Robert Glasper And Yasiin Bey Redefine A Lovely Day Live at A Vaulx Jazz

Two years before his “retirement,” the ex-rapper of Black Star got together with his pianist friend for a set haunted by the ghost of J Dilla. On the borders of jazz, hip-hop, and nu soul, it’s a concert that grooves with class. On his t-shirt it says: “Rap – Lies = Hip-hop” stating that lies and affectations aren’t really Robert Glasper’s thing. For that matter, the pianist starts this concert at the French festival at Vaulx-en-Velin (in the suburbs of Lyon) right away, without any preliminaries, without any “bullshit.” With his quartet, “Experiment,” everything seems easy, and Great Black Music flows from their fingers as if from an inexhaustible spring. The concept album he is defending this night on stage at À Vaulx Jazz is not called Black Radio for nothing and in the human radio that is Robert Glasper we find some Kanye West, Eric Dolphy and Bill Withers, and of course not to mention, Yasiin Bey aka Mos Def. When the ex-rapper from Black Star appears onstage at the seventeenth minute, the audience roars with delight and the concert takes on a whole other vibe: from cool and relaxed, it becomes abrasive and edgy. Together, Mos Def and the Robert Glasper Experiment celebrate the spirit of the most jazz-loving and talented producer in the history of hip-hop: J Dilla (on the De La Soul standard, “Stakes is High”). Together, they seem to jam like nobody else to jazz, nu soul, and hip-hop. Together, they have fun making the audience dance to big blasts of classy groove. “You’re very easy to please, I appreciate that,” confides Mos Def with a smile. Perhaps the audience sense that they were having a rare experience as two years later the MC announced that he had decided to retire.