Robert Glasper - Credit: Interview Magazine/Todd Cooper
The free-spirited pianist Robert Glasper is now as free as possible. However, this was not always the case.
The artificial doves hang from the rafters, and the OVO owl has restricted to his hat. The arrival of Blue Note Records has taken some time, a few Grammy awards, and the scoring of a few films. Including a movie about an old horn player who felt kind of blue.
“I just learned to try, as much as I can,” Glasper says, speaking in allegro meter, “not to let people tell me what I am.”
He is picking at a plate of burrata. In a gleaming hotel lobby off Park Avenue, we are tucked away from the bar, just a half-shout away. It is remarkably warm in the middle of February, and Glasper is about to release a new album. Thus, this album is a sequel to his previous release. This project is his most significant work, the diverse, stunningly slick Black Radio. The album’s title is Black Radio III, and it came out on Friday.
The Life and Work of Robert
Glasper’s mother, Kim, was a jazz enthusiast. However, she injected Glasper’s childhood home with syrupy funk and silky R&B. Father Glasper often played the Isley Brothers, Luther Vandross, especially Anita Baker. Kim conducted the church choir on Sundays. She performed throughout the city other days, providing Robert with both a daycare facility and a musical incubator. As soon as he picked up the piano from one of her bandmates, everything was over.
Furthermore, the “Afro Blue” songwriter attended Houston’s prestigious “High School for the Performing and Visual Arts,” becoming heavily involved in jazz. As a senior, Beyoncé Knowles had just enrolled as a freshman. A year after high school, he enlisted in the “School for Jazz and Contemporary Music at New York’s New School.” All the first-year students had to perform together on the first day of school. Glasper cast a large shadow over the event. The performance has been described as “silly good” by a schoolmate and frequent collaborator Bilal over the phone.
Glasper soon became acquainted with the Soulquarians, a collective of soul revivalists, through Bilal: The Roots, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, and J Dilla. During the period 2000 to 2010, he signed with the most influential label in jazz. Robert Glasper released four critically acclaimed LPs, thumbed his nose at the genre’s stuffy white establishment, and ran circles around it. In addition, he began his most prized campaign: to seek out and delight in the space between genres. In 2012, he conceived Black Radio as the ultimate elixir.
Artist’s Glasper Has Worked With
As a result of its release, he has worked with Kendrick Lamar on To Pimp a Butterfly (you can hear him drizzling acoustic honey over “These Walls”). Aside from that, he has produced and composed for various artists, including Mac Miller, Brittany Howard, and Anderson. Paak. The saxophonist Kamasi Washington, the rapper Common, and others have performed in multiple supergroups. The “Levels” songwriter has spent the last 20 or so months primarily working in his home studio on Black Radio III.
