Black Superheroes
Though the debut of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Black Panther is drawing rave reviews, another group of black superheroes were honored this past weekend with the induction of N.W.A to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For a group that battled the police and censors during their meteoric rise, the rock hall induction represents another validating step for the pioneering group. Kendrick Lamar (who else?) was tasked with inducting them—calling them black superheroes—and the entire text of his speech is online at Rolling Stone. “Chuck D once said rap and hip-hop was the black CNN,” Lamar joked. “N.W.A represent that to the fullest, am I right?
Audio Portrait
One of the underrated features of Kendrick Lamar’s rise is that it has introduced many to a new group of players situated at the Los Angeles avant garde crossroads of hip-hop and jazz like Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, Robert Glasper, and Terrace Martin. The latter—who released his own full-length Velvet Portraits at the beginning of the month on his new label, Sounds of Crenshaw Records—was recently credited in Ebony for being the mortar that held the the To Pimp a Butterfly sessions together. While Velvet Portraits is definitely worth a listen—it’s far less dense than TPIB but a smooth, listenable record that highlights the strengths of the informal collective—Martin was also interviewed at length on NPR’s Microphone Check this past week, a revealing conversation about creativity and belief.
On the Record
For the last eleven years, music fans have lined up outside of their favorite local music shops for Record Store Day, a celebration of vinyl in all its high-fidelity glory. This year’s Record Store Day is Saturday, April 16, and there are some choice limited edition vinyl releases for collectors and fans alike, including John Coltrane’s The Roulette Sides (4,500 copies), Miles Davis’s Ghetto Walkin’ (5,000), J Dilla’s The Diary (4,000), Dizzy Gillespie’s The Champ (2,000), Etta James’s At Last (2,000), Thelonius Monk’s London Collection Volume 3 (2,600), Sun Ra’s Spaceways (2,500), and many more. Philadelphia has a whopping seventeen stores listed on RSD’s site as participants—we hope you enjoy digging through the crates!
The Forerunner
Doubling down with NPR this week, there’s a very worthwhile Jazz Night in America profile and live recording in tribute to Philadelphia bassist Jymie Merritt, who is approaching his ninetieth birthday. Merritt has never released a project in his own name, but his instrument can be heard across the discographies of Art Blakey, Max Roach, and many more. Merritt’s son and his former bandmates recorded a tribute concert at World Café Life, which emphasizes the living legend’s unique contribution to jazz playing—a system of chord inversions and harmonics that he called Forerunner.
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