But shortly after I finished To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick was looking for a studio to work in in LA, and he found one. My last record came out in 2016, I think, Velvet Portraits. It started off - man, I’ve been working on this shit for so long. TERRACE MARTIN: I’ll tell you when we started first, ’cause it really is important for the definition. When did you start working on Drones, and what’s the meaning behind the title?
Hear Drones lead single “Leave Us Be” and read our conversation below. I spent an hour on the phone with Martin talking about the new music, To Pimp A Butterfly, his personal and creative relationships with Snoop Dogg, Kamasi Washington, and Herbie Hancock, and much more. It’s dark and brooding, but ultimately hopeful, journeying from the opening “Turning Poison Into Medicine” to the closing “Listen,” which features gospel singer Kim Burrell and Glasper on piano. Rather than a collection of tracks, it’s an album with a message. Where the Grammy-nominated Velvet Portraits was mostly instrumental, Drones is studded with guests, including Kendrick, Snoop, Kamasi, Glasper, Cordae, YG, Leon Bridges and James Fauntleroy, among others. The songs blur the lines between jazz, hip-hop, and R&B, reflecting contemporary West Coast Black music and Black life in all its joy, pain, chaos, and cool.
On his own albums, Martin brings together the artists who mean the most to him, like Kendrick, Kamasi, Thundercat, Snoop, Robert Glasper, Ty Dolla $ign, and Lalah Hathaway.
He’s also made three albums under his own name: 2013’s 3ChordFold, 2016’s Velvet Portraits, and now Drones, which was just announced today and is out on Friday. He tours in Herbie Hancock’s band and is producing the keyboard legend’s next album, which also features Thundercat. On the jazz side, Martin has been a part of Robert Glasper’s Black Radio projects and is a member of two all-star groups, Dinner Party and R+R=NOW. And of course, he worked extensively on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, bringing jazz and hip-hop (and rock, and poetry, and audio theater) together on that album’s complex, multilayered tracks. He’s worked with Snoop Dogg since 2004, producing tracks for his albums and leading his live band in 2011 - a band that also included trumpeter Keyon Harrold, tenor saxophonist Kamasi Washington, Thundercat on bass, and Robert “Sput” Searight of Snarky Puppy on drums! He’s also produced for DJ Quik, Kurupt, Talib Kweli, Murs, YG, Big K.R.I.T., Rapsody, Wiz Khalifa, 2 Chainz. It didn’t start to work until recently, when a generation of musicians who had grown up listening to hip-hop, breathing it like air, took their place in the jazz world.Īlto saxophonist and producer Terrace Martin is one of them. But there were always players who defended the new music, and by the early ’90s jazz artists were attempting crossover projects. Hip-hop’s locked-in, mechanical funk beats were seen as antithetical to the loose, human swing of jazz. Back in the ’80s, jazz and hip-hop were often seen as being in conflict.
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