Who Is BadBadNotGood?

The symbiotic relationship between hip-hop and jazz has led to classic records by everyone from Gang Starr to J Dilla to Robert Glasper. So it should come as no surprise that one of the most exciting new acts in music is blending the two genres—and then some.

BADBADNOTGOOD is a trio of gifted young players out of Toronto who got together because of their shared love of all things Odd Future and MF DOOM. It didn't hurt that pianist Matthew Tavares, bassist Chester Hansen, and drummer Alexander Sowinski had musical chops for days. We're talking the kind of ears that can just pick up a melody, jam on it, and then flip it into something completely different. That's how they started out in early 2011 when they reinterpreted Bangladesh's beat for Gucci Mane’s "Lemonade," then morphed into “Orange Juice,” the more hyped version performed by Tyler, the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt.

Footage of BADBADNOTGOOD's home performances quickly made its way online and led to a small but ravenous following. The buzz built through a series of free albums and raucous concerts in their hometown that looked more like punk gigs than anything remotely related to jazz.

On April 3, the trio dropped BBNG2, an 11-track collection that effortlessly hops from murky originals ("Rotten Decay) to covers of James Blake ("CMYK") and Kanye West ("Flashing Lights"). It also includes a jam with Tyler, the Creator.

BADBADNOTGOOD's momentum hit another level when they were invited to Coachella to serve as the festival's house band. Oh, and they just happened to back up Odd Future crooner Frank Ocean, interpreting the woozy instrumentals off Nostalgia, ULTRA with ease.

Read on to find out what these talented jazz cats are all about, where they're playing live, and who they hope to jam with next...

As told to Andrew Martin (@andrew_j_martin)

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Getting Started In Toronto

Matt Tavares: “With this band we've had a weird trajectory because our first show was like a house party at a bar with 100 people and that had a cool punk vibe. Then a couple shows later people started crowd-surfing and moshing at the bigger venues. Toronto is amazing."

Alexander Sowinski:"It's been especially cool because we're all from there and all our friends have been supportive and been so cool to see everything grow and progress after we started so small.

“I met Matt because we started talking about MF DOOM and Odd Future. And then we went to the first Odd Future show in New York and we actually went to the same MF DOOM show and didn't know it. Then we just started jamming a bunch and playing Gucci Mane and soloing over it and stuff.

“Basically the whole idea with the covers is we figured out that a lot of music that hasn't seen jazz and there's just so much like good trap beats and old school and West Coast and East Coast and Southern shit and it’s got its own merit. Like, why can't there be UGK jazz?"

On the name BADBADNOTGOOD

Matt: “My friend Connor [who films the videos] said it one day and it stuck. It was actually going to be the name of a TV show we were writing before this whole band thing happened.”

Influences

Alex: “We’re influenced by anyone who is changing the game right now. Shouts to Death Grips, Lil B, Odd Future, Colin Stetson, Brainfeeder Records, James Blake, Waka Flocka."

Matt: “Everything's tied in in different ways. Our shows are definitely influenced by punk music while electronic music has had a huge influence on our original materials. And the covers are all the rest. Between the three of us there’s a lot of musical influences and when we perform we try to bring those high-energy fun moments. We really like to keep it all over the place and give solos and keep the beat going and everything.”

Rehearsals

Matt: “It’s usually a situational basis. For instance, when we were doing the J Dilla tribute we rehearsed for two weeks straight and pretty much played eight hours a day. Other days we’ll get together and produce beats or work on original music. We don’t have any kind of schedule and we still have a lot of fun when we play together.

Chester Hansen: “We always like to play together for a while when we get together.”

Matt: “We all kind of make beats and music aside from the band on MPCs and stuff. All the original material we write with ideas plotted out as a beat and then bring it to the band for interaction.”

Alex: “When we played our first show we had the audio from it and I tried making beats out of solo or improv sessions. I started sampling that and thought it would be crazy to sample those audio, make beats out of that and then made those into our jazz/jam thing, like a recycled music kind of thing.”

Chester: “We all started fooling around on our own time on drum machines and computers, and each time we bring idea to the other guys it grows times three to something crazy. It's a cool collaborative process.”

BBNG’s New Directions In Jazz

Chester: “Traditional jazz is something we have a high respect for with how the genre has progressed and changed with each era. Our indifference is with how jazz and tradition currently sits in 2012.

"We feel that the tradition pushed for more room to expand and experiment which is what we enjoy doing with our music. We enjoy all sorts of new music and movements that are currently going on and that’s how we come to make our sound.

“Getting into a new style or genre of music is always exciting because there is so much to listen to and explore, so getting kids into jazz is definitely something were proud of.

Alex: "Also kids wanting to listen to jazz after they hear us is a cool thing because it's a dying art. If you don't listen to much jazz, you have to listen to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme immediately.”

Matt: “And definitely Bill Evans' Sunday At The Village Vanguard and Charles Mingus' The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.”

Alex: “Anything from Wayne Shorter in the '60s and everything from the second Miles Davis Quintet with Herbie Hancock. And definitely listen to Robert Glasper and Vijay Iyer for modern stuff. There's a lot of modern stuff we're not 100 percent into but we have to give props to those guys.

"Also just like listening to trios is really cool because if people don't know much jazz hearing a smaller group can expose them to that sound. Some of the greatest bands in history in any genre have been trios. It's a bare but full sort of format and as a musician you have control over your domain.”

Live Gigs

Alex: “It's great to be able to play solos and interact, but also have people mosh, dance, and freak out. We like being loud, going hard as fuck and kicking over our instruments. We’ve had mosh pits happen at many of our shows, which is kind of unusual for a “jazz” band.”

Chester: “[When we went to England to play a few shows with Gilles Peterson] it was our first time in the UK and we had a great time playing out there. Gilles Peterson is an amazing guy and being able to record at Maida Vale is an honor. It was just a really awesome time and we're so happy he reached out to us. Playing at the Worldwide Awards we got to meet so many awesome artists and then playing at Maida Vale and being in the same room as so many big artists was a great feeling.”

Alex: “I think we're going to be back in London in June or July playing some shows. At the awards show, we met the members of the xx and they went into the audience to watch our set and told us how much they loved it.”

[Ed Note— They'll be playing at Brooklyn Bowl tonight—May 4, 2012].

Evolution Of Their Sound From BBNG1 To BBNG2

Matt: “BBNG2 is more of a document of all our influences and the energy we create when we play live. With BBNG1 it was just about jamming a couple hip-hop songs in a studio. When the first videos and recordings were happening, Chester was still in Ottawa.

"We hadn’t really jammed much and all we had were a couple cool ideas. Now we all understand each other’s influences and what everyone brings to the table and hopefully our music will continue to grow.”

Alex: “Most people heard the first tape and were like, ‘You're doing Ol' Dirty Bastard and stuff’ and asked where can they find more music that sounds like that. And it's like, we're not doing something new in the hip-hop thing—maybe the shoegaze thing [covering My Bloody Valentine] is more innovative.

"But people want to hear more jazz and music so why not put a cool spin on the music we like and breathe new life into it and get people into more music like that? For us, we don't find that we're a lame hip-hop cover band or anything like that because we change things up. We keep it fresh and keep it fun.”

Giving Away Music For Free

Alex: “Everyone pirates music anyways so it's better if everyone can get a high-quality version of it for free. These days it’s hard to even sell any albums so why alienate people who wouldn’t have checked out the music if they had to pay for it. When things are free people are obviously more inclined to check it out because there is nothing to lose, and it’s obviously been successful with rap and mixtapes—so why not try it with other kinds of music?”

Matt: “[The response to BBNG] been really crazy. We had 20,000 downloads the first day and 50,000 by the end of the week. Were all super proud of it because we did all the mixing, mastering, engineering, artwork, etc… by ourselves with a couple friends involved, which makes the high reception feel even better.”

Jamming with Tyler, the Creator

Alex: “It was all very last minute and we were weren't even sure if it was going to happen. He hit us up saying he was going to be in Toronto for a show and he actually got there a night early. So we went out and rented some gear and he hit me up with a text saying he was tired so we said we'd do it the next day and then we hadn't heard from him.

"But we eventually got a call from his manager who said Tyler was on his way. So he came by and it was just like, "Oh shit!" We just chilled for two hours in my basement and jammed for like 20 minutes. All the video that's out there is what happened when we played, which all happened in one take with no practicing.”

Backing Frank Ocean at Coachella

Alex: “It was super cool. A lot of people think the bigger shows must be nerve-wracking but it was chill and think it turned out really cool. Even with whatever sound issues happened it was a super good vibe.

"The way it worked was they hit us up a couple weeks before on Twitter and we figured everything out. It was really just a great experience. Hopefully we're going to be doing some more collaborations with Odd Future in the future. We actually did a collaboration with Earl Sweatshirt for his new project.”

Matt: “And for the rest of Coachella they hired us to play a bunch of sets and entertain the nighttime crowd and we just had a lot of fun drinking and jamming for everyone. A lot of people didn't know who we are but got really into our sets so that was awesome. We played five sets the first weekend and another five to six the second weekend.”

Plans For The Future

Matt: “There's going to be stuff in between but BBNG3 is the next project; basically more projects with rappers and producing a lot more beats and putting our stamp on collaborations. BBNG3 will be more collaborative with instrumental tracks as well as features.”

Alex: “Nothing is 100 percent yet. It would be amazing do a track with Lil B and Colin Stetson. Lil B's actually really hard to track down and we have talked to him but he's so busy recording like 100s of albums so it's been hard to stay in touch. We've talked to like some bigger producers who try to get in touch with him but they have no luck.”

“The A$AP Rocky thing was cool and it would be cool to do it with him. It might be something we come back to and explore more in the future. We met him at the Toronto show and he's really cool. We indirectly have some connections.”