Drones

The musicians on DronesDronesTerrace Martin · 2021 (2021) form the core of post-2010s jazz across LA and Chicago. Where Brainfeeder-adjacent production instincts meet collective improvisation — this is one of the defining sites of where jazz moved next.

The bass on To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) is Thundercat's. Before the jazz and soul world claimed him he had spent his teens and twenties in the crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies — a gig he still held around the time of his own Apocalypse (2013).

In 2015, Kamasi Washington emerged as a new voice in jazz with his triple album The Epic — but that same year he was also arranging strings on To Pimp a Butterfly, a landmark hip-hop record. He'd already left a mark outside jazz before the jazz world took notice.