Started in 2012, the project Black Radio by composer and jazz pianist Robert Glasper is akin to a jam community celebrating hip-hop culture, this time emphasizing more of its familiarity with R&B and soul. More than twenty collaborators take part in this album where the jazz, here, is used as interpreter with the language rap, but ends up melting behind the groove, Glasper’s articulate playing on acoustic and electric pianos, rarely going beyond mere ornamentation. This third chapter still includes some moments of grace: the meeting of a gospel choir and the rough voices of Killer Mike, BJ The Chicago Kid and Big KRIT on Black Superhero kicks off the episode on a good note. On the sublime and esoteric Why We Speak, Esperanza Spalding even sings in French “the tree of life / and the cosmic egg / and the blood of the earth”, while Common and Lalah Hathaway offer a precious soul-jazz reinterpretation of a Tears for Fears classic. Jennifer Hudson, Gregory Porter, HER and Meshell Ndegeocello are also on the program.
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