No one else celebrates the holidays and brings in the new year quite like the good folks at Okayplayer and The Roots crew.  B.B. King’s was home to the 3rd Annual OKP Holiday Jammy last month, which featured sets from the cast of Fela! The Musical, Blitz The Ambassador, Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew and of course, The Roots.  Special guests packed the venue and as usual, the show was phenomenal.  The highlights of the night were guest performances by Mos Def and Brother Ali, who rocked with The Legendary.  Here is our exclusive audio of Mos Def performing Umi Says with The Roots, and even going into some bars of 100% Dundee and Adrenaline (!!).  Next up we have Brother Ali taking the stage to do The Trap, The Travelers and freestyle with Black Thought while The Roots play The Preacher beat.  Robert Glasper, Casey Benjamin and a few other usual suspects help round out the band.

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Robert Glasper held his album release party/concert at Le Poisson Rouge not too long ago and rounded up his usual suspects (Chris “Daddy” Dave, Casey Benjamin, Derrick Hodge and Vicente Archer) to play cuts off his fantastic new record, Double Booked (iTunes | Amazon).  Many special guests came out for the occasion, including Bilal, who performed his awesome new song off the Double Booked album, “All Matter”.  Here’s our exclusive 10+ min recording of the song, which is jammed out with some amazing solos and some out of this world drumming by Chris Dave.  I also found some video of the performance, which I included below.

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Mos Def recently took the stage at the Newport Jazz Festival, backed by his usual supporting cast of Chris “Daddy” Dave, Robert Glasper, Casey Benjamin, Derrick Hodge, a 5-piece strings section and a trio of horns, collectively, The Watermelon Syndicate.  I was thrilled to see a hip-hop artist close out the first day of the prestigious jazz festival, really goes to show just how far hip-hop/jazz fusion has come.  Mos and his band did a nice mix of his own songs (Casa Bey, Life in Marvelous Times, Umi Says) and covers from a variety of artists such as De La Soul, Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane.  What really stood out was his cover of the late Michael Jackson’s Human Nature.  It sounded beautiful with the strings, but wasnt a straight up cover as Mos sang different lyrics.  Check it out after the jump, as well as his performance of Life In Marvelous Times.

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I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… The Roots’ jam sessions at Highline Ballroom in NYC are a music lovers wet dream.  If you aren’t in NYC, you probably have heard about some of the big name guests that come through the sessions to rock out with The Legendary.  However, what gets unjustly overshadowed are the talented musicians who craft incredible jams on the fly, completely adlibbed.  The jam sessions are just as much about the music as it is the special guests.  Here’s a prime example from one of the jam sessions last month as we have an amazing line-up of musicians creating a lush backdrop for Black Thought to tear through new verses over… oh yeah, did I mention this jam is 15 min long?

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Whenever Mos Def performs with The RCDC Experiment, its always a mesmerizing, incredible experience.  This was no exception as Mos Def took the stage at the illustrious Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. last year, backed not only by The RCDC Experiment, but also a 9 piece horns section and a 10 piece orchestra, collectively The Amino Alkaline Orchestra and Watermelon Syndicate.  The show was phenomenal, but my personal highlight was a performance of an unreleased song, “M.D. (Doctor)” played to the music of David Axelrod’s groovy “Holy Thursday” (one of my favorite songs and also sampled on Lil Wayne’s “Dr. Carter”).  Keeping the doctor theme, Mos’ lyrics expose the shady aspects of the medical world and questions the ethics of the industry… its powerful stuff.  Here we have an exclusive recording of the song being performed at The Kennedy Center from September 22nd, 2008 as well as audio and video of another rendition of the song from the Cape Town Jazz Festival from this past April courtesy of the good folks over at Frolab.

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Earlier this year, Mos Def did an incredible run of six intimate shows at New York’s legendary jazz club, The Blue Note.  Black Dante was backed by remarkably talented RCDC Experiment for the occasions (Robert Glasper, Chris Dave, Casey Benjamin & Derrick Hodge) and they put on some of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time.  Previously, I had shared “Fantastic” from the first of the six shows, but the true highlight was the cover of Kanye West’s “Say You Will”.  The interpretation was beautfiul, with jazzy solos from Robert Glasper and Marc Cary, who also sat in on keys for this song.  Mos even peppered in verses from “U R The One”, which fit perfectly in the context of the heartbreak motif.   This exclusive 12 min rendition will definitely go down as one of the gems on this site, I cant recommend this enough.

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