Jazz-Funk Quotes

I remember playing Billy Cobham's 'Total Eclipse' for Snoop Dogg. I also played him Frank Zappa, 'Apostrophe.' And I played him 'Saint Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast.'

There are no great jazz-fusion bands.

I've grown up with jazz - the Joe Hendersons, Oliver Nelsons, Miles Davis and stuff - but I was also listening to, like, Slipknot, Korn, and Rage Against the Machine. There was all of that weaved - interweaved - in there, and being from L.A., you tend to know your musical history.

Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.

My band, Miles Long, is a jazz-funk spoken word band. There's jazz sensibilities, but I'm a bass player, so I'm very much into the head-bobbing vibe with sophisticated lyrics.

Thundercat put me on to George Duke.

To most people, jazz-fusion means this dreadful synthetic jazz-rock thing, this jazz-Muzak, which I detest. They also think of jazz as a specific form of music, while to me it's just the opposite.

I've been listening to Herbie Hancock forever. He's gone through so many transitions, even before bringing hip-hop to the forefront with 'Rockit' and everything.

We've now got a whole generation of jazz musicians who have been brought up with hip-hop. We've grown up alongside rappers and DJs; we've heard this music all our life. We are as fluent in J Dilla and Dr Dre as we are in Mingus and Coltrane.

As time passed on, got to hear some players who were straight up funky, not just jazz. Nat Adderley, for instance - he's a funky trumpet player, so he was my man.

When I first played some Coltrane-type stuff on the 'Pimp a Butterfly' sessions, Kendrick got it immediately. 'I want it to sound like it's on fire,' he'd say. That's the kind of common ground that the best jazz and the best hip-hop have.