Dinner Party

Facilitated by multi-instrumentalist and producer Terrace Martin, Dinner Party vaporize genre distinctions between jazz, soul, and funk in a way that is ultimately hip-hop despite a lack of MCs. The collaborative group, also featuring pianist Robert Glasper, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, producer 9th Wonder, and numerous guests that likewise reflect the group's name, debuted in 2020 with a self-titled EP offering solace and strength in the face of brutality and weariness. The subsequent remix project Dinner Party: Dessert earned a Grammy nomination. Enigmatic Society, a comparatively romantic set, followed in 2023. All of the group's output has been issued by Martin's Sounds of Crenshaw label. Before linking under the Dinner Party name, Martin, Glasper, Washington, and 9th Wonder had a lot of common history with an almost innumerable quantity of recordings involving two or more of the musicians. The players with the deepest shared background were Martin and Washington, who came up together and graduated from Los Angeles' Locke High School. Glasper, hailing from Houston, and 9th Wonder, the sample-based beatmaker who established himself with the Durham, North Carolina rap group Little Brother, had most famously shared credits with Martin and Washington on Kendrick Lamar's Grammy-winning 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly. Washington and Glasper were on Martin's Grammy-nominated 2016 album Velvet Portraits. Dozens of other connections could be drawn. The quartet recorded the Dinner Party EP in 2019 and released it the following July. Warmly received, it topped Billboard's Top Contemporary Jazz Albums chart, though it was more of an R&B recording with soulful singer/songwriter Phoelix fronting four of the seven tracks, including the anti-police brutality single "Freeze Tag." Only three months later, Dinner Party: Dessert was issued with new versions of Dinner Party material featuring the likes of Herbie Hancock, Snoop Dogg, Tarriona "Tank" Ball, and Alex Isley. The set was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Progressive R&B Album. Dinner Party were soon behind the title song on Martin's Village Days EP, and Washington and Glasper later appeared on Martin's long-in-the-making 2021 album Drones, yet another Grammy-nominated album. Dinner Party made a full return in April 2023 with the comforting Enigmatic Society, on which the elder Tank (Durrell Babbs), Arin Ray, and Ant Clemons joined Phoelix behind the mike. In early 2024, Dinner Party and Dinner Party: Dessert were combined for CD release as Dinner & Dessert.
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