![]() Our host CP holds court in the World Star Studio with a live audience, celebrity guests, and funny friends at the bar. World Star TV incorporates the same elements of the site into a weekly late night comedy format. ![]() And like the founder of the site says, this show is more Howard Stern than SNL. It shows the realest, rawest elements of life, and no matter how shocking, raunchy, or brutal some of those elements are, World Star can make it funny. World Star finds the light in dark comedy. It’s culture, comedy, music, news, girls, and a launching pad for some of today’s hottest urban talent. These developments conspired to take some shine away from Guru’s experiment, but three decades later, Jazzmatazz endures as a highly listenable timepiece that nods warmly to an era when modern rap cats and veteran jazz figures broke bread and became musical kinfolk.World Star Hip Hop isn’t just a site, it’s a movement. Likewise, Gang Starr’s own upcoming release, 1994’s Hard to Earn, replaced the smoky jazz samples of 1992’s Daily Operation with an emphasis on weighty crunching drums and more angular and abstract chopped samples. Dre was moving hip-hop toward a sleek G-funk zone with The Chronic and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle, while RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan striped New York City hip-hop down to a fantastically grungy essence. (Blue Note also repackaged its most sampled wares into the Blue Break Beats compilation series, complete with liner notes documenting precisely which hip-hop producers had repurposed the dusty grooves.) But hip-hop moves at light speed. Adding weight to the idea, later that year the UK group US3 were granted carte blanche to sample selections from the iconic jazz label Blue Note’s deep vaults. Released in 1993, Jazzmatazz made plain the potential of jazz-rap. Lee bring an acid jazz sheen to “When You’re Near” and “No Time To Play” respectively (with the latter featuring vibes work from Roy Ayers) and Lonnie Liston Smith’s piano lines add the lonesome aura of the blues to “Down The Backstreets.” ![]() (In most cases, the musicians are also granted a few extended bars at the end of each outing to stretch out, improvise, and showcase their chops.) Early on, saxophonist Branford Marsalis infuses Guru’s “Transit Ride” guide to navigating the New York City subway system with a fittingly taut quality the singers N’Dea Davenport and Dee C. Listen to Guru’s Jazzmatazz Volume 1 now.Īnchored by smooth, rolling boom-bap drums, Jazzmatazz spotlights a roster of sax giants, trumpet maestros, and piano players who bought into Guru’s concept by providing sample-worthy riffs that become the melodic thrust of the album’s 12 tracks. In Guru’s mind, the next logical step was to formalize the arrangement by reaching out to original artists whose music they’d been sampling – Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd, and Lonnie Liston Smith – and getting together in the studio. At the time, a wave of hip-hop artists headed up by A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, and Guru’s own group Gang Starr (alongside producer DJ Premier) were receiving critical acclaim for unearthing and flipping jazz samples into their hip-hop tracks. “Peace, yo, and welcome to Jazzmatazz, an experimental fusion of hip-hop and live jazz,” announces Guru in his trademark suave monotone at the outset of the MC’s 1993 solo album.
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