Alexander Brown
Contributing Writer
alexanderparisbrown@gmail.com / @relaxandaspire

As I mentioned in a previous column, Robert Glasper Experiment’s Black Radio is wildly accessible to a variety of music listeners and could serve as a way to get more music fans past this barrier that is the labeling of jazz. However, Glasper’s ode to mid-to-late twentieth century pop isn’t the only way to introduce your friends to jazz music and concepts. A variety of mainstream and indie artists have blurred the lines between what is and isn’t a jazz recording and will serve as a great icebreaker into how a music lover views jazz as a whole part of music rather than a ghetto.

Alexander P. Brown
Contributing Writer
subjektxero@gmail.com / @relaxandaspire

The Nextbop staff is compiling its lists of the best albums of 2011 in jazz and all other genres. We’ll release our mass lists during the last week of December but we want to make sure everyone’s individual lists have the chance to shine.

My tastes are different. For example, I think every Katherine Heigl role would be vastly improved if Anne Hathaway or Mila Kunis were offered first dibs. I’m also fruitlessly awaiting Michelle Rodriguez and Sanaa Lathan buddy cop action drama, co-starring Taylor Lautner as Sanaa’s secretly drug addict son, Maya Rudolph as Michelle’s over-worrying physician life-partner, Gina Torres as their by-the-books antagonist and Sam Jackson and Marion Cotillard as the villanious power couple. Directed by Katheryn Bigelow and produced by Michael Mann. Which is all to say, my brain just looks for different things in art.