Don't deserve the gong, don't deserve the praise
The tranquility will make you unball your fist
For we put Hip Hop on a brand new twist
A brand new twist with a whole heap of mystic
So low-key that you probably missed it
And yet it's so loud that it stands in the crowd
When the guy takes the beat, they bowed."
Jazz rap, or jazz hip-hop, is a fusion genre that developed in the late 1980s and early 90s. As the name implies, It fused the beats of hip-hop with the sonic elements of Jazz, usually via sampling; though some artists have also incorporated live instrumentation into their tracks.
Although jazz and hip-hop artists often have had a contentious relationship at best, especially during hip-hop's early years, jazz is regularly cited
as one of, if not the biggest influence on hip-hop; to the point where some call jazz "the mother of hip-hop". Poets like Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets are often considered the progenitors of hip-hop in general, performing rhyming poetry over jazzy backing tracks; but jazz rap as a genre didn't truly come into its own until the late '80s.
While it's unclear who had the first real jazz rap record, the Jungle Brothers' debut 1988 LP Straight Out the Jungle, Stetsasonic's "Talkin' All That Jazz" and Gang Starr's "Words I Manifest", both released in 1989, are considered the popularizers of the sound. The genre would become a staple among Afrocentric emcees of the time, especially among the Native Tongues collective (A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, De La Soul, etc.). While the mainstream west coast rap scene had largely shunned jazz rap in favor of Gangsta Rap, the alternative scene thrived in it, particularly Del tha Funkee Homosapien and his Hieroglyphics crew, the Los Angeles-based Freestyle Fellowship, and the Native Tongues-adjacent Pharcyde.
Within time, jazz artists begun participating on jazz rap albums, helping to both legitimize the sound, and bridge the gap between jazz and hip-hop. Legendary trumpeter and jazz experimenter Miles Davis recorded Doo-Bop in 1991 (released posthumously in 1992) with Easy Mo Bee, who'd later go on to produce for The Notorious B.I.G.. Gang Starr member Guru would release the first volume of his jazz/rap album series called Jazzmatazz in 1993, incorporating both sampling and live instrumentation provided by legendary jazz musicians like Donald Byrd and Lonnie Liston Smith, and jazz vocals from N'Dea Davenport, Carleen Anderson, Jay Kay of Jamiroquai, and several others; and jazz bassist Ron Carter would assist in the production of A Tribe Called Quest's acclaimed The Low End Theory, playing double bass on the track "Words from the Abstract".
Today, while no longer seeing the same mainstream success it had in the 1990s, jazz rap remains popular among Alternative Hip Hop fans and artists, and still influences mainstream hip-hop music today, as seen in the music of Anderson .Paak and Kendrick Lamar. An offshoot subgenre, called Lofi Hip-Hop or Chillhop, heavily utilizes jazz samples as well, but is usually instrumental in nature, with an emphasis on a deliberately low-fidelity aesthetic; usually having cassette tape hiss, or the crackle heard on vinyl records mixed in, with downsampled music samples and instruments.
Compare Rap Rock (another rap hybrid that combines elements from Rock music) and Jazz Fusion (a genre similarly influenced by Jazz).
Artists:
- Anderson Paak
- Black Milk
- Bonobo
- Camp Lo
- Digable Planets
- Dream Warriors
- Flying Lotus
- Funky DL
- Gang Starr (First three albums; Genre Popularizer and Trope Maker)
- Hieroglyphics:
- J. Cole
- J Dilla
- Kendrick Lamar
- To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)
- Lupe Fiasco (especially on Drill Music In Zion)
- MC Solaar
- MF DOOM
- Madvillainy (with Madlib as Madvillain; 2004)
- Miles Davis
- Doo-Bop (1992)
- Nas (Not as overt as most here, but Illmatic has strong elements of jazz rap.)
- Illmatic (1994)
- Native Tongues:
- Nomak
- Nujabes
- Organized Konfusion
- Pete Rock
- The Roots
- Tom Scott (more specifically Home Brew and Avantdale Bowling Club)
- Stetsasonic (Genre Popularizer and Trope Maker)
- Tyler, the Creator
- Us 3
- Uyama Hiroto
