Robert Glasper Black Radio 2 on 2LP

On their 2012 breakout Black Radio, Robert Glasper Experiment laid out a new paradigm for creative music, reaching beyond entrenched genre boundaries to create a singular vision that drew from all reaches of contemporary black music and beyond. Black Radio drew unanimous praise from critics across the board and earned Glasper the highest chart positions of his career when the album debuted at #10 on Billboard‘s Top Current Albums chart, also claiming the #1 spot on both the Billboard Jazz chart and the iTunes R&B chart. The album kept earning accolades all the way to the 2013 Grammy Awards where Black Radio was awarded Best R&B Album.

On October 29, RGE ups the ante with the release of Black Radio 2 (Blue Note), another genre-defying effort that takes the Black Radio blueprint and builds to even greater heights. The core remains for the Experiment, as astoundingly versatile a band as has ever existed, which features Robert Glasper on keyboards, Derrick Hodge on bass, Mark Colenburg on drums, and Casey Benjamin on vocoder and saxophone. Providing the vocals throughout is another jaw-dropping roll call of vocalists including Common, Patrick Stump, Brandy, Jill Scott, Dwele, Marsha Ambrosius, Anthony Hamilton, Faith Evans, Norah Jones, Snoop Dogg, Lupe Fiasco, Luke James, Emeli Sandé, Lalah Hathaway, and Malcolm-Jamal Warner.

On Black Radio 2, the emphasis is on songwriting with 11 of the 12 tracks new originals, from the soaring lead track “I Stand Alone” featuring rapper Common and vocalist Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy through Jill Scott’s sensual ode to connection “Calls” to the reinvention fantasy “Somebody Else” featuring BRIT Award winner Emeli Sandé. The lone cover is the album closer, a spine-tingling version of Stevie Wonder’s “Jesus Children of America” by vocalist Lalah Hathaway that also features a poignant spoken word tribute to the 20 young victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting by poet Malcolm-Jamal Warner. The album was produced by Glasper along with executive producers Nicole Hegeman and Eli Wolf.