Karriem Riggins is best known as a jazz drummer and hip-hop producer for artists like Common, Slum Village, Talib Kweli and The Roots, but he doesn’t categorize himself as anything but an artist.
“You don’t have to put yourself in a box…there’s so many different ways to go,” Riggins says. A student of late jazz bassist Ray Brown, he tours with another Brown protégé, Grammy Award winner Diana Krall. In 2011, he collaborated with former Beatle Paul McCartney in concert and on Kisses on the Bottom, McCartney’s first studio release in five years. Names of some of the jazz artists he’s backed reads like the genre’s hall of fame - Hank Jones, Oscar Peterson, Milt Jackson, Donald Byrd and Ron Carter.
For his solo debut Alone Together on Stones Throw Records, Riggins plants himself firmly as a hip-hop producer with a 34-track instrumental odyssey through nearly every influence on his career thus far.
“Coming back to th...
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Karriem Riggins is best known as a jazz drummer and hip-hop producer for artists like Common, Slum Village, Talib Kweli and The Roots, but he doesn’t categorize himself as anything but an artist.
“You don’t have to put yourself in a box…there’s so many different ways to go,” Riggins says. A student of late jazz bassist Ray Brown, he tours with another Brown protégé, Grammy Award winner Diana Krall. In 2011, he collaborated with former Beatle Paul McCartney in concert and on Kisses on the Bottom, McCartney’s first studio release in five years. Names of some of the jazz artists he’s backed reads like the genre’s hall of fame - Hank Jones, Oscar Peterson, Milt Jackson, Donald Byrd and Ron Carter.
For his solo debut Alone Together on Stones Throw Records, Riggins plants himself firmly as a hip-hop producer with a 34-track instrumental odyssey through nearly every influence on his career thus far.
“Coming back to the machines, I feel like I can really express myself,” Riggins says. “This is the way that I express my rhythms.”
Machines, however, are just one way he expresses his rhythms. Midway through the album, the track “Water” is interrupted by a vocal snippet where the speaker places Riggins “right at the intersection of hip-hop and jazz.” Alone Together is that intersection; it’s the jazz music he’s played professionally since the age of 19, and it’s crafting beats like “Africa” on an MPC5000 while touring throughout Eastern Europe and Russia.
-- Ronnie Reese
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