MARCUS MILLER, J.B. MOORE, KNEECAP

A great musician, a sad death, and a spirited hip hop movie from Ireland

I don’t think its a stretch to say Marcus Miller is one of the most gifted and versatile musicians in the world. As a teenager Marcus became one of the top session bassist in New York, playing on countless jingles and recording sessions. The late Roberta Flack hired him for her touring band, where he befriended background singer Luther Vandross. That bond grew when Luther signed as a solo artist to Epic and Marcus became his co-producer and frequent songwriting collaborator. At some point Miles Davis became a fan of Marcus and recruited him to produce three of the trumpeter’s electronic albums — Tutu in 1986, Music from Siesta in ‘1987, Amandla in 1989. In the middle of those collaborations with the jazz giant, Marcus produced the funky “Da Butt” for Experience Unlimited.

While recording a catalogue of jazz albums that move between the wildly progressive and more relaxed smooth jazz, Marcus has been an in demand composer for movies and documentaries. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Marcus twice, first on the score for ‘Good Hair,’ a project I produced, and then ‘Say Hey, Willie Mays!’ which I directed for HBO. His knowledge of the interplay between jazz, funk and pop comes from hands on mastery of various idioms. This YouTube post above is from a nearly hour long conversation at his Santa Monica studio. This clip is forty-five minutes and there’s a shorter part two on my YouTube page. Funk, Miles, Sly and the GOP view of arts education are all discussed in detail.

RIP J.B. MOORE

J.B. Moore passed recently from complications of pancreatic cancer. J.B. and Robert "Rocky" Ford, Jr., co-workers at Billboard Magazine, partnered in 1979 to produce and co-write "Christmas Rappin'" and later "The Breaks" for Kurtis Blow. Rocky and J.B. went on to produce the first five albums by Kurtis Blow. When I was an intern at Billboard, J.B. lived a few blocks away from the magazine’s Times Square office and I’d stop in when he, Rocky and young Kurtis Blow started working on “The Breaks,” which would be the first gold 12 inch single in hip hop history. J.B. worked in the advertising department at Billboard and was not a devotee of rap music, but was a music lover who saw great potential in rap as music when so many others - black as well as white - did not. J.B. was an unlikely, but essential, figure in getting hip hop on vinyl.

KURTIS BLOW, ROBERT ‘ROCKY’ FORD AND J.B. MOORE IN 2014

KNEECAP ON NETFLIX

I saw good reviews of the Irish hip hop movie Kneecap when it played theaters last fall, but missed it. Well its on Netflix now and its a raucous, rude, and rhyme loving film about a real Irish hip hop trio who piss off the British and their Irish elders by spiitin’ in their country’s native tongue, mixing politics with copious quantities of every drug available. It stars the the three band members and a slew of real actors, including Michael Fassbender as the outlaw father of one of the MCs. Kneecap reminds me of how hip hop was once outsider music that spoke truth to power and that authorities chasing MCs was part of his appeal. Cinematically the film is bright, even garish, with creative use of graphics, which matches the pugnacious attitude of its stars. Wishing we had more of this spirit in the U.S. right now.