Will Lee Daniels’ The United States Vs. Billie Holiday cast Holiday as more than a tragic drug addict? 

Will Stevie Wonder give up his American citizenship when he moves to Ghana? 

Roy Ayers wrote “Everybody Loves The Sunshine” in response to all the smog in Los Angeles which caused people to have more of an appreciation for the sun. Ayers had started his career playing bebop in the early ’60s. He became inspired to play the vibraphone after Lionel Hampton gave him a pair of mallets when he was five-years-old. In the ’70s, he formed his band Roy Ayers Ubiquity and started pioneering soul-jazz. “Everybody Loves The Sunshine” was a peak moment of his Ubiquity years and became his most recognizable song and album. It has been prodigiously sampled most famously for Mary J. Blige’s “My Life.”  This period of Roy Ayers’ career is credited with being the nucleus of the Acid Jazz movement of the ’90s. Ayers has kept busy most recently appearing on Tyler The Creator’s 2015 Cherry Bomb album. He attracted a new generation of fans as the host of the fictitious Fusion FM radio station in Grand Theft Auto IV. In 2020, he collaborated with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge for the Roy Ayers JID002 album. 

Skyler Reed’s “Are We There Yet”  is a brief respite from the stress of the world. Reed’s jazz and soul influences converge on a musical island away from daily routine. The single is on the Atlanta-based vocalist’s debut EP also titled Are We There Yet. The EP will be released by year’s end but until then Reed’s introduction is another song to add to the pandemic playlist. 

Robert Glasper has unearthed his newest single “Better Than I Imagined” and it features H.E.R. and Meshell Ndegeocello. The song is inspired by Black love and the need to affirm it during the visibility of Black Lives Matters. Glasper made a statement:

“Black lives matter and so does black love; no one wants a life without love, but we have generations of people in our community who haven’t had the tools to actually be in healthy relationships. It seems like people are finally ready to open their eyes to systemic racism in this country, and if we’re going to talk about it, we have to also talk about how it affects our relationships — how we communicate, how we see ourselves, how we treat each other. It’s not always good, even though maybe it could be.”

“Better Than I Imagined” will appear on Glasper’s Black Radio 3 scheduled for release in 2021. Glasper will be performing at the 2020 March On Washington in DC with bassist Derrick Hodge this Friday, August 28th.