Bilal and the Robert Glasper Trio at Yoshi's, November 26th, 2007

I’ve been dying to see Bilal live for about two years now. I tried to see him maybe a year ago at this club in Oakland. I went with my girlfriend at the time, Natalie, but it turned out that we didn’t meet the dress code, both of us being white suburban kids with jeans and converse or flip flops or something. So we had to drive home without hearing any of the soulful wailings and phat-ass beats that we were dying to hear.
Last night I finally got to see him play, and it certainly was a different side of Bilal than I expected to see. It was his first time playing at Yoshi’s, and as his back up band he had an incarnation of the Robert Glasper trio, with Alan Hampton on bass and Chris Dave on drums.
My friend Brian and I walked in in the middle of the first tune, and somehow landed seats five feet away from the performers. We were elated. It was just the trio at this point, and they were playing a tune called F.T.P. of Glasper’s latest record, “In My Element.” They transitioned this into a monk tune that I wasn’t familiar with, which they imbued with, as Glasper described, some more modern grooves a la De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and the ever-cited late J-Dilla. This intro set the tone for the rest of the night, with Glasper’s deeply gospel influenced piano style, complex rhythmic interplay, and dense chords over Chris Dave’s changing hip-hop grooves and polyrhythmic hi-hat work.
Glasper then introduced Bilal, and the man that walked on stage was a far cry from the man that appears on the cover of his album, 1st Born Second. Rather than long dreads, heavily tattoed arms, and a tight fitting white tank top, Bilal was wearing faded grey jeans, a grey crew-neck sweatshirt with a grey collared shirt underneath. His hair was cut short, and he was wearing dark framed glasses and a neatly trimmed goatee. He told the audience that we would be seeing a different side of him, and emphasized that he met Glasper at New School, where they both studied Jazz.
They then went into a particularly nasty rendition of Autumn Leaves, with Bilal chopping up and stuttering the melody and lyrics as he gesticulated animatedly. After a simple but solid scat section, Glasper did something really cool with his solo. He had a fender Rhodes right next to the baby grand he was playing, and he played unison lines on both keyboards, with the acoustic piano just barely coming after the Rhodes, creating an ill-sounding natural sort of delay.
After this the group played what sounded like Wayne Shorter’s Barracuda. It was an up-tempo, swinging number with Bilal singing the melody with a lazy but controlled sounding falsetto. Hampton had a nice bass solo, over a stripped down bass and kick only hip hop beat. This tune transitioned into a rendition of Miles Davis’ Blue in Green, with Bilal singing some heartfelt lyrics as Glasper channeled Bill Evans through his funky fingers with some dense, cascading block chords. It was a very beautiful ballad moment, the perfect mixture of jazz and modern grooves, and ended with the crowd clapping along. While Bilal was singing the head, a beautiful woman who may have worked for Yoshi’s, or may have come with Bilal, walked on stage and brought him a martini, which prompted him to laugh exaggeratedly and toast the crowd in a mock James Bond, classy sort of way. He said “I know you’re not supposed to clap your hands at a jazz club, but hey it feels good.”
The next tune Bilal dedicated to the late J-Dilla, a legendary and influential producer that worked with Bilal on a lot of projects. Bilal was in the Soulquarians, Dilla’s production team that was responsible for such classic hip hop and neo-soul albums as Common’s “Like Water for Chocolate” and Eryka Badu’s “Mama’s Gun.” One thing I love about Bilal’s album are the sick beats that he sings over, always with a bass or drum or guitar part that is almost too slow and yet right on. There was no lack of phat beats at this show though, even with a piano trio as his only backup. He went into Reminisce, a number off his album 1st Born Second. Chris Dave, who I’ve been wanting to see live for a while now, provided beat after beat, always super funky and always super interesting, with snare rolls and complex hi hat rhythms that emulated a drum machine, but with that irreplaceable human element that only a drummer of Dave’s caliber can bring. There was a back up vocal part that they obviously couldn’t reproduce, Bilal being the only singer, but somehow some vocally gifted members of the crowd sang it anyways, perfectly on time and harmonized so that it honestly sounded rehearsed. There is something you don’t get everyday. I felt like I was in church.
The highlight of the set though were the last two tunes they played. Throughout the show the crowd kept yelling out “Sometimes!” which is my favorite Bilal tune by far. So they acquiesced, but not before playing a slower number of his, Queen of Sanity. Sometimes was everything I wanted it to be, with all the proper builds, and Bilal wailing in his signature soulful-as-fuck falsetto. The man is so damn fun to watch on stage, even in a setting like this. He waves his arms like a monkey, and seems lazy and a little wasted at all times, yet ever in control and musically on-point.
Not that he needed to, but Bilal definitely showed us that night that he has chops beyond just hip hop and neo-soul. He has the knowledge and grace of a trained jazz musician, and yet this was far from a straight jazz show. It brought together some of the best elements of black music in the past 40 years and filtered it through Bilal and Robert Glasper’s unique styles that they have very clearly developed alongside each other in years past. A killer band and a great performance from start to finish.