Kassa Overall gives the cream of the hip-hop crop a thrilling jazz twist

“Back in the days when I was a teenager / Before I had status and before I had a pager / You could find The Abstract listening to hip-hop / My pops used to say, it reminded him of bebop…”

– Q-Tip aka Kamaal The Abstract (from A Tribe Called Quest “Excursions,” a short treatise on the relationship between hip-hop and jazz based around a sample of Art Blakey’s “A Chant For Bu”)

From the genre’s origins, hip-hop has drawn comparisons to jazz. Early on, it was understood that the social commentary and improvisational nature of rap placed it as a descendant of the jazz-informed poetry of Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets, and The Watts Prophets. With the emergence of jazz-sampling rap acts like A Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers, and Gangstarr, the connection between hip-hop and jazz became more evident. Digging up second-hand copies of bebop records from the ‘50s and ‘60s, as well as ‘70s fusion sides, a new generation of hip-hop artists used their samplers and turntables to weave a tangible connection between the past and present.

Seattle drummer / rapper / producer Kassa Overall has long embodied this connection in his work. Albums like 2019’s Go Get Ice Cream And Listen to Jazz and 2023’s Animals were bridges between the distinct musical languages of jazz and hip-hop. For his latest album, CREAM, Kassa Overall takes his penchant for melding jazz and hip-hop further by infusing classic rap favorites with the complex rhythms and extended improvised passages of jazz. In the hands of Kassa Overall’s band, Notorious B.I.G.’s “Big Poppa” is redrafted as an understated Bossa Nova tune while Digable Planets’ “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like That)” is transformed into an epic, post-bop scorcher. The result is a gleefully experimental take on the canon of classic hip-hop songs.

On September 3rd, Kassa and his band will be pulling up to Solar Myth to perform the entire album in full. We spoke with him about the congruence of jazz and rap and the process of breaking both genres down to their most fundamental compounds.

John Morrison: For starters, tell me about the record. What made you pursue this direction with the music?

Kassa Overall: The thing about a new record is it kind of grows. It starts as a little idea or a song, and then if that goes well, it keeps adding and adding till it’s a whole thing. It actually was based around the live band, and the live shows are really where this grew. We would be touring all over, and we’d do some of my songs, album joints, and then we would do some other stuff, some covers. We kept finding ways to flip those songs to make ’em a little more difficult or a little more inspiring to improvise on, you know? And so the first version of that actually was for Grammy.com. They had this thing where it was like, you can pick any song that’s been nominated for a Grammy and then do your version of it and record a video. The songs that we came down to pick was either (Snoop Dogg’s) “Drop It Like It’s Hot” or (Digable Planets’) “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like That).”

We ended up doing “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” The first thing I did was add these different measures of 5/4 time and seven, and kind of made it like an obstacle course. We started doing that live, and people started tripping out and asking, “Where can I listen to this on streaming?” And that kept happening for over a year or so. We were doing different covers live. And that’s what initially started the idea. And once we went in the studio, it came out so well. We were so pleased that we went back in the studio two more times. It just made sense because it was like, we got something that’s unique here.

JM: I’m very curious about the process of blowing these songs up and rearranging them. A lot of these tracks, I don’t want to say they’re simple, but have straightforward sample-based music. But y’all are really stretching out and kind of like twisting the arrangement of these songs. Can you walk me through how that happens? Rhythmically, harmonically, just break that down.

KO: I think, again, a lot of the things start in my mind. The first step is always a thought that kind of makes you go “ah,” you know what I mean? Whenever you start there, it’s hard to go wrong. We did the first few songs, but then I had to come up with some new arrangements for the second and the third session relatively quickly, you know? So, I would be walking around, and I’d just be like what if I did this to that? You’re listening to “Big Poppa” and first it’s like, yo, it would be dope to do “Big Poppa.” But then it was like, in a weird way, “Big Poppa” is almost like a rap version of a Brazilian love song. Like, it has that same texture. Biggie has that same smooth delivery.

So, it just starts in that thought place. Even though everything was recorded live, no edits, we recorded all in one room, as a producer, I utilize a lot of my production skills. So, I would take the original and drop it in Ableton and then record myself playing a bossa nova drum groove over it, to hear how it sounds. I even messed around with some of the stem separation technology, like, let me grab the bassline, and what would it sound like if I slowed that down to halftime? That kind of tinkering in the studio. I still utilize that part of my process in order to come up with arrangements. But then oftentimes the demos that I make, or the things that I made at home, they really sounded like trash. When I’d play it for the band, it didn’t sound right, you know? They, they’re like, nah. It was in my head, and I’m like, yo, I’m telling you if we go in there and record it like this, just trust me.

JM: That’s such an interesting kind of reversal of the process. Usually, when you make beats and sample-based music, you’re taking this recording of people in the room playing together with live instrumentation, and morphing that into a production with samplers and drum machines…maybe you cut something up on the turntables. But you did the opposite. You’re working with something as a demo version, making a beat, and then you blow it up into the live thing.

KO: It was the natural progression for everything I’ve done so far. It was a natural progression to give this like reverse mirror image of what I’ve been doing. And I think it also gives the world a chance to understand me as a drummer. I’m really coming from the old style. Even though I make beats and there’s a lot of electronics and what I do and all of that, I’m coming from the old thing, you know what I’m saying?

JM: Yeah, just thinking about how jazz has historically taken pop songs, R&B songs, and just opened them up.This is kind of like a continuation of that, you know what I mean? It’s what people used to do back in the 50s, the 60s.

KO: That’s right. 100%.

JM: When you were looking at these rap songs and creating these new versions of them, were you going back to the records that were sampled in the songs for clues on where you could go with the arrangement? Was that something that you considered?

KO: Yeah. It was even a learning process for me because, for example, I keep bringing up the Biggie record. All the people that are older than me, when I start to play that joint, they’re like “Oh, ‘Between the Sheets’,” you know what I’m saying? I got a OG bass player homie, and he’s like, “Man, you know how much booty I got off of ‘Between the Sheets’?” But the thing is, I was in sixth grade or whatever when “Big Poppa” came out, I didn’t even know that it was a [Isley Brothers] sample. I was just a kid. For a lot of them, I actually ripped the original version, and then I kind of went through the process of chopping it the way the producer chopped the original to get an understanding. One thing I learned that was really unique was that a lot of what they’re doing when you’re chopping a sample is removing, So like, you’re taking the part and you’re not going to the pre-chorus, or you’re not going to the bridge, or maybe you’re taking the bridge and that’s the basis. But if you think about that as a compositional process, removing things that you don’t use, it’s powerful. If you look at a piano, you got 12 notes. If you take out five notes, that’s a chord. You know what I’m saying?

JM: Yeah. It’s like DJing and cutting up a break. Like you get a two-bar drum part and you just gotta go back and forth between the turntables, and isolate that one little effective part. When folks come see y’all live on this tour, what can they expect, and what do you hope that they take away from it?

KO: I hope they take what they need, you know what I mean? Because everybody needs something different, you know? For sure. Some people need to just release and calm down, and let go of all the anxiety of the work week. Somebody needs some intellectual stimulation ’cause they’ve been sitting on they ass. if I can present something that gives whatever you need, that would be a powerful intention.

Kassa Overall headlines Solar Myth on Wednesday, September 3rd; tickets and more information on the show can be found here. CREAM releases on September 12th via Warp Records, and can be pre-ordered here.