Kassa Overall is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap in unmapped directions. His albums have been placed on many top 10 lists over the years including ones from the New York Times, NPR, Brooklyn Vegan, MOJO, and more.
On his first two studio albums GO GET ICE CREAM AND LISTEN TO JAZZ and I THINK I’M GOOD, Kassa layered virtuosic drumming, meticulous production techniques, and incisive lyricism to establish himself as a rhythmic innovator and visionary poet, using his voice to address the injustices of the carceral system, the pharmaceutical industry, and anti-black racism, while wrangling with the perils of his own mental illness.
His most recent album, 2023’s ANIMALS, was his Warp Records debut, and saw Kassa pushing his kaleidoscopic, subversive vision further than ever before as layered Roland 808s pushed against avant-garde drumming in the vein of his mentors Elvin Jones and Billy Hart, the latter of whom he studied with at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The album also found Kassa pushing his message further, and is the sound of an artist aware of the cost of embodying one’s natural self in the public eye, a deep reckoning with the two-sided truth that to perform one’s freedom for an audience can mean succumbing to life inside a cage.
