Jazz breaking news: Experimentation For Meditation: Robert Glasper Explores Neosoul Hinterland On Black Radio

Firstly – and you don’t need to be a Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out – the album, unlike all of his previous ones, is dominated by vocalists be they rappers or singers. Secondly, there is no Herbie Hancock cover which I am sure Glasper will smile about in interviews, as all his albums have featured one so far. Maybe there was one and it ended up on the cutting room floor but we’ll have to wait for the version with bonus tracks if that’s the case. And thirdly Black Radio makes deep inroads into Glasper’s personal take on how he views neosoul even more so than hip hop, something that it’s important to realize is very distinctive and separate to hip hop in Glasper’s outlook. The glorious and very different version of Mongo Santamaria’s ‘Afro Blue’ by Erykah Badu (with a lovely flute arrangement featuring Casey Benjamin) is most crucial in opening up new ground on the album but the soul peak is realized with one of the genre’s latest and greatest new divas, Ledisi, on ‘Gonna Be Alright (F.T.B.)’ which was co-written by the singer and Glasper. His longtime work dating back to New School days with Bilal bubbles up on Bowie’s ‘Letter To Hermione’, a world away from ‘All Matter’, the standout song on Double Booked. But Bilal’s role on the album is not as dominating this time, although he’s also on ‘Always Shine’ which gets inside you after a while, and he sings on that track with the often misunderstood rapper Lupe Fiasco.

If anyone it’s Lalah Hathaway at the heart of the album, and of course in keeping with the soul flavour, excelling in lovely call and response passages on 'Cherish The Day' to Casey Benjamin’s vocodered vocals. Her input is the grounding element, also producing the most controversial aspect of the album, the cover of a Sade song, ‘Cherish The Day’ reinterpreted to the point that if you were listening blind and didn’t know the song but knew Sade’s voice you just could not even make a wild stab at what it is. 

In Glasper’s world the leap from Sade to Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ at the end would produce just a small shrug. It is this ability to elevate the most over covered or well known material, switching genre, into something to cling on to that is quite remarkable. Because with his improvising ear and touch it goes to another level. "Black radio" as the “black box” flight recorder is quite a concept, harnessing the just-done present and the past. There’s also more improvising on the Nirvana track than anywhere else, but if you listen to say the beginning of ‘Ah Yeah’  – what a glorious voice Taalib Johnson aka Musiq Soulchild has – it's Glasper setting everything up on Rhodes that makes the song click into place. The way he clears space on his solo after the vocal on ‘Why Do We Try’ is also something to behold.

– Stephen Graham

Check out Jazzwise in early-2012 for a major interview with Robert Glasper