Kassa Overall is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap in unmapped directions.
On ANIMALS, his Warp Records debut, Kassa pushes his kaleidoscopic, subversive vision further. He layers Roland 808s against avant-garde drumming in the vein of his mentors Elvin Jones and Billy Hart, the latter of whom he studied with at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Virtuoso musos appear alongside rap poets, including Danny Brown, Wiki, Lil B, and Shabazz Palaces. Top-flight jazz improvisation weaves in and out of orchestral string arrangements by Jherek Bischoff. The album’s diverse, all-star roster of collaborators includes several of his close friends, like vocalists Nick Hakim, Laura Mvula, Francis and the Lights, and jazz stars like Theo Croker and Vijay Iyer.
The title ANIMALS serves as a loaded metaphor for the paradoxes of his life as an entertainer and as a black man in America. ANIMALS is the sound of an artist aware of the cost of embodying one’s natural self in the public eye, a deep reckoning with the two-sided truth that to perform one’s freedom for an audience can mean succumbing to life inside a cage.
TRACKLIST:
A1. No Camera
A2. Anxious Anthony (feat. Anthony Ware)
A3. Ready To Ball
A4. Clock Ticking (feat. Danny Brown & Wiki)
A5. Still Ain’t Find Me (feat. Tomoki Sanders, Bendji Allonce, Mike King & Ian Fink)
A6. Make My Way Back Home (feat. Nick Hakim & Theo Croker)
A7. The Lava Is Calm (feat. Theo Croker)
B1. No It Ain’t (feat. Andrae Murchison)
B2. So Happy (feat. Laura Mvula & Francis and the Lights)
B3. It’s Animals
B4. Maybe We Can Stay (feat. J. Hoard)
B5. The Score Was Made (feat. Vijay Iyer)
B6. Going Up (feat. Lil B, Shabazz Palaces & Francis and the Lights)
