Robert Glasper Experiment

Robert Glasper is an American jazz pianist and record producer. His 2012 album Black Radio won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album at the 55th Grammy Awards pre-show.

Glasper's albums are centered around his work as a solo artist, and two bands: The Robert Glasper Trio (on piano Robert Glasper, drummer Chris Dave, and bassist Vicente Archer) as an acoustic jazz trio, and The Robert Glasper Experiment (Glasper, Dave, saxophonist/vocalist Casey Benjamin and bassist Derrick Hodge) as an electronic act that defies genre norms from any single discipline. "That's what makes this band unique... We can go anywhere, literally anywhere, we want to go. We all have musical ADD and we love it." With primary influences in neo-soul, hip-hop, jazz, gospel, and R&B, Glasper also has reinterpreted songs from rock acts Nirvana, Radiohead, Soundgarden, and David Bowie. As a jazz artist, Rashod D. Ollison reviewed him after the release of Canvas as "a gifted jazz musician with a brilliant, energetic technique and a fresh, mesmerizing sense of melody and composition.".

On February 28, 2012, Glasper released Black Radio, which featured performances by many neo-soul and hip hop artists including Lupe Fiasco, Bilal, Lalah Hathaway and Yasiin Bey. This synthesis of hip hop and jazz is supposedly Glasper's attempt to correct what he sees as a lack of new energy in the jazz genre. In the April 2012 issue of Down Beat, Glasper stated that "I've gotten bored with jazz to the point where I wouldn't mind something bad happening. Slapping hurts, but at some point it'll wake you up. I feel like jazz needs a big-ass slap." On November 5, 2012, Black Radio Recovered: The Remix EP was released with five remixed tracks from the prior album.

His latest single is entitled, "Somebody Else," featuring Emeli Sande.

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