CREAM

Jazz and hip-hop have crossbred and intermingled enough times over the past few decades so that once-clear genre lines remain perpetually and gloriously blurred. Still, there’s always room for reassessment of the classics, and few artists are as suited to straddle both worlds in this fashion quite like Kassa Overall. On *CREAM*, the drummer, producer, and sometime rapper leads his shifting ensemble down a predominantly instrumental route, taking plenty of improvisational liberties with iconic singles along the way. Song titles like “BIG POPPA” and “NUTHIN BUT A ‘G’ THANG” leave little ambiguity about the source material. Yet while his covers rightfully appropriate key elements from these hits and fan favorites, the pathways taken open the compositions up in fresh and revealing ways. While his versions of Digable Planets’ “REBIRTH OF SLICK (COOL LIKE DAT)” and A Tribe Called Quest’s “CHECK THE RHIME” splice directly into those cuts’ jazz sample DNA, approaches to Southern staples by Juvenile and Outkast help link them to a broader lineage.