Flying Lotus Puts the Nail in the Coffin of the Jazz/Hip Hop Intersection
The music of producer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, is often upheld by jazz journalists and writers as an example of the intersection of jazz and hip hop. His family background helps this narrative, as he is the nephew of John and Alice Coltrane. Yet, like many musicians of his generation, his musical world is too capacious to be conceptualized as operating at the intersection of two distinct genres.
Flying Lotus’s 2014 album You’re Dead — which features an impressive list of musicians including Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Herbie Hancock, Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, and Kamasi Washington — is the end result of his seamless amalgamation of myriad stylistic influences. The album is adventurous, complex, and above all, unique in its aesthetic vision and execution.
Jazz fans will immediately pick up on Flying Lotus’ incorporation of jazz elements, from Kamasi Washington’s fleet post-Coltrane melodic lines to Herbie Hancock’s fusion synthesizers. Flying Lotus mixes jazz styles in a jarring and unpredictable ways. On several tracks the drummer — either Gene Coye, Justin Brown, or Deantoni…
