Jazz dream team album debut! 180-gram gatefold double LP
Debut album from dream team band R+R=NOW — featuring Robert Glasper on keyboards, Terrace Martin on synthesizer and vocoder, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah on trumpet, Derrick Hodge on bass, Taylor McFerrin on synth and beatbox, and Justin Tyson on drums.
Collagically Speaking, the album, leads off with "Colors In The Dark." The band's DNA is evident in the song's woozy soul with Martin's robo-coo floating like a hallucination over a lush scene rooted by Hodge's warm bass and featuring a breezy Glasper piano solo that crests in a sudden burst from Tyson.
Okayplayer wrote that "R+R=NOW consists of some of the brightest and baddest musicians in the game today," adding that the album's first single "Change Of Tone" "finds R+R=NOW fluidly showcasing their individual sounds as a cohesive blend... expressing hope, love, confidence, and resiliency through their respective melodies." Stereogum declared the song "a powerful introduction to the band, highlighting each members' skill and spirit," while Paste called it "a hybrid encompassing all of black music-hip-hop, R&B, jazz, soul, funk-with its layered instrumental laying out black excellence."
"R+R stands for ‘Reflect' and ‘Respond'," says Glasper. "When you reflect what's going on in your time and respond to that, you can't not be relevant. So ‘R' plus ‘R' equals ‘NOW'."
In that spirit, Collagically Speaking isn't some wonky thesis on the state of the nation. It's a raw document that seamlessly adheres neo-soul to future-funk, West Coast jazz of the moment to astral electronica, instrumental hip-hop to musique concrète, avant-garde to classical-these are single-take songs, written live in the room, that go wherever this formidable crew's mood goes. Guest voices get caught in that mix as well: actors Omari Hardwick ("Power") and Terry Crews ("Brooklyn Nine-Nine," "Expendables"); actress Amanda Seales ("Insecure"); MCs Stalley and yasiin bey (f.k.a. Mos Def); and singers Amber Navran (of Moonchild) and Goapele. The themes that bind it all together are both spoken and inferred: romantic love, universal love, systemic bigotry, the women's movement, quiet power, wild creativity, personal loss and growth.
1. Change Of Tone
2. Awake To You
3. By Design
4. Resting Warrior
5. Needed You Still
6. Colors In The Dark
7. The Night In Question
8. Reflect Reprise
9. HER=NOW
10. Respond
11. Been On My Mind
