Robert Glasper

One Liner:  Killer piano player who collaborates well.

Wikipedia Genre:  Jazz, hip hop, soul, R&B, neo soul, acid jazz
Home: Houston

Poster Position: 14
Both Weekends.  Sunday.

Thoughts:  When I kicked this guy into Spotify, I thought I had another R&B singer on board.  The first song features a singer named Phoelix, actually so do 7 of his top ten songs, which makes it seem like Phoelix is the sound of this dude.  But after making it through his top ten and his most recent album, I realized that we were dealing with a virtuoso piano player instead.  Because his second most recent album is pretty much a jazz piano disc.  And despite the fact that you would never find me in the jazz aisle at Waterloo Records, his playing is so damn pretty that I find myself enjoying it despite my proclivities.

And I'm not the only one believing that he is good, as he boasts four Grammy awards and collabs such as playing the keyboards on Kendrick's To Pimp a Butterfly.  Beyond Kendrick, he's appeared on or produced everyone from Mac Miller and Common to Brittany Howard and Anderson.Paak.

He got an early start, with a mother who sang blues and jazz professionally.  She'd apparently take him to clubs instead of leaving him with a babysitter, which led to is path into music.  After high school he attended the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in NYC.  I was hoping that reviewing the list of famous alumni from there would lead to me blowing your mind with some cool people, but none of them ring a bell.  Yuki Tei or Adam Cruz, anyone?

His first album was 2005's Canvas, which is a pretty straight-forward jazz album.  But by 2007's In My Element, you get some cool, strange tweaks.  An extrapolation of Radiohead's "Everything in its Right Place," for example.  3.8 million streams.

Freaking cool.  This dude is insanely talented.  After that album, he released 2009's Double Booked before he actually hit big with 2012's Black Radio.  The disc has a sort of Common and Erykah Badu vibe to it - jazzy piano underneath beats and either R&B/neo-soul singing or rapping.  It sounds phenomenal.  He also covers "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on here, which is very unexpected for sure.  The top track has Badu on it - "Afro Blue" - with 20.3 million streams.

Nice chilled out groove.  The issue I have here is the realities of this show.  Is he going to bring singers and rappers along with him for the concert?  If he's actually bringing Badu and Common and Jill Scott and Snoop Dogg and Denzel Curry and H.E.R. and Q-Tip and Killer Mike and Jennifer Hudson up on stage with him, then you'd think this would be advertised differently.

After Black Radio, he's done a bunch of additional albums, including Black Radio 2 and 2022's Black Radio III.  Off of that new album, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is a killer cover, complete with a really solid Common verse in the latter half.  Phenomenal song.  But the top streamer of the whole catalog comes from 2020's Dinner Party, which was a big collaboration with several other folks, and with that Phoelix guy doing the singing.  "Freeze Tag" has 35.2 million streams.

Now I am realizing that "Dinner Party" is the name of the group, it just gets listed on Spotify as though it was a Glasper album.  Also, good goddamn.  That video is tough.  The lyrics of the song belie the gentle groove there - it sounds like a nice summertime track for a good cookout or something, and then you realize that he's singing about the freeze you do when the cops draw down on you and you're waiting to see if you are going to get shot.  Damn.

Again, this dude is super talented.  Not sure how his show would go at a huge festival, I guess he'll invite somebody to come and do the vocals for him, and we just won't know who that is until it drops.  If you want to see what that might look like, here is a 2019 show - Glasper seems really likeable.