Black Milk - FEVER [2018]

Black Milk has been lyrically silent for some time, with his last raps being on 2014's If There's a Hell Below. The hip-hop artist's 2016 release, The Rebellion Sessions, was a collaboration with the band Nat Turner that only had a tangential relation to hip-hop. With its tight rhythms, The Rebellion Sessions is not completely divorced from Milk's hip-hop roots, however the fact that it was a jazz record which featured improvisation made it stand out as a notable left turn in Milk's discography. On FEVER, Black Milk is rapping again, and it sounds like a lot of the production ideas that go into making the record such a success can be traced back to what the Detroit native was experimenting with in his years without the mic.

Quin Kirchner - The Other Side of Time [2018]

Published on NextBop

When speaking of jazz cities, New York and New Orleans are the ones that immediately come to mind, however, Chicago also deserves a shout. The city is no stranger to jazz creativity, being the home of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and having a scene which honed the chops of talented modern jazz names such as Tomeka Reid, Jaimie Branch and Matana Roberts. Drummer Quin Kirchner, a Chi-Town native, proves to be another quality example of the Chicago scene in his debut record, The Other Side of Time. The bandleader is an integral part of his skillful quintet made up of Nick Broste (trombone), Nate Lepine (tenor saxophone, flute), Jason Stein (bass clarinet) and Matt Ulery (bass).