By Michael Bayliss
Few other bands have captivated my full attention like the Toronto jazz/ hip hop collective BadBadNotGood (BBNG). The quartet is made up of Matthew A. Tavares, Chester Hansen, Alex Sowinski, and Leland Whitty, together they make one of the most exciting fresh sounds in hip hop today. Already onto their fourth album so accurately titled IV, they progressed their sound without compromising the integrity of who the band is at its core.
The album opens up smooth and soulful, it almost pays homage to classical jazz standards with the clear cut progression of notes. Leland whitney on the saxophone continues to astound me as a musician and leaves me in happy place when thinking about the era of jazz we live in. But later on in IV their rhythmic timing seems to follow a more hip hop flow, there's more use of just the breaks which is in a nutshell how hip hop came to be in the first place. While other songs will be more freeform there will also be tracks that act as instrumentals and beats. BBNG's sound is a clear cut bridge between jazz and hip hop. I know that other artist like Kendrick Lamar and Tribe Called Quest use jazz in many of their tracks, but their wicked lyricism can take away from the musical complexity of such a great genre of music. That is why I enjoy BBNG so much, it is because of their wordless freeform hip hop that makes me love their music without the use of lyrics to aide the listener.
Few other bands have captivated my full attention like the Toronto jazz/ hip hop collective BadBadNotGood (BBNG). The quartet is made up of Matthew A. Tavares, Chester Hansen, Alex Sowinski, and Leland Whitty, together they make one of the most exciting fresh sounds in hip hop today. Already onto their fourth album so accurately titled IV, they progressed their sound without compromising the integrity of who the band is at its core.
The album opens up smooth and soulful, it almost pays homage to classical jazz standards with the clear cut progression of notes. Leland whitney on the saxophone continues to astound me as a musician and leaves me in happy place when thinking about the era of jazz we live in. But later on in IV their rhythmic timing seems to follow a more hip hop flow, there's more use of just the breaks which is in a nutshell how hip hop came to be in the first place. While other songs will be more freeform there will also be tracks that act as instrumentals and beats. BBNG's sound is a clear cut bridge between jazz and hip hop. I know that other artist like Kendrick Lamar and Tribe Called Quest use jazz in many of their tracks, but their wicked lyricism can take away from the musical complexity of such a great genre of music. That is why I enjoy BBNG so much, it is because of their wordless freeform hip hop that makes me love their music without the use of lyrics to aide the listener.
Don't get me wrong though hip hop would not be where it is without the intense, and sometimes wacky ear pleasing use of the spoken word, and BBNG delivers that as well on IV. The vocalist and rappers that are featured every now and then throughout the album accompany BBNG in beautiful harmony giving words to the straight instrumentations of the album . Some of the artist featured on these tracks off of IV like Samuel T Herring, Charlotte Day Wilson and Colin Stetson. Musician I’ve never heard of before but now I can’t stop listening to. With this album BBNG has also allowed for interpretations of their sound by featuring tracks with Mick Jenkins and Kaytranada to make this album even better than I had previously thought possible. BBNG once again proves to me that hip hop can take many forms and this time it does not disappoint.