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Sophisticated as chilled Moët and as easy as a Sunday morning, jazz keyboardist, arranger, composer and producer Robert Glasper and his company of merry men do it again. Black Radio 2 is essentially a continuation of Glasper’s critically acclaimed, Grammy-winning project, Black Radio. So, it should be no surprise that they decided not to fix a winning formula of quality neo-soul, smooth soul, and conscious hip hop artists singing and spitting rhymes over commercially accessible but still highly artful jazz productions. Heavy on the grown and light on moving any cultural needles forward, the Robert Glasper Experiment’s Black Radio 2 doesn’t do a lot in the way of experimenting, but Glasper and Co. do know how to deliver an exceptional, spit-shined project for the ‘90s crowd who traded in their granola and backpacks for Brooks Brothers and cabernet.
Sophisticated as chilled Moët and as easy as a Sunday morning, jazz keyboardist, arranger, composer and producer Robert Glasper and his company of merry men do it again. Black Radio 2 is essentially a continuation of Glasper’s critically acclaimed, Grammy-winning project, Black Radio. So, it should be no surprise that they decided not to fix a winning formula of quality neo-soul, smooth soul, and conscious hip hop artists singing and spitting rhymes over commercially accessible but still highly artful jazz productions. Heavy on the grown and light on moving any cultural needles forward, the Robert Glasper Experiment’s Black Radio 2 doesn’t do a lot in the way of experimenting, but Glasper and Co. do know how to deliver an exceptional, spit-shined project for the ‘90s crowd who traded in their granola and backpacks for Brooks Brothers and cabernet. The A-list of guests alone makes BR2 the season’s most anticipated project and most of its big bright lights live up to every bit of their shine, even when the songs they’re granted sometimes don’t.
The guest starring soul/neo-soul and hip hop meet hybrid jazz formula for Black Radio 2 isn’t especially novel. It was successfully done by Roy Hargrove with his R.H. Factor series, the first of which, Hard Groove, is a modern-day classic. Before Hargrove, the Jazzamatazz series by Guru reigned for more than a decade with some four releases to its credit, the last of which, Street Sounds, boasts such future Robert Glasper Experiment alums in Bilal, Common, and Erykah Badu. Big R&B and hip-hop names drive consumers soft on jazz but die-hard for urban adult contemporary to give straight-ahead jazz players a shot at being heard. For fusion, astral and smooth jazz, this practice has been old hat since the ‘70s for artists like Roy Ayers, George Duke, Norman Conners and Grover Washington, Jr., among others. Usually, one to three big draw names or rare but respected underground vocalists are brought in to sing little more than a single and then just hooks for the rest of an instrumental project. This can be frustrating for fans who really bought the jazz album for the names. The Robert Glasper Experiment projects don’t engage in such bait and switches. Each artist is the front and center star of each story, and the song is king. As with the first Black Radio, for those seeking advanced or avant-garde instrumental heavy jazz, this is not the project for you. At best, it’s very modern soul.
And what soul there is. Thank God for Anthony Hamilton. From the perfect “Gently” on Booker T’s Sound the Alarm duet album to the thumping “You’ve Got The Love I Need” with Al Green a few years back, Hamilton just makes everything better. “Yet to Find” is no exception, a cross between Southern soul quartet gospel and country flavored jazz, the Hamilton/Glasper collaboration is easily a standout on Black Radio II. In direct contrast is the acoustic atmospherics of “Yet to Find,” dark toned West Coast hip hop soul courtesy of Luke James, Lupe Fiasco and the iconic Snoop Dogg, conjuring low riders midnight marauding along the Pacific Coast Highway. Gifted one of the catchier hooks, Dwele’s hushed crooning on the mid-tempo light groove of “No Worries” is everything you want this kind of fusion material to unwrap, music both smart and soulful. One uncharacteristic performance is delivered by an artist who is at her best when challenging expectations; a sinewy Norah Jones couldn’t be as far removed from “Don’t Know Why” on the upscale drum and bass driver “Let it Ride,” the most progressive of the offerings here.
Meanwhile, in Brandy, Faith Evans, Jill Scott, Lalah Hathaway, and Marsha Ambrosius, a quintet of R&B ladies are tapped to do what they are best known for…but here the results are a mixed bag of goods. On a cut she makes wholly her own, Lalah Hathaway’s vocals on Glasper’s in the basement rearrangement of Stevie Wonder’s “Jesus Children of America” (featuring a completely unnecessary spoken word by Malcolm Jamal Warner) is the most fresh and unexpected moment on a project that is consistent but not always delivering that “wow” factor. On “What Are We Doing,” a multi-vocal Brandy does her part(s) on one of the more rhythmic cuts on an album that prefers to saunter rather than jam. While “What Are We Doing” begs for more bassline thump to make it the head banger, the Brandy/Glasper collaboration makes you miss BET’s Midnight Soul, where this would’ve been in high rotation. Never one to slack, Faith Evans is conservative but still pure churchified soul on the jazzy relationship cut, “You Owe Me,” bringing something compelling to an otherwise routine smooth jazz proceeding. Unfortunately, Jill Scott does slack off in the disappointing “Calls” song, which attempts depth and deconstruction, but whose muddied, repetitive sounds feels like a cheat and a waste of Ms. Scott’s ample talents. One who can be as delightful as she can be grating when given too much rope, Marsha Ambrosius balances the sister scales here with her fluttery butterfly soprano routine, but in Glasper’s capable hands a dynamic composition and arrangements keeps her too busy meeting its regular shifts to oversell the slow burning 7:30 “Trust.” Throughout, the ladies bring their rightly celebrated skills to tracks that don’t always do for them what they do for the songs.
Soul pop star Emeli Sande and conscious rapper/actor Common bring some panache to songs where the material rises to match them. The tidy inspirational anthem, “I Stand Alone (featuring Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy),” is a close runner-up for the best song on the album and could very easily have been a single from Common’s famed Be project (including the sublime sermon by the hip hop academic, Rev. Michael Eric Dyson). Equally clean in precision and direction, “Somebody Else” is an ideal marriage of pop, soul, and nu-jazz, and its in the familiar bassline and Sande’s elegant simplicity that the track wins, giving BR2 more wins than misses.
Overall, Black Radio 2 matches the bar set by Black Radio by being what everyone in the grown and sexy set is looking for from mature, contemporary soul by their favorite 1990s-early 2000s veteran acts. There isn’t a lot of ingenuity or artistic push here by musicians Robert Glasper, Mark Colenberg (replacing drummer Chris Dave), Derrick Hodge, and Casey Benjamin - artists who are the promising music vanguards of their generation - but there is a consistent, flawlessly produced and performed album here that will get regular play as the soundtrack for many a cocktail party, candlelight dinner, and smoke session to come. And you know what? That’s all right. Highly Recommended.
By L. Michael Gipson
*Note: this is not a review of the Deluxe Edition, which contains bonus material by Bilal, Macy Gray, Jean Grae, Jazmine Sullivan and Eric Roberson. Correction: An earlier version erronenously stated Chris Rob was the drummer.