Re Imagined: R+R=NOW - How Much A Dollar Cost (Kendrick Lamar)

R+R=NOW released a live version of Kendrick Lamar track How Much A Dollar Cost from the band's sophomore live album R+R+NOW LIVE (Blue Note Records 2021). It's this generation's real jazz supergroup joining the dots between jazz, improvised music, hip-hop, electronic and club music.

R+R=NOW is a band assembled by Robert Glasper but functionally egalitarian, in no small part because its members are visionary players, composers, and producers on their own: Glasper on keys, Terrace Martin on synthesizer and vocoder, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah on trumpet, Derrick Hodge on bass, Taylor McFerrin on synth and beatbox, and newcomer Justin Tyson on drums. This genre-mashing outfit moves as one and, as their name reveals, with great purpose.

The origin of the group came in 2017 when Glasper was asked to put together an all-star line-up for a SXSW show at Empire Control Room. With his history—producing for everyone from Common to Herbie Hancock to Seun Kuti, reinterpreting Miles Davis and Simone, exploding jazz boundaries with his Black Radio series—the Houston-born auteur could be choosy. Terrace Martin, of L.A., was best-known as a chief architect of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. NOLA native Christian Scott turned heads with his socially charged 2017 Centennial trilogy, a comprehensive celebration of Africa’s sonic diaspora. Philly’s Derrick Hodge has scored for Spike Lee and music-directed for Maxwell. Taylor McFerrin, born in Brooklyn, is Bobby McFerrin’s oldest son and rolls with Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder camp. Grand Rapids native Justin Tyson plays with Esperanza Spalding. Their diverse wealth of experience melded with profound ease.

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Listen to R+R+NOW new live version of Kendrick Lamar track How Much A Dollar Cost from the band sophomore live album R+R+NOW LIVE:

“R+R stands for ‘Reflect’ and ‘Respond’,” says Glasper. The idea came to him via Nina Simone while he was coproducing Nina Revisited, a companion album to the 2015 film What Happened, Miss Simone? "Facing backlash for her politics, Simone was asked, more or less, why she didn’t just shut up and sing. Her answer: “an artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” Glasper adds: “When you reflect what’s going on in your time and respond to that, you can’t not be relevant. So ‘R’ plus ‘R’ equals ‘NOW’.”

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Watch the video of R+R+NOW new live version of Kendrick Lamar track How Much A Dollar Cost from the band sophomore live album R+R+NOW LIVE: