Kassa Overall is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer. He previously released four critically acclaimed projects: I THINK I’M GOOD, Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz, Shades of Flu, and Shades of Flu 2.
On ANIMALS, his Warp Records debut, Kassa pushes his kaleidoscopic, subversive vision further. He layers Roland 808s against avant-garde drumming in the vein of his mentors Elvin Jones and Billy Hart, the latter of whom he studied with at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Virtuoso musos appear alongside rap poets, including Danny Brown, Wiki, Lil B, and Shabazz Palaces. Top-flight jazz improvisation weaves in and out of orchestral string arrangements by Jherek Bischoff. The album’s diverse, all-star roster of collaborators includes several of his close friends, like vocalists Nick Hakim, Laura Mvula, Francis and the Lights, and jazz stars like Theo Croker and Vijay Iyer.
ANIMALS is out now.
Kassa Overall is a Grammy-nominated drummer, producer, and rapper; Ishmael Butler is the leader of Shabazz Palaces and formerly a member of the legendary hip hop trio Digable Planets. Ishmael is featured on the track “Going Up” off of Kassa’s latest record, ANIMALS, and today, we’re premiering the video for it right here on Talkhouse. Check it out below, along with Kassa’s chat about it with Ishmael — one of his musical heroes. And check out ANIMALS, which is out now on Warp Records.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Kassa Overall: What’s goody, man?
Ishmael Butler: Shit, you know everything’s cool.
Kassa: Yeah.
Ishmael: Are we starting with your Frankenstein Jordans idea?
Kassa: Oh, yeah, that’s definitely where we should start. So, anybody that is of age that travels a lot, but also likes to be swagged out — you know, I like Hokas, I like On Clouds, I like orthopedic shoes that are comfortable, but I also like Jordans.
Ishmael: OK.
Kassa: So I’m hoping we can find somebody that could take some Jordan 1s but make them more healthy for the foot.
Ishmael: Would you say that idea embodies what you do with your music?
Kassa: Exactly. [Laughs.] That’s basically it, though. You know what I mean? From a distance it’s like, “Oh, shit, he be wilding.” And then you look closer, it’s like, “Nah, he’s juicing.”
Ishmael: “Come on, he’s orthopedic! The sole of it is ergonomically right.” [Laughs.]
Kassa: Yeah, absolutely. And I got that from you, bro. If I think about the music you made before I started putting out music, there’s a similar thing where it’s like, it’s always going to be fresh first. No matter what, it’s gonna be fresh. But then if you take the time to listen close, you’re gonna get some game and you’re gonna get some upliftment. You know what I mean?
Ishmael: Yeah. I think that’s how you sort of find your musical family, is that you end up basically doing a call and response. Your music that you make is a response to a call that that a cat made or a sister made that got you excited. And then your music becomes that to somebody else. And then within the music world, other musicians that get down hear what you’re doing, and then you all end up gravitating towards each other. You know, that’s the vibration. That’s the way music works. It lets you find your family out here in this world. I got it from someplace, and you got some of it from me, and then now I get some of it from you. And we end up globe trotting with it.
Kassa: That’s real, man. Everyone has a different way of organizing the spirit world, but I feel like there’s people in this world that it’s like, you’re going to link eventually.
Ishmael: Yeah.
Kassa: There’s been different people that came into my life, we made music and then gravitated away. But it was almost like Zelda or something — I got this shield from this person, and I got this other sword… There’s certain people you’re going to cross paths with, and you don’t even really have to try too much. It just kind of naturally happens.
Ishmael: Well, the spirit world organizes us. The spirit world manipulates us. The spirit world is in control. Because there’s so much more force and energy, and amount of people in the spirit world. They’ve all learned things about what life is about, and they’re kind of manipulating the living into certain situations. So you gotta go with it, you know what I mean?
The first time I ever saw you get down was with Stas [THEE Boss] at that little spot downstairs.
Kassa: Barboza [in Seattle].
Ishmael: Yeah. I was like, OK, yeah, mans gets busy. But that was years ago. So you see it, you feel it, and then eventually it’ll come back to you like you said.
Kassa: Yeah. And I think you got Carlos on a joint not too long after that. My brother, Carlos Overall.
Ishmael: Sax player extraordinaire.
Kassa: He did vocals on that joint.
Ishmael: Yeah, he did.
Kassa: How did that happen? Because I’ve been rocking with my brother my whole life, and I ain’t seen him do vocals. So how did you get him on the mic?
Ishmael: So, I came up in the ‘70s. It was the era of the big groups — Earth, Wind, & Fire, Parliament-Funkadelic — 10, 15, 20 cats. And everybody that’s on stage — whether you was, quote-unquote, a “singer” or not — you had to contribute your voice to the overall thing, because we raising the joyful noise, we sending out a vibration, and everybody should participate. That’s the philosophy that I had. I think in that spirit, when I asked him, he just kind of was like, “Yeah, I’ll put my voice to it.”
Kassa: That’s crazy, man. Because I remember he mentioned it when he did it, and then I listened to the track and I was like, Wait, that sounds a little bit like Carlos singing that. It sounded dope too.
Ishmael: No, it’s cool. He got busy.
Kassa: He did his thing. So you went to Garfield [High School, in Seattle], right?
Ishmael: Yeah.
Kassa: What was that like?
Ishmael: I got there in ‘83, ‘84. It was kind of the end of the golden era of Seattle, when the neighborhoods hadn’t been diluted. They were sort of at their cultural strength. Seattle has always been diverse, but it also had a lot of rich communities that had kind of possied up — Yesler Terrace and all that. But then Garfield was in and of itself legendary. A lot of athletes and musicians and performers and neighborhood superstars all went to Garfield. Then they had Mr. Acox [Clarence Acox Jr.], a world renowned jazz teacher, so the bands was always crazy. And then the Central was lively, too; a lot of activity going on, it hadn’t been gentrified, so it was very wild in the best way. I’m glad I was around in that time. And you caught the tail end of that vibe, too, so you know what it is.
Kassa: Some of my earliest memories were going to Medgar Evers to take swimming at four or five years old. I remember going into Ezell’s — and we was raised vegetarian, so I got the roll and some fries. I remember the vibe back in the ‘80s in Seattle and it was activated, man. It felt crazy at the time.
I got some questions on some musical vibes. First thing: there’s a bar you said, “I lost the best beat that I had.” Do you remember that beat?
Ishmael: Of course.
Kassa: Can I get the story of this beat?
Ishmael: Well, the song is saying, I had this beat and everybody thought it was a good beat, but I actually lost the beat, and no matter what I try to do to recreate the beat or come up with a bunch of new beats, I always think about that beat that I lost. And it’s a true story. Because everybody’s had the hard drive malfunction and you never get it back. But it’s also an allegory about a love that I had, so I talk about it in that sense, it’s basically saying, I got this beat and I’m making new beats and everybody’s like, “Yo, that beat is cool.” But in your mind, you know that it ain’t as good as that beat that you lost.
Kassa: Yeah. I feel like on a metaphorical level, that also kind of makes you colder in the game. Say your heart broke, you’ve been through this thing — it’s almost like every move you make after is with a little more abandon. You’re not as attached because you’re like, I mean, I already lost the best joint.
Ishmael: That’s real.
Kassa: If I lose the next joint, it might hurt but, shit, I’m already trained up for this. The joint that we did, “Going Up” — I started that in 2019. It was a take on Outkast’s “Elevators.”
Ishmael: OK, yeah.
Kassa: I’m going to segue for a second — “Elevators” feels like whoever made that beat might have been influenced by the “Rebirth of Slick” beat.
Ishmael: Interesting. I never heard that. Go ahead, why?
Kassa: It has the same little hi-hat skip and it also has strings that add the kind of sensitivity. Like it’s not one of the bust-your-head-open type snares.
Ishmael: Right, right.
Kassa: It has a lightness. And so when I made that beat, I originally took a piece of the “Elevators” drums, and it was how I started sketching the rhythms. But I’m just saying there may be a correlation between that and the “Rebirth of Slick” drums.
Ishmael: It could be. I mean, them cats — they hear everything, and the way they translated whatever they liked into their own style was ridiculous. But also, that rhythm is kind of a quiet take on that Schoolly D “Saturday Night” beat, without all the stuff on it. So that was for cats from our era.
Kassa: You told me that, and that busted my head open, because I know those drums. I didn’t come up on Schoolly D, so I didn’t know that Schoolly D was the original. But, Biggie used that, and then there’s this joint with Case and Foxy Brown. But I would have never put that together with “Cool Like Dat.”
Ishmael: Yeah. That beat was played by Andy Kravitz, this drummer out of Philly — Schoolly D’s a Philly cat. Andy played that beat and also mixed it and stuff like that.
Kassa: On a drum machine?
Ishmael: No, on drums.
Kassa: What? That’s a drum set beat?
Ishmael: Yeah.
Kassa: I swore that was one of them Yamaha, Run DMC type drums.
Ishmael: I mean they looped it. But the original is just in a plate reverb, on a reel. You know,
it’s in one of them old rock rooms that cats ended up doing rap music in cause it was turning over at the time.
Kassa: So those are probably hi-hats just reverbed out.
Ishmael: Yeah.
Kassa: In my head, it’s just a crash cymbal on a drum machine, because it’s so reverb-y. That’s insane.
OK, so I was going to tell you the story about my beat, right? The “Going Up” beat was a Craig Taborn sample from a live show. We did a duo improv show, where I did this whole series of improvs and made beats out of the improvs. I knew that track was going on the next album — the album didn’t even exist yet, it was years to come, but it’s like, I ain’t got nothing, but I got this. So I recorded a sketch vocal over the beat where I was like, “Going up!” Just so there was a couple little vocals, and I made a bounce of a two-track of that. It was an instrumental with a couple little sketch vocals. Then the hard drive I had with the actual session and the stems and all of this — I dropped it down the stairs in Bushwick. I felt stupid because I was showing off to the homie. I brought the hard drive upstairs to play the beats and and it was almost like, Why are you doing all that? Keep that tough. And then I go downstairs, drop it, and nobody could restore the hard drive. I took it to this dude that be doing stuff for the government to recover files — I was like, “Bro, however much money, I just really need this one beat on here.”
Ishmael: And you said he got a little bit of it back.
Kassa: No. So this is what happened: The hard drive was a wrap, but I had the two-track. It was a bounce two-track — it had drums, it had the chords, it had a little bit of those sketch vocals, and that was it. So what I ended up doing was taking that and kind of muting and unmuting it and adding a bunch of new layers. I added more keys, more drums, sax, and eventually you and Lil B.And that actually kind of released me from some of the fear of losing stuff. Because at the end of the day, if you got a two-track, you can take it, sample it, make something fresh. So it was cool.
Ishmael: And you have to lose stuff — you gotta give some stuff up to the gods. Because music was never meant happen in the moment that it happens, and that’s it. The recording of it, although it is something that we all take for granted and feel natural about, it kind of goes against the philosophy of what making music is really all about. Like you, I thought it was the end of the world when I lost a hard drive. You got 150 songs on there, and in your mind you got all your hits on it. But at the end of the day, it’s gone and you gave it up to the universe. It’s time to make some more.
Kassa: Yeah. I mean, that’s happened to me so many times at this point, it’s almost part of the process.
Ishmael: At least they stopped making the motor drives, because if you drop them and the little spinning thing got a little off, you was toast, man. [Laughs.]
Kassa: [Laughs.] Yep. And now, I know something’s going to happen. I’m going to lose this, this computer is going to snap, or I’m going to leave a bag of hard drives somewhere — which I did.
Ishmael: A bag of hard drives?
Kassa: A bag. But whenI’m getting close to completing the album, I try to hurry up and finish before something snaps.
Ishmael: Of course.
Kassa: Because I have the whole album on this one laptop. I’ll back it up on Google Drive, but I don’t trust it. I’ll damn near stop leaving the house. [Laughs.]
Ishmael: A lot of cats be backing they stuff up, I’ve never done that. I have the Cloud now, but you know how it goes, man. When you really gotta go back and get it—
Kassa: It’s not there. I’ve been through that so many times, man. And every time it’s happened, I went and made something that was better.
Ishmael: For sure.
Kassa: So I’m not tripping, man. I love making records. I think that I almost shine more as a producer. When I have the time to make a thing, people go, “Oh, you got this unique thing that’s different.” But as a drummer, it’s not as obvious to the average person, because you really gotta have an ear for all of those ghost notes. But the feeling when I’m playing and the stuff clicks in and everybody’s on a cloud together — you can’t get that from listening to a record, and you can’t get that from chopping something in Ableton. Though it feels good, it’s not that same spiritual practice.
Ishmael: Yeah. It’s cool, we recently spoke to one of the cats to play saxophone on the “Reflections” song that we got from Art Blakey that ended up being “Cool Like Dat” — he was saying that they were out on tour in Europe, in Scandinavia somewhere, and the piano player John Williams wrote the cut. So they just went in the studio, handed out the sheets, everybody did two takes and that was it. So that’s a good combination of using recording to basically capture something.
Kassa: Capture the magic.
Ishmael: Yeah, and then going about their way. And you see how that song has lived on based on four bars of them just going in a lab on their day off. I like that. That, to me, is what it’s all about.
Kassa: Yeah, I feel like that’s super key, to not overthink it, especially in the creation process. Sometimes cats write some stuff and it’s so orchestrated down to every little note that when you go to record it, there’s no room for that magical part.
Ishmael: Yeah, I respect that level of skill, but I don’t really jack it myself. I saw Rick Ross was saying that Dr. Dre spent two days on two words. [Laughs.] Man, I wouldn’t spend two seconds. But that’s what makes it cool, man — everybody’s got their approach to this thing, man.
Kassa: Yeah, I respect somebody else doing it like that. But we was talking about Lil B and the bass approach, and that’s like the polar opposite. I think the reason I like the bass shit is because it actually connects into jazz improvisation.
Ishmael: And even before that — where all of our music comes from, there was no notion of a set way to do something. It’s, “Are you good? Can you come put up your stuff and go?” Because back in Africa, cats do a ceremony and might play for eight, nine, 10 hours, and you gotta keep coming up with stuff.
Kassa: Right.
Ishmael: And then obviously you transition to jazz and that whole sort of improvisational ability. But it’s all based on practice, shedding, so now when you get to the moment of detonation, you’re able to improvise and do all that. So what Lil B’s done — and another thing genius to me — he always has his roots in instinct, not thought. Because you could tell when he was in the pack, I’m not saying he didn’t have any cerebral nothing to it, but it was more feeling, and it made for some of the coldest songs. But bars too — some of the stuff he ended up saying, and then he would quote-unquote “mess up,” but he was like, “Nah, keep that in there.” It was just bold, man. The kid is just one of a kind.
Kassa: Yeah. And back to the original — the goal is to be playing to the point where you actually get out of your body and you’re not even there no more.
Ishmael: You’re gone.
Kassa: You can’t judge if you’re doing something good or not. I feel like I’ve been lucky in this life to have moments where I’ve been playing and then all of a sudden, I’m like, damn, wait, what’s going on? And then it’s almost like you feel like you’re driving the car with some very important people in the back and you’re just kind of like, Let me not crash the whip because this is some next level stuff. Let me not get in the way with my brain because this is on some whole other planetary level.
Ishmael: Yeah. Like Herbie said, when he first got with Miles they were playing the cut and, if you’re looking at the structure of the chords, he played a note that was wrong. And he kind of tensed up, and then he said Miles played a note that made that note right.
Kassa: That’s crazy. And like you said with practice and preparation, it’s to shed and to become totally fluent, but then not get caught up in what you learn to where you’re now handcuffed to some type of intellectual approach.
Ishmael: Yeah, that’s not swinging.
Kassa: [Laughs.] It’s not swinging.
Ishmael: Some people can’t really handle a hard swing. It’s like some people wear mom jeans and look good in them, some people wear them and don’t. But some people like the way that person that we think don’t look good looks. It’s complicated. And that’s the thing: music will let you appreciate all angles. You’re setting up at the festival, y’all playing before the bluegrass band or something, and you listening to them warming up and you’re like, OK, OK, that’s kind of ill how they hit that lick! That ain’t really your wheelhouse, but you see where they going with it, you know what I mean? So you can learn from that too.
Kassa: Yeah, that’s real, man. I got one last thought: What’s next? What’s the future look like for you, or for the whole universe?
Ishmael: Man. I really like the opportunity of collaboration and the product that comes from it. Because now that they’ve made everything a marketplace, the freedom for collaboration and production into product is good, but it’s also kind of necessary. Cats like me and you, we gotta always be playing, performing, releasing music, and trying to increase the amount of hits to the revenue stream. So in order to capitalize on that reality, we just get to do what we already like to do. So I think that’s the future, really: taking time like, me and you go get with some cats — or even if we just did it ourselves — make five or six joints, package it up dope, do some good visuals, put it out.
Kassa: Yeah, get active.
Ishmael: Do some shows. If we do it for a year and then go away for a little while and come back, that’s just how it goes. So I’m looking forward to that, man. Just working a lot. I like to tour, getting money that way and getting to see the world. Getting all my itches scratched.
Kassa: Yeah, that sounds right to me, man. I’m ready. You already know, man. Alright, well, I think we over and out.
Ishmael: That was a good one.
Kassa: Peace and love.
Ishmael: Paz y amor.
(Photo Credit: right, Patrick O’Brien-Smith)
