2015 · The Epic
The Epic
Library — Saxophone
Kamasi Washington
2 albums as leader and 8 as sideman (2005–2025), each listed chronologically.
As Leader · 2
As Sideman · 8
Notes on these albums · 6
Terrace Martin2018 · Heaven and Earth
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.
2021 · Drones
The musicians on Drones
Makaya McCraven
Robert Glasper
Thundercat2016 · Velvet Portraits
Terrace Martin trained as a jazz saxophonist, but in 2015 he helped shape the sound of a landmark hip-hop album, To Pimp a Butterfly. Around the same time he was quietly releasing straight jazz records like Velvet Portraits and Gray Area under his own name, moving between the two worlds with the same hands.
2017 · Drunk
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).
2025 · The Eternal Tenure Of Sound: Damage Control
Alto saxophonist Gary Bartz made his name on the 1971 electric fusion session Live-Evil and on 1966 hard bop dates. In 1997 he turned up somewhere unexpected: Roy Hargrove's Afro-Cuban band, cutting the Grammy-winning album Habana alongside Chucho Valdés while Hargrove was still in his twenties. Bartz was still releasing albums under his own name in 2025.
