Hip-hop musicians embraced jazz around 1990, with groups as disparate as Gang Starr, A Tribe Called Quest and The Pharcyde sampling records by Ramsey Lewis, Roy Ayers, Ahmad Jamal and Thelonious Monk. As you might notice, my list includes some ringers: Ayers and Lewis were credible jazz players, but they specialized in music that merged pop and funk with straight jazz. The Los Angeles band The Pharcyde hit in 1992 with their debut album Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, an album I loved so much I ordered the T-shirt from their label. That T-shirt is long gone, but Bizarre Ride holds up after three decades. In the same year that Eric B. & Rakim released Don’t Sweat the Technique, The Pharcyde made a funny album that addressed deep subjects — check out “Officer” — and used all those jazzy samples to good effect. The follow-up, 1995’s Labcabincalifornia, featured production by J Dilla. The current version of the group includes original members Imani, Slimkid3 and Fatlip, with Bootie Brown absent. Like Slick Rick’s 1991 The Ruler’s Back and De La Soul’s 1993 Buhloone Mindstate, the first two Pharcyde albums belong to a time when hip-hop expanded its cultural reach — after all, Monk and Ayers had more in common than you might think.
7:30 p.m. at City Winery
609 Lafayette St.
