplaying, but it is something we're trained to do to respond and react.

We're not sensitive about that, are we? I mean, you're the one who insisted on the keyboard on the podcast. Noodles. Well, but think about it. Like, this record was recorded very differently than they typically, like, even like bringing Ron Carter, I can guarantee he was in the studio for about an hour and a half, laying that. And he might have laid that down on the first.

six minutes. We know that from our own experience. Yeah, yeah, we've worked with him. But I'm like, that's typically, that's sort of the the usual way of using a jet. Like, they can come in and do it quickly, they can hear it, they can lay down their part. I mean, Roy Harger was like, lays down and layers up those horn

lines so fast, you know. Not to say that he can't sit around and create more stuff after that. Yeah, I mean... What's wild, though, is, I just feel like you're talking about a great pop singer laying their vocals down. It's the same thing. It's like, Charlie. It's a great point. If you don't do it in the first five takes, you're going to blow your voice out. You kind of will have lost all the great

unique emotion that each phrase has. And then you know, you watch someone like Ariana Grande, layer her vocals. She's just like, great, I need this note, this note, this note, and she's just punching each one in, super, super, super fast, super intuitive. And that just, it feels like there's so much in common. Really, the big difference here is going to be that a pop vocal is going to be comped together. And you're going to get, of those seven takes, you're going to take one phrase, then another phrase, another phrase. So you get this sort of more pristine, perfect presentation, but the process is actually very similar.

For sure. And even, Charlie, that doesn't not happen on some jazz records as well, where they come together a solo if they can. I'm reminded here of this part of what we're talking about here, we did an episode recently on Stevie Wonder's InterVisions, where

Stevie's playing most of the instruments. We really broke news on this record because we felt like the world didn't know it. We talked about how great it is, how Stevie wrote these, it's a concept record. We really nailed it. We went outside the box. It's two middle-aged jazz pianists talking about Stevie Wonder.

But what's so... We've done the same episode. Of course. But what's so great about that music, and I think what's so great about, like, Ron Carter on the tribe called Questin about Robert Glasper on the Tibimpo Butterfly, is that we talked about the sort of wavy-sabi nature of Peter, of Stevie, playing the Moog bass, playing the drums,

and not doing the same thing every verse around is different. Every chorus is different. And there's something special. And I think the best pop producers and musicians recognize that. think we have our own prejudices as jazz musicians of like, well, it's robotic and it's programmed and it's on a grid and it's, you know, this and that. But I think that's, you know, Charlie, you know, it's not the case. It has, well, it often, yeah, it has its own aesthetic preferences, which often can be at odds with what jazz musicians might want, but there often is more

common language than you might expect, which makes me, I actually would like to go back to Black Star for a second if you don't mind, because I was surprised when, I think Nate, you recommended this album, and I've loved this album. I had never gone deep into who was playing, there was not one moment of me that had ever thought, oh, this is a jazz record. These are jazz music. So I'm especially curious for you guys, our open studio friends, like,

what is your impression of this music? Does it feel like the language of jazz? What's happening here? So I think especially, like, the key piece to this for me is drummer, Mark Giuliana, who has been on some real landmark modern jazz recordings

in the last 15, 20 years. And it feels like his playing. He made an album, a duo album with Brad Meldow called... I love that. It's a great album. But to me, there's not much difference between what happens there and what happens here. He's a little more restrained and it's not this through, like this through composed kind of thing. But it's the same style of playing.

It's the same, it's his same rhythmic sensibility that's going out. These like incredibly syncopated and broken down rhythms where you can hear like, just in the Black Star, and we hear the beat come in, that, da-da-da-da-da-da. There's this, like, off-beat, 16th note thing that's happening throughout, that to me is like a hallmark of Mark's playing and how precise it is. You know, like you mentioned Charlie Excellence. It's like, that is the precision of someone who's... In the filler of all men.

In the filler of all men. You know what I mean? But I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, Charles. I think what Charlie's saying is... Like, if you didn't know Mark Giuliani, personally, I didn't know his work, would you think, oh, wow, these are some jazzy guys playing behind Bowie. Not necessarily.

Yeah, I would say. Certainly how it's produced, how it's mixed, the prominence of the snare is much more a sort of rock, pop kind of thing. For sure. Where the snare really takes a back seat in so many styles of jazz, probably not in Mark's playing, but amongst many jazz drummers. You know, they're playing top down, right? It's not all-kick snare.

For sure. Yeah, the only thing that might, pop out as if I hear a tenor saxophone, I mean, just like with Terrace Martin, I'd be like, who's that? Because there's just not a lot of saxophone. Not nearly enough. We need more, by the way,

80s-style saxophone breaks. Right, McCaslin on this record is, I don't know about purpose. Like, he's playing less jazzy than almost anything I've ever heard him on. And Tim Lefevre is a great baseball, but I mean, he's not really, he can play jazz, but he's not a jazz.

I know Tim. And, like, he's, it wasn't going to be like, Ruben Rogers or something. Yeah, no one had to tell him, like, I'd ease off the, you know, the Ron Carter lines or whatever. So I almost wonder if, like, now that I'm thinking about that Sting record, it was a similar, because like Braver Marcellus and Kenny Kirkland were both playing in the same band when Sting took that. But the rest of it was not like this where it was the whole band.

Omar Hakeem was really more of a, I mean, he's not, never was really a jazz first drummer. He could play jazz, but that wasn't his thing. And Daryl Jones was playing bass on that, with that record. So it was kind of like a combination, certainly a couple of guys that could go create. I wonder if Sting and a Bowie, too. were like, all right, I'm going to get jazz players, but I'm going to get at least a couple of them that are not like jazz first kind of players, you know?

All, hold on. I just want to find what you're talking about here. That's not the one I was talking about. That's, that's jazzy. That's what he was like, he got a little too confident. Shut up, Stink, love you, stink. Or My Funny Valentine. I've, yeah. But, yeah.

Well, it's dangerous for a pop artist to get, too jazzy, honestly. I mean, these, these, if I think of a, like, a big pop artist who, who made a fully fledged jazz album, one of the things that comes from my mind is Andre 3000, formerly of Outcast, who, who a few years ago released this instrumental album anchored by his improvised flute playing called New Blue Sun. Yeah. And it's very, to me, it's, it reminds me of, like, um,

Hubert Laws, CTI records from the 70s, or maybe even Yusef Latif, or kind of mystical exploratory jazz. And that was a huge, you know, for him to do that was a huge swing for the fences. And it actually paid off remarkably. And he got a lot of, you know, acclaim. For what album of the year at the Grammys? Yeah. It was his first album in how many years, too? Like, since?

20 years. Yeah. Yeah. 20 years. Would you consider that a jazz album? No, look, I'm going to go back to my young lions. Come on your soapbox. Mid-80s.

Yeah, I mean, more, certainly those people he were playing with are a lot of them are from the jazz world. Carlos Nino and Nate Mercero or have jazz training. Yeah. But yeah, I wouldn't fire. I wouldn't put it in Tower Records under jazz necessarily.

But I'm bringing, I think I'm bringing it up as an example of, you know, a lot of Hutzpah for a big pop star to say, I'm going to make an album that's truly a jazz record. It would require a lot of faith for your audience to go there with you. So I think it's more frequent for people to do their sound and have it be enlivened by jazz musicians.

People who try to go and really cite jazz from being like a bigger pop star and a different other genre, that approach has been tried many times and it often backfired. I think about Christina Aguilera had a record in 2006 called Back to Basics and the title tells you exactly what you're going to get you're going to get some swing

and I actually think there's some really cool stuff on that record but she's like an Andrews sister's inspired track way back to basics yeah you never want to go full Rod Stewart oh god

yeah exactly there's a certain amount it's like oh so now you're like now you're doing like Vegas lounge singing is the translation that can happen well everybody should check out switched on pop one of the great music podcast there is. O.G.

and leader in our field. So inspiring guys. Thank you, Nate. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you guys. You're chatting with us. See you in seven years. No, no. Please, no. Thanks, guys.