Robert Glasper: ‘You don’t say no to Miles Davis’

It's Miles' time again. The jazz icon is currently on the big screen in Miles Ahead with Don Cheadle leading the way as the iconic trumpeter.

Next month, a new album, Everything's Beautiful, goes on release to mark what would have been Davis' 90th birthday. Produced by award-winning pianist and producer Robert Glasper, it features acts such as Stevie Wonder, Erykah Badu, King, Hiatus Kaiyote, Bilal and others revamping and putting their spin on Davis' work.

The original plan was to do a remix album, but Glasper had other ideas when the call came from the label.

“Sony got the idea about approaching me from Miles’ family, his nephew Vince Wilburn Jr and his son Erin. They know my music and my style so they knew that if I did a remix album, it would be more than a remix album. When Sony approached me, they knew I was going to do something more.”

Glasper didn’t get any knockbacks from any of the singers he approached for the album.

“Pretty much everyone that I originally wanted that I knew said yes. The biggest factor with the roster was time and getting them into a studio, depending on where they were in the world, when they would be free, when they could get it done. I had a certain time period in which I was trying to finish the album so some of the people couldn’t do it, but I didn’t get anyone saying no.

“It’s Miles Davis, so I knew I’d get yes from most people. You don’t say no to Miles. I made sure that the people I asked liked Miles Davis to begin with. If I didn’t know exactly, I had a hunch.”

He says he was largely hands-off when it came to direction in the studio. “For the more band-orientated artists, ones like King and Hiatus Kaiyote, I pretty much let them be. Actually with most of the tracks, I tried to give the artists the leeway they wanted. I wanted this album to be an honest reflection of each artist’s love for Miles and I wanted it to be personable from them. I didn’t want to tell them how to portray how they felt.”

Glasper already had experience of large vocal collaborations from his Black Radio recordings and that was the template he stuck to.

“I think that was my way of taking the cloud about Miles’ legacy and iconic status from over people’s heads. I wanted it to be as different as possible from any other remix album you’ve heard because it’s more a reimagining than a remix album.”

That reimagining was also very much in the spirit of Davis. “He used to do these interpretations of pop songs because he was a jazz icon who wanted to be relevant. It’s different now because I think pop music has changed so much and songs are not as good as they used to be.

“Back then, it was about the music. When you interpreted a song, the song was already musical to a point. But now, pop music is not about the music any more so when you do a pop song now, it can be really corny and turn out really bad. For our generation, hip-hop is our pop music and that’s where this record is coming from.”

For the non-jazzers Glasper believes this record is for the non-jazzers out there. “The audience for this record probably don’t listen to jazz. That’s what I wanted, I didn’t want to preach to the choir.

“The jazz world already knows Miles and his legacy so this particular project was for those who don’t know him and don’t listen to jazz. This is a way in for them to Miles and what he was about, an album they can understand and digest and love.

“That’s what Miles wanted all along for his music. He didn’t want to box it in, he didn’t even want to call it jazz. He didn’t just want one audience to appreciate him so he kept evolving and doing different things.”

Glasper is currently working with Common and Herbie Hancock on new albums, there’s a Blue Note superband project on the go, and he’s in talks about producing several other artists. When he thinks back now on the new album, it’s the access he had to Davis’s work which resonates the most.

“The coolest thing was when they let me into the vault to take multi-tracks of his recordings,” says Glasper. “That’s where I got some of the samples from and a lot of them were from things that never made it on to actual songs, just ideas that he had. That was cool because I’d never have heard these half-songs and little ideas and the way he explained to his musicians what he wanted and how they talked to him if it wasn’t for this project.”