How Jazz Saved Hip-Hop Again

The story of two South Los Angeles music scenes and Kendrick Lamar's genre-bending album To Pimp a Butterfly.

- Branden Peters

Nothing more influential than rap music

I merge jazz fusion with the trap music

I mix black soul with some rock and roll

They never box me in. — Kendrick Lamar, “Black Friday”

These lines, taken from a freestyle that Compton artist Kendrick Lamar released in late November 2015, land between a riff about what the White House would be like if Kanye West took over and a slick comparison of Lamar’s DNA to the psychedelic drug DMT. As usual, the rapper delivers a blast of quotable lyrics across the track, but it’s the above salvo that sharply sums up Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly—the 2015 album that garnered him a historic 11 Grammy nominations—and the small, tight-knit cast of L.A. jazz musicians who helped create it.

Saxophonist Kamasi Washington, producer and saxophonist Terrace Martin and bassist Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner are all secondgeneration musicians, now in their early to mid-30s, who grew up together in South Los Angeles. (The L.A. City Council formally changed the name from “South-Central” in 2003 in an effort to downplay the area’s longtime association with gang violence, riots and poverty.) Their group dynamic is immediately apparent: Washington exudes a quiet yet larger-than-life gravity; Thundercat oozes otherworldly cool, offset by a sartorial style that includes pelts, traditional Native American headdresses and outer-space-inspired garb; and Martin, slightly older than the other two and often wearing an L.A. Dodgers cap, plays the role of seasoned streetwise leader.