FILTER ALBUMS
Be not afraid
Reared on hip-hop, the saxophonist invites lyrical friends into his open world.
By Grayson Haver Currin.
Collective conscience: the sense of togetherness is “electrifying and urgent” on Kamasi Washington’s latest.
B+
Kamasi Washington
★★★★
Fearless Movement
YOUNG. CD/DL/LP
KAMASI WASHINGTON’s album covers feel like feints, singular portraits of his imposing figure that give the onlooker the sense that his music is egocentric and self-interested. But since his toddling days in a casual family band that featured Ronald and Stephen ‘Thundercat’ Bruner, the second-generation Los Angeles saxophonist has depended upon the collaboration of community, of musicians chasing strains of transcendence together in a room. From his days as a “Young Jazz Giant” and his inaugural tour with Snoop Dogg to his sprawling two prior albums, each rendered by a cast of dozens, Washington has indeed functioned as a very bright star in his artistic constellation but never the one around which everyone else revolves. “Each of the musicians I have with me I respect as being a genius,” he told The Fader website in advance of 2018’s Heaven And Earth. “I would never try to block that.”