Among this year’s Grammy laureates is American jazz pianist and producer Robert Glasper, whose latest release Black Radio wasn’t awarded in jazz categories but in the category for Best R&B Album.
Black Radio was released at the beginning of 2012 for the record label Blue Note. Critics were divided about it at the beginning, while some didn’t hide their rapture, others took the album with certain skepticism considering the fact that it consists of 12 compositions played by Glasper’s band Experiment with musicians from the hip-hop world like Erykah Badu or Yasiin Bey aka MosDef.
Black Radio is the fifth album of this American pianist and the first one crossing the borders of jazz. Magazine Rolling Stone praised this “hybrid” emphasizing Glasper’s ability for seamless merge and overlap of jazz, hip-hop, neo-soul and rock.
Robert Glasper Experiment consists of drummer Chris Dave, bassist Derrick Hodge and Casey Benjamin on the saxophone, flute and vocoder. Vocalists on the album Black Radio are Erykah Badu, Lalah Hatherway, Bilal and Yasiin Bey.
Listen to a composition from the album Black Radio, the jazz standard Afro Blue performed by the Robert Glasper Experiment and Erykah Badu.