Cats and Rappers

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

The union of hip-hop and jazz has gone from oddity to commodity in just one year. In 1993 the rap trio Digable Planets released its jazzy, idiosyncratic debut album Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space); since then the record has sold more than 500,000 copies and won a Grammy as well as two naacp Image Awards, and other jazz-rap bands, like US 3, have followed in Planets' wake. Meanwhile, some of the most respected musicians in jazz -- from Harvard summa cum laude saxophonist Joshua Redman to veteran trumpeter Lester Bowie -- have recorded songs combining jazz with hip-hop. Both Miles Davis and Quincy Jones experimented with rap-jazz fusion in the '80s, but a decade later it is becoming a staple. How broad is its acceptance? Well, Digable Planets is featured on a compilation called Hip-Hop 'n' Jazz that's being sold with a food tie-in at McDonald's.

Jazz-rappers don't just borrow from jazz's sound; they tap into its spirit, its artful soul and its cool. The music has successfully harnessed the sagacity of an older generation of performers with the rawness of a newer one. Says 61-year-old trumpeter Donald Byrd: "All of the jazz cats, everybody I talk to now, they want to get involved in this." Three new CDs -- Blowout Comb, Digable Planets' daringly laid-back sophomore album; Home, by the rap group Spearhead; and Red Hot and Cool: Stolen Moments, an aids-benefit CD featuring collaborations by various jazz and rap performers -- should further establish jazz-rap as pop's most dynamic new genre.

The form combines the rich sounds of jazz playing with the insistent rhythms of hip-hop. The jazz performances are often samples -- snippets of music from classic jazz records. These pieces of sound are then reassembled into a sonic collage and set to a new beat with a rapper speaking over them. On Blowout Comb, Digable Planets draws not only on jazz but on R. and B. as well. In addition to relying on samples, Planets employs live musicians on many of the tracks, a move that allows the songs to breathe and flow into extended jams. Pop songs tend to last about three minutes -- the attention span of the typical rock star -- but several selections here wander pleasantly about for six or seven minutes, giving the whole CD an unhurried feel.

The lyrics on Blowout are often abstract, but the clear subjects are Afrocentrism and revolution. The melodious Dial 7 (Axiom of Creamy Spies) proclaims that blacks, like cream, will rise to the top. "It's Nation-time/ Nation-time/ ready to put in work," the chorus goes, calling for black solidarity. The mesmerizing Black Ego starts with the sound of a policeman reading Butterfly (real name: Ishmael Butler) his rights and the rapper sourly answering, "Oh, like I ever had rights." But unlike cop-hating gangsta rappers, Digable Planets has a constructive rebelliousness. "There are messages in our music for people who are oppressed in America to recognize their oppression," says trio member Ladybug (Mary Ann Vierra). "So this is one little way to help you out of it."

The brilliant Stolen Moments is an openly contentious album. Most of the songs deal with aids, and each of the tunes pairs rappers with jazz performers -- rapper Guru with Donald Byrd, the spoken-word group the Last Poets with saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, Digable Planets with guitarist Wah Wah Watson and trumpeter Lester Bowie. Age is coupled with youth, cool with anger, and the result is music with a caustic beauty.

On the mostly successful CD Home, Spearhead too takes on a variety of social concerns, from poverty to black nationalism. The songs draw on hip-hop, jazz and soul. One song, Positive, is about getting tested for the aids virus; another, Caught Without an Umbrella, describes the allure of suicide. A few of the tunes on Home are pedestrian, but all are jaywalkers -- flouting the rules and going where they please.

One track on Stolen Moments samples a comment by philosopher Cornel West that could be the jazz-rap credo. "Often times when young people feel as if they're rebelling," West says, "these forms of rebellion result in falling into the very traps that are being laid." He goes on to say: "One must have a much broader view of how one rebels." Rap is a form of rebellion, but it can be a trap when it plays into violent stereotypes. By adapting the humanism of jazz and channeling the power of rap away from antisocial braggadocio, Digable Planets, the performers on Stolen Moments and Spearhead are helping make hip-hop truly revolutionary.

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York