The NY saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman's music has always drawn from disparate sources in distinctive ways, but with 'Sélébéyone', he takes an unexpected turn: drawing, from modern jazz, Senegalese rap, live electronics, and underground hip-hop, to create a unique form of urban experimentalism. The project stands apart from almost every other jazz/hip-hop collaboration that has preceded it.
Hailed by The New York Times as "a state-of-the-art musical thinker with a reputation for sure-footed futurism," and "a quietly dazzling saxophonist," Steve Lehman has built a career creating innovative new music that packs a visceral wallop.
His critically-acclaimed octet has previously released arrangements of seminal hip-hop tracks, like Wu-Tang Clan's "Living In the World Today" and Camp Lo's "Luchini." And his professional ties with Meshell Ndegeocello and other pioneering members of the contemporary R&B community date back to 2004: most recently Lehman was a featured soloist on Ndegeocello and Jason Moran's 2014 Blue Note release 'All Rise'.
The musical relationships underpinning 'Sélébéyone' are decades old. HPrizm (AKA High Priest) - a legend of New York's underground hip-hop scene and a founding member of Antipop Consortium - has been one of Lehman's closest collaborators for over a decade. Saxophonist Maciek Lasserre, began studying with Lehman in 2005 and introduced Lehman to the burgeoning Senegalese hip-hop scene in 2010 and began working with Gaston Bandimic - one of Senegal's most distinctive young rap stars - a few years later.
The distinctive sound on 'Sélébeyone' is a result of the sonic expertise of noted hip-hop engineer Andrew Wright, a childhood friend of Lehman's since the early 1980s. Wright received a GRAMMY-nomination for his work on Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, and in some ways, Sélébéyone delivers on the promise of Lamar's more mainstream collaborations with contemporary jazz artists like Ambrose Akinmusire, Robert Glasper, and Kamasi Washington.
