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Terrace Martin VibeZ

Twenty-nine tracks from a Los Angeles saxophonist and producer who is one of the most important connectors between jazz and hip-hop working today.

Terrace Martin

Terrace Martin is from South Central Los Angeles, the son of a jazz drummer and a singer, and trained seriously on saxophone at Locke High School — the same institution that produced Patrice Rushen and a long line of Los Angeles musicians.

His most consequential work is with Kendrick Lamar. Martin was central to To Pimp a Butterfly, playing, producing and helping assemble the cast of jazz musicians — Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, Robert Glasper — that made that album what it is. It is difficult to overstate how much that record changed what mainstream rap could sound like.

He also works constantly as a producer for West Coast rap, and his own records move fluidly between straight jazz, G-funk and soul.

What to listen for

The Dinner Party tracks — "Sleepless Nights" and the wider project with Robert Glasper, 9th Wonder and Kamasi Washington — are the best entry point and among the most enjoyable music being made in this space.

"Sick of Cryin'" with Leon Bridges and D Smoke is the most emotionally direct, and "Pig Feet"-era material from 2020 is the angriest.

"Beige" with Arin Ray and Elena Pinderhughes is the prettiest thing here — Pinderhughes is a flautist of extraordinary quality and lifts everything she appears on.

"Paradise" with Alex Isley — daughter of Ernie Isley, and one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary soul — is the other standout.

"Lets Go Get Stoned" with Snoop Dogg is the West Coast connection made explicit, and "Ten West" with trumpeter Dontae Winslow the most straightforwardly jazz.

"Turning Poison Into Medicine" is the title that tells you what the project is.

Go deeper

Velvet Portraits (2016) is his own album and was Grammy-nominated. Dinner Party's self-titled record is the short perfect one.

Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly is the essential context and one of the most important American albums of the century.

For the wider Los Angeles jazz world: Kamasi Washington's The Epic, Thundercat, Flying Lotus and the Brainfeeder label. That scene has done more to renew jazz's relevance than anything in decades.

A last note on what he actually changed. Before To Pimp a Butterfly, putting live jazz musicians at the centre of a mainstream rap album was a niche gesture; after it, it was an option any major artist could reach for. Martin was the person who made the introductions and played the horn parts, and a great deal of what the last decade of rap sounds like runs through decisions he made in that studio.

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