After “fusing” with rock and funk, the next logical step for jazz was to “fuse” with other forms of popular music. Throughout the 1980s we saw jazz artists dabbling with various forms of 1980s pop, most of it ending up sounding kind of cheesy. But, in the late-80s and early-90s, some jazz performers started to collaborate and cross-pollinate with folks from the emerging hi-hop scene.
Jazz and hip-hop are quite similar in many ways, and these early collaborations show how natural of a fit these two styles are. Here are two excellent examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwBjhBL9G6ULinks to an external site. ”Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” by Us3 (released in 1993)
This song features a sample of “Cantaloupe Island” by Herbie Hancock as well as a great (improvised) trumpet solo. Us3 was something of a “one-hit-wonder” with this song, but it is an excellent example of how smooth the transition between jazz and hip-hop can be. (Also of importance: Us3 was signed to Blue Note records, the same record label as Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, and lots of other great jazz musicians from the early-1960s. Blue Note is a “jazz label” through and through, so the fact that they signed a hip-hop group is telling.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxN4nKk2cfkLinks to an external site.
”Buggin’ Out” by A Tribe Called Quest (released in 1991)
The album The Low End Theory features Ron Carter on bass (from Miles Davis’s “Second Great Quintet”), with the song “Buggin’ Out” being one of the more popular songs from the album. Here we hear, again, how easily jazz grooves and vocabulary can fit inside hip-hop. (The part that features Ron Carter starts at about 3:35.)
Can you find other examples of jazz mixing with hip-hop (or other popular music styles)? Are there any current artists that you know that are dabbling in (or more!) jazz styles?
Please post a link to a video that shows us some new jazz-pop fusions.
(I am well aware that my examples are 30+ years old. These were just to kind of get the “wheels turning,” so to speak. There are many more recent examples you can find.)
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