In the cultural crucible of the 1990s, a new sound emerged from the fusion of two of Black America's most enduring musical legacies: jazz and hip-hop. While jazz had long been revered as the sophisticated artform of prior generations, and hip-hop had taken root as the raw, rhythmic voice of the youth, the crossover between the two created something both timeless and entirely new. Sampling became a bridge across eras, and soon dusty Blue Note records were being looped under boom-bap drums, saxophone riffs mingled with scratch hooks and MCs flowed over upright basslines with the cool poise of bebop legends.
This was more than just aesthetic experimentation — it was a reclamation of lineage. Projects like 'Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space)' by Digable Planets, 'Do You Want More?!!!??!' by The Roots and A Tribe Called Quest's 'The Low End Theory' didn't just nod to jazz — they embedded it into the DNA of 90s hip-hop. These collaborations and samples paid homage to jazz greats like Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Roy Ayers while simultaneously pushing hip-hop into more sonically expansive territory.
This article explores five projects that took the jazz-rap crossover of the 1990s into exciting new directions moving beyond sampling and venturing into shared spaces, ideologies and collaboration; where improvisation met lyricism and tradition embraced innovation.
Synonymous with releasing music under the banner of 'jazz rap', the iconic Gang Starr stylistically interwove music by jazz greats to comprise the building blocks of their own revered catalogue. Seminal releases including 'Moment of Truth', 'The Ownerz' and 'Hard to Earn' set the standard for Guru and DJ Premier with a catalogue that cemented their legacy as golden era legends. While both Guru and Premier thrived with their own solo endeavours within the 90s, Guru perhaps took the boldest leap in spearheading his 'Jazzmatazz' series that would generate two releases within the 90s and four full-length releases overall. While Gang Starr's music was constructed around samples of jazz artists, 'Jazzmatazz' opted to take the concept a step further with Guru creating music alongside a range of musician and vocalists. Dubbed "an experimental fusion of hip-hop and jazz", 'Jazzmatazz, Volume 1' is arguably the most renowned hip-hop-meets-jazz album of its ilk. Boasting a phenomenal roll call of 90s jazz names, the album featured a dream line-up including N'Dea Davenport, Ronny Jordan, Courtney Pine, Lonnie Liston Smith, Brandford Marsalis and Donald Byrd who guests on the album centrepiece 'Loungin''.
Blue Note have always been very giving when it came to their own catalogue. Their understanding of the importance of releases by Lee Morgan, Bobbi Humphrey, Freddie Hubbard, amidst countless others that have at one time or another waved the flag as a Blue Note artist, have had on subsequent generations of jazz artist couldn't be overstated. Over the years, Blue Note have consistently invited interpretations of their music through the eyes of different visionaries including the incredible 'Shades of Blue' by Madlib, 'Blue Note Reimagined' which featured a range of UK-based jazz artists and musicians presenting contemporary takes on the catalogue, or 'Blue Note Street' which turned their catalogue over to Japanese artists for an equally riveting interpretation of the Blue Note story. 'The New Groove (The Blue Note Remix Project Volume 1)' from back in 1996 was Blue Note's acknowledgement of hip-hop's burgeoning prominence within pop culture and their subsequent embracing of it. Over the course of the album's eleven tracks, 'The New Groove' opened the doors to the Blue Note vaults with music by Grant Green, Gene Harris, Bobby Hutcherson and Noel Pointer remixed and recontextualised through the visionary perspectives of 90s hip-hop luminaries including The Roots, Q-Tip, Large Professor, Guru and Easy Mo Bee.
Having solidified himself as a leading collaborator and solo artist in the 80s, saxophonist and bandleader Branford Marsalis went on to achieve incredible successes throughout his career. A Grammy-winning recording artist, former leader of The Tonight Show Band and frequent collaborator with names including Herbie Hancock and Sting, Marsalis' 80s run generated some inspired accolades and achievements solidifying the musician as a leading name for the jazz of that era. Buckshot LeFonque proved one of numerous musical endeavours for Marsalis and one that once again saw him embracing musical shifts due to the unbridled creativity a platform like hip-hop offered a new era of artist. Marsalis' riveting side-project sought to unify the musical realms of jazz and hip-hop in ways that echoed Guru's intentions with 'Jazzmatazz': with Marsalis on saxophones, he shared the director's chair for much of the album with Gang Starr's DJ Premier - an inspired collaboration in of itself but throw in names like Claire Fischer on strings, Mino Cinelu on percussion, Jeff "Tain" Watts on drums, Frank McComb on vocals and trumpets throughout by Roy Hargrove (who would deliver his own timeless jazz-funk fusion outfit in The RH Factor some ten years later), then you end up with something very special. A second, and final, Buckshot LeFonque album would follow in 1997 ('Music Evolution') but the Buckshot project as a whole also spawned a series of remixes by DJ Premier and Salaam Remi that are also very worth your time to find.
Arguably the most celebrated artist within jazz's glittering lineage. Beyond helming what is considered by many to be the Bible of Jazz in 'Kind of Blue' (1959), trumpeter Miles Davis was synonymous with steering his music in entirely new directions throughout his lengthy career. An advocate for collaboration and fusion, Davis keenly experimented with rock, funk, African rhythms and emerging electronic music technology for releases that pre-date any of the adventurous projects on this list. Through a recommendation via Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons, 'Doo-Bop' saw Davis once again seek to create a project with a contemporary sound which ultimately brought producer Easy Mo Bee into the fold. Easy Mo Bee's production in the 90s saw him seated amongst hip-hop royalty as a producer of the time - with productions that graced projects by Heavy D, Tupac, Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane and perhaps most famously, The Notorious B.I.G.'s 'Ready to Die' album, Easy Mo Bee provided fantastic accompaniment for Davis' vision for the project. Named as something of an homage of the two worlds coming together, doo-wop and bebop, it would be only fair to cite that 'Doo-Bop' was certainly divisive upon release and despite winning a Grammy for Best R&B Instrumental Performance, it is perhaps an album that has aged better over time.
Through an extensive series of albums and documentaries dating back to 1990, the Red Hot Organization has long sought to bring attention to the AIDS epidemic and associated stigma surrounding the disease. Musically, the Red Hot brand has delivered, at this time, in excess of 20 compilation albums that have celebrated various styles and genres including country, Latin, classical and soul including full-length musical odes to Fela Kuti and Sun Ra. 'Stolen Moments (Red Hot + Cool)' perhaps ranks as one of the series' most renown offerings with a celebration of hip-hop and jazz that presented some incredible cross-genre collaborations that were executed in a seamless fashion. Hailed as Time magazine's Album of the Year in 1994, the album actually generated one of the decade's most impressive hip-hop and jazz crossover projects that in no way felt like an experiment but more like a natural and cohesive presentation. Highlights included Herbie Hancock and Meshell Ndegeocello's 'Nocturnal Sunshine', Lester Bowie, Digable Planets and Wah Wah Watson's 'Flyin' High in the Brooklyn Sky' and 'Trouble Don't Last Always' by Incognito, Carleen Anderson and Ramsey Lewis.
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