And fans of hip hop seemed to really appreciate this, as the unparalleled smoothness of a slick flow over a subtly swinging jazz sample was soon to be found everywhere.Īnd the great-grandchildren of jazz and rap’s fateful pairing are spread far and wide today. As Digable Planets iconically chronicled on hit ‘Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)’, these new jazz rap MCs did in fact sound ‘cool like dat’. Early hip hop live band Stetsasonic do display a true-blue jazz rap bop with 1988’s “Talkin’ All That Jazz” and Gang Starr’s Guru and DJ Premier came through strong with “Jazz Thing” not long after – both are undeniably ancestors of the jazzy hip hop hits heard all-over the shop only 5 years later, when the style was to hit heights of popularity. That winning formula can be more confidently credited to the hip hop groups of the late 80s.ĭe La Soul perhaps most famously adopted elements of jazz in trendsetting album 3 Feet High and Rising, although, at this point at least, they did not submerge themselves in the style quite as much as others. Listening to it now though it is obvious that this was not the particular blend that caught on. Maybe surprisingly, the earliest overlap of the two genres is owed to jazz’s veteran innovators rather than the fresh creative faces of hip hop, with jazz pianist Herbie Hancock enlisting DJ Grand Mixer D.ST to collaborate on his track “Rockit” as early as 1983. While their meeting could have been anticipated what would have been more difficult to predict is the longevity of their relationship, as jazz and rap’s matrimony in the 80s went on to conceive a truly prosperous and enduring lineage of jazz rap tradition. Maybe this is why they form such a harmonious pairing when you hear jazz loops and solos chopped up and sprinkled into a blissed-out boom-bap beat it does feel like hip hop was always meant to be that way. Bearing in mind the way in which both genres place such emphasis on improvisation, often over a backdrop of cyclical rhythms, it is easy to see how. There is an argument to suggest that the very form of hip hop was shaped by jazz. Both represent important cultural touchstones of the very same communities rappers such as Q-Tip and Snoop Dogg grew up in homes surrounded by the many classic records of the Black America’s jazz greats. And the common alignment of jazz and hip hop, with both acting as vital outlets of expression for African Americans (albeit primarily of different generations), made the union all the more inevitable. Hip hop’s ravenous appetite for sampling means that everything from disco to prog rock has been hoovered up into the genre’s kaleidoscopic palette. Jazz and hip hop were always going to collide eventually.
Discover some of the best ever jazz rap and learn about the history of hip hop’s mellowest mode along the way. These are the top 10 jazz rap albums in the genre’s history.
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