Two jazz and hip-hop musicians find a passion in Common

By Kyle Koch

The following article excerpt, published March 16, 2010, can be read in its entirety at this link.

A few months ago, they were strangers. They met in early January at the Czar Bar. Mehari, a trumpet player, and Izmore were participants in an avant-garde evening of jazz and hip-hop improvisation called “Mark Lowrey Versus Hip-Hop.” Izmore’s firebrand flows gave Mehari his introduction to local hip-hop music.

Chatting afterward, the two bonded over a shared adoration of Common’s Like Water for Chocolate. Bring up the album in their presence, and both break out smiles of mutual enthusiasm. On this night, the two huddle over Izmore’s cell phone, where he has downloaded the album, trying to locate their favorite verse. After a minute or two spent sifting through tracks, the two simply start reciting lyrics.

Released nearly 10 years ago, Like Water for Chocolate was Common’s fourth studio record and his first major-label release. To many hip-hop fans and critics, the album is Common’s magnum opus: a striking combination of socially conscious themes, standout beats and Common’s silken delivery.

Friday at the Czar Bar, the new friends, after a few rehearsals, will bring Like Water for Chocolate to life. In doing so, they’ve set out to realize the vision of authentic hip-hop Common once outlined: thought-provoking rap free of corporate manipulation, computerized production and thuggish minstrelsy. Flanked by the other members of Diverse, Mehari and Izmore plan to round out the night with improvisational interludes and perhaps a deep-bellied freestyle or two from Izmore.

“We’re going to be playing for people who have never stepped foot into Jardine’s or the Blue Room,” Mehari says of hip-hop fans in the habit of avoiding two of the city’s jazz hot spots.  “And the people who are there, like us, are going to be exposed to Les and hip-hop.”

It’s easy for Mehari to imagine converting a few jazz souls to rap music on Friday night. A fan and player of jazz from an early age, he credits his high school discovery of Like Water for Chocolate with helping him see beyond the misogyny and glamorized crime he had associated with the music. “I was like, ‘Wow, hip-hop can be so much more,’” he remembers thinking. “It [the album] really elevates hip-hop to an art.”

Mehari and Izmore see a shared history between hip-hop and jazz. Recently, though, Izmore has been frustrated by what he says is an absence of musicality in hip-hop. There are simply no instruments, he says. Like the collective he belongs to — a teeming mosh pit of horns and reeds — Izmore believes in big: the rock and roll of Chuck Berry, the funk and soul of James Brown.

If Mehari looks to invite a broader audience to jazz, Izmore wants to escape the boundaries of hip-hop and break open the mold of sampled boredom and Auto-Tune conformity now dominating the genre.

“Hip-hop has become a hustle all across the board,” he writes in an e-mail. “It’s not black and brown art anymore.”

Their motives for resurrecting Like Water for Chocolate vary, but Mehari and Izmore are about to find common ground in their fusion of live hip-hop and soul-inspired funk.