Guru – Jazzmatazz (1993)
Con il beneplacito di Miles Davis ed Easy Mo Bee, il miglior progetto ad esplorare l’unione tra hip hop e jazz strumentale è senza dubbio la serie Jazzmatazz firmata da Guru in quattro volumi dal 1993 al 2007. La serie annovera un numero incredibile di featurings con i più grandi pionieri della scena jazz degli ultimi 50 anni, da Donald Byrd a Roy Ayers, passando per Lonnie Liston Smith, Ramsey Lewis, Freddie Hubbard e molti altri. Intervistato nel 2009 in merito alle finalità del progetto, Guru ha detto: “Back around ’93 […] I was noticing how a lot of cats were digging in the crates and sampling jazz breaks to make hip hop records. But while I thought that was cool, I wanted to take it to the next level and actually create a new genre by getting the actual dudes we were sampling into the studio to jam over hip hop beats with some of the top vocalists of the time. You know, the whole thing was experimental, but I knew it was an idea that would spawn some historic music”.
