Kassa Overall

Grammy-nominated drummer turns hip-hop classics into acoustic jazz standards.

On CREAM, drummer, rapper, and producer Kassa Overall brings together his two great loves: hip-hop and jazz drums in the tradition of Elvin Jones. While rap albums typically sample jazz, he reverses it and rewrites rap hits from the 90s and 00s into instrumental jazz standards. C.R.E.A.M. by Wu-Tang Clan becomes a spiritual waltz on West African trance rhythms, Big Poppa by Notorious B.I.G. a bossa nova, and Cool Like That by Digable Planets is set in a 15/4 time signature. After previous albums full of drum machines, samples, and Ableton Live, he recorded CREAM as Rudy Van Gelder did with Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme: together in one room, without overdubs and without editing.

Kassa Overall has been connecting jazz, hip-hop, and avant-garde for over twenty years. He toured and recorded with Geri Allen, Jon Batiste, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Gary Bartz, and produced for Theo Croker, Arto Lindsay, and Danny Brown. On his Warp debut ANIMALS (2023), he explored his identity as an artist and as a black man in America, with guests like Lil B, Nick Hakim, and Vijay Iyer.

'One of modern jazz music’s most audacious futurists' (Pitchfork).