During his October residency at the Blue Note, Grammy-winning jazz pianist Robert Glasper will be hard-pressed to top one of his previous shows…
During his October residency at the Blue Note, Grammy-winning jazz pianist Robert Glasper will be hard-pressed to top one of his previous shows at the West Village institution.
That’s because Kanye West — the perpetually controversial rapper who just changed his name to Ye — once sat in with Glasper at the club.
“I did a week here with different guests, and one day I had [rapper] Lupe Fiasco be my special guest,” Glasper tells The Post while sitting in his dressing room before a soundcheck for opening night earlier this week. “Between the first and second set, Mos [Def] calls me. He’s like, ‘Yo, I’m coming through, and I’m bringing Ye with me.’”
After a little prodding from Fiasco, West and Mos Def ended up hitting the stage. “I doubt Blue Note’s ever been that lit. Everybody was on their chairs,” says Glasper of that surprise rapper trifecta. “They rhymed, freestyled back and forth, like, 30 minutes. Dude, I tell you, that s – t was wild.”
That 2011 moment will be the one to beat as Glasper plays 48 shows over 24 nights through Oct. 28. Along the way, the genre-bending artist — who has worked with everyone from Erykah Badu and Norah Jones to Kendrick Lamar and Stevie Wonder — will be switching it up with different musical themes (such as a Miles Davis tribute) and band configurations (including a trio featuring Yasiin Bey, the artist formerly known as Mos Def), plus surprise guests.
Not that Glasper has gotten along with everyone he’s collaborated with: In August, he went viral for slamming Lauryn Hill on a Houston radio show. He said she mistreated her musicians and cut their pay for a 2008 show during which Glasper backed the diva.
“That was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my life musically, as far as how she treated people,” he says. “I’m just speaking up for the little guy, because it’s been happening for 20 years, bro.”
The Houston native, who is now based in Fort Greene, has come a long way since he first went to the Blue Note in 1997. “It was a jam session,” says Glasper, 40, who continually taps his left foot to the inner rhythms of his mind during the interview. “Soon as I walked out of the Blue Note, I found a hundred-dollar bill sitting right there on the ground. Good sign, right?”
But Glasper didn’t really need the good luck of finding a C-note outside of the Blue Note, because he had talent — and a vision that went outside of the box. That creativity got nurtured when jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove visited his high school in Houston.
“He had on overalls and Timberlands and played jazz,” Glasper says. “I’m like, ‘You can look like that and play jazz? Oh snap!’ I thought you had to look like my f – king principal.”
Changing his perception of jazz as “old music,” Glasper went on to bring some fresh young energy to the genre by infusing it with R&B and hip-hop.
“I’ve definitely gotten pushback from jazz purists,” says Glasper, who has won Grammys in R&B categories (for his 2012 album “Black Radio” and 2014’s “Black Radio 2”) and rap fields (for “These Walls,” his “To Pimp a Butterfly” collaboration with Lamar). “But if I’m being honest with my story, it has to involve hip-hop, neo-soul, gospel and all these things.
“I was playing gospel when I was 10. I didn’t start playing jazz until I was like 16. But those things are all African-American music. Black music is one big-ass house, and I just go room to room.”
