He is said to be a jazz musician for the hip hop generation. There’s a lot of truth to that, but not all of it. He blurs the lines between traditional and modern jazz, hip hop, soul, funk, pop and rock so perfectly that his style can be thought of as black music history in a nutshell. He is brilliant at everything he does: as a singer, as a guitarist, and as a songwriter and producer. A consummate professional.
In addition to the talent that was given to José James in his Irish-Panamanian heritage, he is also a highly accomplished musician, a graduate of The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, located in New York’s legendary Greenwich Village neighbourhood, where the music life has been beating for more than half a century. Though he made his independent debut in 2008, he had already captivated listeners and critics alike with his album Dreamer, and it’s no surprise that his slow journey led him to two of the coveted publishing ports of call for all jazz musicians everywhere, first to the Impulse! and then Blue Note, for whom he recorded five albums before setting up his own label, Rainbow Blonde, with his wife, the well-known singer Taali.
José James is truly a genre-straddling artist to the max. Like few others, he is able to combine nimble hip-hop rhythms and jazz harmonies into a completely natural whole. The musical legacy of his predecessors, or rather female-predecessors, is a testament to his range, as he finds them extremely inspiring and enjoys exploring their music. In 2015 he released Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday, an album on which he covers songs from the repertoire of one of the greatest jazz singers of the twentieth century. And his most recent album to date, last year’s On & On, is again a tribute to singer-songwriter Erykah Badu. “For my generation, Erykah Badu was one of the most innovative and insightful songwriters. Her work has proven to be groundbreaking in a social, musical and artistic sense,” says José James.
After all, he has also collaborated with an absolutely wide range of musicians in the past, whether it was the deceased pianist and modern jazz classic McCoy Tyner, or contemporary progressives Flying Lotus, Robert Glasper or Erik Truffaz.
José James is simply exactly what any even slightly non-dogmatic listener would like all musicians to be: multi-talented, capable not only of playing and singing anything, but also of putting in a big chunk of his own unmistakable feeling.
