Jazz-rap collaborations mostly happen at the spot where both genre's mainstreams overlap. Guru's Jazzmatazz series tapped the talents of one-time Billboard-charting trumpeter Donald Byrd. Herbie Hancock approached Grandmixer.DST for the scratches on “Rockit” well after the keyboardist had settled into his populist, funk-fusion period. The same tends to hold true today, as when Kendrick Lamar chooses improvisers who have already proved their expertise with incorporating R&B flourishes.
Much less familiar is the sight of left-field rappers experimenting with artists from jazz's avant-garde scene. One artist who's been an exception to this rule is HPrizm—the rapper formerly known as High Priest, from Antipop Consortium. In 2003, Antipop recorded with the blazingly talented pianist Matthew Shipp. Their partnership was notable for its boldness, though the album is more a curiosity than a highlight (in both catalogues).
HPrizm’s latest foray into hybrid-genre adventurism easily stands with the most successful jazz-rap crossover efforts of years and decades past. Part of what makes this new project work is the fact that it’s not merely a meeting between one rapper and one jazz artist. Going by the name Sélébéyone—a word for “intersection” in Senegal’s Wolof language—this ensemble contains two different emcees who hail from different continents, as well as two composer-saxophonists, and three other valuable supporting players with strong pedigrees in jazz. What they come up with feels both legitimately new and surprisingly approachable.
The two saxophonists who share composition duties on this group’s self-titled debut are altoist Steve Lehman (the nominal session leader) and his onetime student Maciek Lasserre (who plays soprano saxophone). Lehman is already celebrated in jazz circles for his complex rhythm switches and a taste for experimental harmonies. And while his tunes on Sélébéyone occasionally showcase these attributes, those characteristics have been mixed so well into the collective’s sound that they don’t call too much attention to themselves.
Despite all the wild change-ups on a track like “Are You In Peace?,” the air of abandon and possibility is due to its fresh take on the posse cut: one in which the jazz solos are positioned as equal to the verses, and in which electronic sampling bolsters instrumental bridges. It’s possible to pick it all apart and figure out who’s doing what, but the surfeit of talent is just as easily enjoyed on its own.
On this and several other cuts, Senegalese rapper Gaston Bandimic shares vocal duties. He’s a revelation: When he isn't raising the entire group's energy level during hype-man verses, Bandimic’s lyrics often orbit around topics of social-humanist concern, as well as the emcee’s Sufi practice of Islam. His lines from the album (as well as HPrizm’s) are presented in English on Lehman’s site, though a listener won’t need a line by line accounting of the bars spit in Wolof to appreciate the way that Bandimic throttles between a staccato flow and more fluid passages. As he’s demonstrated in his solo music, Bandimic can also carry a tune—a skill he shows off on the slinky minor-mode conclusion of “Dualism,” where he duets with Lasserre’s soprano horn. The rapper’s sensitivity to pitch is also in evidence during more uptempo moments, as with the exciting closing minutes of frenetic album finale “Bamba.”
Amid Bandimic’s onslaught of approaches, HPrizm more than holds his own. He threads fast passages through “Hybrid” (“No imagination, only my real life / Pulse over drums, hope to show what it feels like”). He offers a thrilling, predominantly a cappella introduction to “Dualism.” And during “Laamb,” the album’s slowly evolving opening track, HPrizm stretches his line breaks, creating unpredictable syllable stresses in a verse about the psychological tolls exacted by political inequality. (“Jewels I find/Under three-fourths water/From flooded streets I was brought up/Now in this era facing the ramifications/Of blocks to the occupation/As bars over propaganda/They criminalize the victim/Then the truth sets in.”) The rhythmic structure that Lehman uses for “Laamb” matches the lyrics—as a steadily marching piano ostinato gradually makes room for polyrhythms, and eventually some graceful accompaniment from his saxophone.
Though its members don’t have much solo space, the rhythm section is critical to Sélébéyone’s excellence. As a veteran of keyboardist Robert Glasper’s earliest explorations of Dilla’s legacy, drummer Damion Reid knows how to drive rap-influenced jazz performance—and he’s never sounded more excited than he does here. The varied qualities of tracks like “Origine” and “Cognition” show his ability to move from energetic swing to subtler support. And he fosters joyous head-nod vibes during more consistently burning tracks like “Akap” and “Hybrid.”
Perhaps the most convincing mark of this group’s confidence is their understanding that, collectively, they have more skills than can be put to use in every single song. On some tracks, the celebrated saxophonists appear not at all with their main axes (instead focusing on composing or sampling). Bandimic rhymes alone on select cuts. This wise restraint makes the full-ensemble performances hit with the force they deserve. And the variance also helps pace an album that might otherwise have become overstuffed. Over its 41 minutes, Sélébéyone walks the fine line stretched between fusion’s twin perils—too much accommodation of preexisting tastes the one side, too much invention on the other—and makes the unusual triumph look easy.
