Bro, they went in on me,” the intrepid drummer-rapper-producer Kassa Overall — who I’d just interviewed — texted me two summers ago. That June day in 2023, Animals — his third album, and his hotly anticipated Warp Records debut — was released. Warp, the pioneering UK label that helped set the pace for experimental electronic music in the ’90s with artists like Aphex Twin and Autechre, was now backing his restless exploration of the Black American musical continuum.
He brought in an array of guests to match the project’s reach: rapper Danny Brown, Detroit’s gleeful provocateur; jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, exacting yet expansive; and singer Laura Mvula, whose voice fuses classical training with gospel and soul. Elsewhere, the lineup stretched from the cryptic Afrofuturism of Shabazz Palaces to Nick Hakim’s dream-hazed psych-soul and Theo Croker’s trumpet, gleaming and fluid, threading through the mix.
In that sense, Animals was widely received as a bold, boundary-dissolving work — tracing the trunk of Black music and branching into rap, jazz, soul and beyond. But one publication balked: the characteristically contrarian Pitchfork, who, in a 6.7 review, acknowledged that the album “rejects false dichotomies like jazz vs. hip-hop,” yet concluded that Overall’s “freeform style is too scattered for its own good.”
Overall took it with a shrug and good humor. His new project, Cream — out September 12 on Warp Records — flips the script. Where Animals sprawled across genres with a roster of collaborators, Cream pares down: no samples, no drum machines, no overdubs, just Overall and his band reimagining hip-hop staples as live, jazz-inflected improvisations.
The selection of material is audacious. It moves from the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Big Poppa” and Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” to Digable Planets’ “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat),” Dr. Dre’s “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang,” A Tribe Called Quest’s “Check the Rhime,” OutKast’s “SpottieOttieDopaliscious,” Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” and Drake’s “Passionfruit,” the simmering 2017 track from More Life. (The liner notes come from Dan Charnas, author of Dilla Time, the 2022 biography of J Dilla that traces how he reshaped rhythm.)
We spoke ahead of the album’s release about why Overall stripped everything back, what it means to recast rap classics as jazz standards, and how life at home in Seattle with his fiancée, writer Lauren Du Graf, and their baby son, Seneca, is shaping his music.
How has becoming a father shaped your creativity?
His name is Seneca, like the philosopher. He’s crazy, man. He’s mad cool, super happy. He loves hitting the drums. He just wants to be grown like all little babies — he wants to walk, he wants to eat, he wants to eat the eggs and dill. Having him put a whole new dimension on everything. I thought I’d be so stressed out and delirious that I wouldn’t be able to create. And I am stressed and delirious. But the creativity stayed strong. It’s inspired me to be creative in a different way — more free with it, more playful with it.
What kind of kid were you?
I was real happy. My parents were hippies. The living room was full of instruments. They let me be free for the first few years of my life. It wasn’t a bunch of “don’t do this, don’t do that.” It was openness.
What’s your partner like, and how do your personalities mix with your son?
She’s a writer, Lauren Du Graf. She wrote the liner notes for that Alice Coltrane Carnegie Hall record. We’re both artists, both on the artsy side. In most couples one person is more organized and the other is looser. But with us we’re both loose. We’re still figuring out how to be timely and organized. I think Seneca will be inquisitive, intelligent, creative. I just don’t want to put pressure on him to be any specific person. I just want him to be happy and to do whatever it is he’s supposed to do.
How did you get from Animals to Cream? I remember when the Pitchfork review came out, you texted me about it.
Yeah. The Cream record is the response record to all my previous records. I didn’t think about Animals specifically, but I just thought about the process that I used normally, which is a lot of spontaneous composition, improvisation. And then I would chop it up, edit it, rework it and turn it into something collage-like, my version of hip-hop or electronic music. Animals was very much that.
But no, it is not a response to the Pitchfork article. It’s a response to my process. Instead of trying to make something more palatable, I decided to make something that was even more me, but different. With Cream I wanted to flip it. No edits, just a band in a room, Rudy Van Gelder–style. It was almost a boomerang response to everything before.
Talk about the band.
A lot of them had been touring with me through the whole Animals run. Matt Wong is on keys. Bendji Allonce plays congas. [Tenor saxophonist] Tomoki Sanders, Pharoah Sanders’s son, is on two songs. Emilio Modeste plays sax on the rest. He was already playing with Wallace Roney at 16, he’s a serious cat. Rashaan Carter is on bass. I wanted a band that was mostly acoustic, to stay in that palette.
Were you used to recording like this — live, no surgery?
Not really. To be fair it wasn’t only one take — we did a few takes of each song. But no overdubs, no edits. If we got one we liked, that was it. That was wild to me. Because I usually have songs that take years. I’ve got songs I started in 2009 or 2010. And I just recorded the drums last week. So to finish a song in one session, to literally be able to send it straight to mixing — that was crazy.
What’s your personal golden era of hip-hop?
The whole idea of a “golden era” is kind of a farce. It shifts depending on how old you are. People used to say it was KRS-One, Public Enemy, early ’90s. Then it settled into ’96 with Tupac and Biggie. Over time, what we think was the most important moment shifts.
For me, it’s the music I came of age with. I smoked my first weed to some of that. I remember hearing “Big Poppa” for the first time, and when [Outkast’s] Aquemini came out. Those records hit and we listened to them for months and years. We were never the same after. They affected our whole outlook on life. Those are coming-of-age songs. They trigger nostalgia. And I know them so well that arranging them is natural. You know every little grunt and groan in the recording.
What’s your personal Wu-Tang? Which member are you drawn to the most?
My favorite member has changed over time. But now I’ve got to give it to ODB [Ol’ Dirty Bastard]. He was the most organic, the realist. People didn’t think he could rap as good as Nas, or even Method Man or Ghostface. But when you zoom out, he did. Just in a different style of art. More improvisational, not preconceived. If you write something complicated and preconceived, it might come off perfect. But if you come right off inspiration, it’s not supposed to sound perfect. ODB knew how to live in that space. The beautiful mistakes as art.
I saw an interview where they said a lot of what he was doing came out of Biz Markie, and that made sense. Biz wasn’t about technical virtuosity. It was 90 percent personality, his ability to connect. ODB had that, but on a visionary level. Wu-Tang as a whole had rawness. It was fatigues instead of expensive suits. It was self-empowerment. Anti-Hollywood. Anti-showbiz. They weren’t the only conscious rap group. But nobody had that same rawness.
Do you have any personal connection to Staten Island?
I went there once for a rehearsal with Vernon Reid, and I took the ferry back. The trippy thing was, because I’m from Seattle, I thought I knew ferries. But the Staten Island Ferry is New York public transit. It feels like the subway on water. Same energy, but on a boat. That was wild.
Where are you in your artistic trajectory right now?
It’s step by step. But over the past year I’ve felt a new level of freedom. I don’t feel like I need to make a record just to follow up something, or to put myself in conversation with other people. That feels phony. I made a whole other groove-based album recently. Instrumental. A little editing. Organic sounding.
And then I decided I didn’t like it. Because I realized I was making something I thought people would like. I don’t want to do that. I want to follow my gut. Maybe nobody likes it. Maybe nobody around me even hears it yet. Maybe in 50 years people will. But when you get that feeling in your chest — “this is it” — you’ve got to trust that. Fuck what anybody thinks.
Are you sensitive to feedback?
Yes and no. Early on, I was an oversharer. I always had the aux cord, playing tracks for my roommates, tweaking, playing them again. Same back in high school in the basement. Homies would come over — some into OutKast, Wu-Tang, Tribe, others into Master P. Cats with no talent would be like, “You need more hi-hats.” I’d just chase whatever the person next to me wanted.
Then I had a phase of being aggressively anti-feedback. Like with my “Passionfruit” cover. It opens with a free-jazz drum solo, then drops out, then I sing “Passionfruit” on Auto-Tune. It was anti-radio. Anti-“catch them in 20 seconds.” If somebody critiqued something, I might just do the opposite out of spite. That was about solidifying my own instincts.
Now I’m somewhere in the middle. My partner Lauren is my number-one editor. We fight. I tell her she’s wrong. She goes to sleep. It bugs me. And then I fix it. She’s not always right. But if she doesn’t like something, that means something. She co-produced Animals and Cream. Mostly that means she listens to bounces, we argue and I work on it more. Her writing background balances my tendency to finish quickly.
Can you give an example?
On “Make My Way Back Home,” I wrote a verse I loved. She said it was lazy. I fought her for months. Eventually I rewrote it. For a while I even had a bounce with no verse, tried to get Ishmael Butler or Arto Lindsay to rap it. Then I realized I could do it. I wrote a heavier verse, and I put a line in there about miscarriages, and that’s what made it. She wouldn’t let up until it was strong.
How’s your home life?
We live in Queen Anne in [northwestern] Seattle. We cohabitate. My son doesn’t like sleeping in the crib. He’s always with her. So I end up on the couch if I don’t want a bad back. I even thought about sampling that [1996] Dru Hill song “In My Bed,” making it about the baby taking over. Like, “he took my spot.” It’s a scene at home. But it’s fun.
What else are you up to outside Cream?
I’m driving from Seattle to Chicago right now in a Chevy Express to start tour. Boxes of merch and backline in the van — old-school grunge band style. After the U.S., we go to Asia in October, then Europe in November. I’m also playing on Gary Bartz’s new album [Damage Control, with the backing band Eternal Tenure of Sound] and doing gigs with him.
How do you spend your time on long drives?
Sometimes we listen to audiobooks. Lauren and I listened to Dilla Time from Nashville to Seattle. Right now I’m with my cousin Jeremiah. We’ll probably just talk for hours, like our own podcast. Other times I drive in silence. That’s powerful. You get ideas, have to pull over and write notes. On one drive I came up with seasoning ideas for Animals. That silence gives you space to think.
Anything else you want JazzTimes readers to know?
I love the new jazz scene — fast grooves, two-chord vamps. I’m part of that too. But I felt like some requirements were getting lost. Especially the cymbal-beat, snare-bass drum language I learned as a drummer. That wasn’t being represented. With Cream I wanted to lean on that tradition. It’s not only instrumental. Or only jazz. But it comes from that drumming language. It’s powerful. And I think it’s important we keep chasing it. At the same time, I’m reframing the hip-hop I grew up with into jazz standards. It’s about keeping both traditions alive, and letting them talk to each other. JT