Adrian Young on “Something About April III”, Jazz is dead

For more than 15 years, Adrian Young Has given backbeat for a large discover of black entertainment – literally.

In Addition to Composing The Scores for Marvel’s “Luke Cage,” The James Patterson-Inspired Series “Cross,” Queen Latifah’s “Equalizer” Reboot and the BlaxPloitation Riff “Black Dynamite” (as well as a Compinoff) Producing and performer has been fueled tracks by Jay-Z, Ghostface Killah, Talib Kweli, Kendrick Lamar and dozens of other rappers. The record label he founded with a tribe called Quest member Ali Shaheed Muhammad, the healthy name Jazz is deadwas designed in 2017 not only to pay tribute to aging genre fixtures such as Gary Bartz and Lonnie Liston Smith, but also to give them an opportunity to record new music decades after their respective great days.

On April 18, Young releases “something about April III”, the operational conclusion – and culmination – of a trilogy whose origin reaches almost twice as long, to the first days of his career. The album’s musical influence draws on the many Brazilian legends (including Marcos ValleAzymuth and João Donato) and other international artists (including Ghanic guitarist Ebo Taylor and the late Nigerian drummer Tony Allen) whom he has recorded and performed live with via Jazz Is Dead. It also symbolizes a transition Younge call “From Sampler to Symphony”, celebrated with a concert series (including a 17 April date at Soraya on Campus in Cal State Northridge) with a 35-part orchestra that he will lead himself.

It is a journey that began when he decided to teach himself how to make music as the records he loved to try as a future producer. “I realized that I was more inspired by the records than I was the derivative music I did,” says Young Amount. “It was actually the things that came before hip hop that set the foundation for me, because I feel as if hip hop never really mastered the composition … I realized that I had to learn to play instruments.”

With his extra cash, Younga began to acquire instruments – a Fender Rhodes piano, a bass guitar, drum set, guitar – and learning to use them by copying the riffs sampled into their favorite songs. When he became musically skilled, he kept a boxing sensitivity as a composer. “Hiphop gave us ears to hear some things others can’t, and these ears are mainly based on hip -hop being a vinyl culture bricolage,” says Young. “It’s about our ears that say:“ Ok, we will take that part and do something new out of it. “So I’m writing from that perspective.”

After composing the point for “Black Dynamite” in 2009, Young configured his debut EP 2000, “Venice Dawn”, to “Something about April” as a clearinghouse for his ever-growing musical inspiration. “I wanted to record an album that represented my DJ box,” he says. “In my box I would have Wu-Tang, Delfonics, Ennio Morricone, Portishead, Air, Stereolab.” To follow the late story of the 1960s, the record clearly has a black man and a white woman on the cover, “because you would never see that kind of interracial couple on an album cover in the sixties or seventies.”

Because of the deliberate insularity of his vision, Young was proud – but originally unprepared – by how strong listeners responded to the album. “When I create, I create for this fake audience in my head, and I have to make sure that this fake audience in my head really likes what I do,” he admits. “So when I saw the reaction from people I was like,” really? Damn. Ok, let’s do another. “

During the five years between “Something About April” and its sequel in 2016, Young produced albums by Ghostface Killah, Souls of Mischief and Bilal, collaborated with Philadelphia R&B Legends The Delfonics and composed the points for the first season of Marvel’s “Luke Cage.” It was on the Souls of Mischief album that he first worked with Muhammad, who says that the two quickly identified a relative creative spirit in each other. “I saw that his process was very similar to mine,” remembers Muhammad. “He comes from the same place I come from when it comes to digging in the boxes and taking sampling discs, and kind of hit a wall where you want to build on a song and find someone else’s idea to get a song to grow.”

Muhammad says that Young’s “fake audience” does not just fry his music but gives it a unique artistic purity. “He is an audience of one – and it’s himself,” he says. “It does not mean that he does not make music for everyone to enjoy, because he is. But the audience to one is the ultimate level of freedom for a creative person. There are no external voices coming in. Adrian is on a loneliness and I think it is the best place for a creative person to be. And he uses the loneliness.

Their collaboration grew rapidly, which not only led to music for both seasons of “Luke Cage” but the Mash-up album “The Midnight Hour.” The two Invester Crate Diggers, who collaborate with his shared manager Andrew “Dru” Loyro and former Sony Music Exec Adam Block. “On my travels around the world, nothing has affected me as much musically as Brazil has,” says Young. “I continued to take trips out there and it allowed me to get closer to the icons like Marcos Valle, Hyldon, Azymuth, Joao Donato, Joyce. And I was like,” Yo, if I could record albums with these cats in my studio, it would just be a dream “.”

Their Highland Park studio, Linear Labs, offers a full functional recording space, while business offices next to the package and market the resulting work for release on vinyl and through tours and events that extend across the world. “Dru handles all the concerts and handles many other logistics as well. There is no jazz is dead without Dru – he is the one who even came with the name,” says Young. “When it comes to music, I make yes or no the decision. All albums (in the studio) because it must be an analog, like my sound. Then when we make an album is the vast majority of them (made by) me and ali.”

Including many for the artists listed above, they have since released more than 20 albums and coordinated live performances or tribute shows while mounted one -off events like last year 80^Th Birthday celebration for IF-you-wheat-you-wheat jazz producer Larry Mizell. The work goes in parallel with Younge’s many points games, as well as his solo project. Like “something about April II” before that he had not planned on a third part, but quickly realized that “April III” was an opportunity to fold his work the many musical lessons he had learned, “I thought to myself, how can I give back to a culture that has given so much to the world?” he says.

“Usually what Brazilian artists do is write their music in English in the hope of blasting abroad. I decided to write this album for them because the audience in my head said that the best you can do to pay tribute to a culture is to force me to write in a language that is not native to my own,” he adds.

Put against the tumultuous cultural background of Brazil, the album’s flowers, psychedelic soul, the relationship between a darker skin and a lighter black woman chronicle. In combination with the Portuguese lyrics, Whiffs of Younges are other influences: the severely loaded “Nos Somos as Estrelas” evokes the sunny edge of the French electronic tape air to an Al Jackson Jr. Backbeat, while “Esperando Por Voce” uses Kascadiga keyboards and thoughtful female voices as a win from Goblin. Given his idiosyncratic inspirations, it is equally surprising that Younga says he feels more outside the mainstream recording industry than ever before. “I don’t really consider myself part of modern black contemporary music because I’m not identifying with most things that are out right now.”

Yet with the Northridge show that comes up and a performance of all three albums planned for May in São Paulo, Young says that he has learned to create a balance between satisfying his “audience of one” and the growing legion of fans who agree that there is something about “April.” “That’s where I’m a DJ coming in,” he says. “As a DJ, your job is to be a judge of cool. You try to put a whole lot of music together that these people probably wouldn’t rock on your own, but because you do it is down with it.”

With its many partnerships and companies ready for even greater exposure, Younga sees the release of “something about April III” as more than a typical album cycle – rather it is an arrival. “This concert series is the biggest moment of my career,” says Young. “I know this sounds strange, but I’m looking at this as my debut, as if I’ve been doing all this work for the past 30 years for this moment to tell people:” This is Adrian Young. “

“By creating for this audience in my head, I feel like I am trying to develop the best version of myself,” says Young. “Going from any hip-hop guy in his bedroom who samples things to become a quincy Jones and doing their quincy Jones things is astonishing. It’s a dream that I never thought would come true.”