This lecture explores how the relationship between the different agents (musicians, producers, critics and audiences) of jazz and hip hop has evolved over the last 30 years. In the early 1990s, rap groups such as A Tribe Called Quest and Gang Starr began to sample historical jazz recordings in their own work. At the same time, in both lyrics and interviews, various rappers began to speak respectfully of jazz and its musicians and to suggest that rap (as a collaborative, yet highly soloistic, African American genre) was the new jazz. However, jazz musicians did not always agree, as the use of samples seemed more like theft than legitimate creative use.

The session addresses the debate that musicians, critics and theorists had for some time about whether jazz and hip hop could be considered to share a cultural lineage. However, as this dialogue matured and as new generations of musicians and audiences became more aware of the two genres, these dissonances were resolved.

The talk concludes by looking at how, in more recent work, forms considered as jazz have informed hip hop projects and vice versa.