Robert Glasper

In 2019 Robert Glasper appeared in Toni Thai Sterrett's "Potty Break" Webseries as an R&B artist named "The Hawk".

In an August 2018 radio interview Glasper accused Lauryn Hill, who he had performed with once in 2008, of ″stealing″ music for her classic 1998 album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. He also claimed that she treated her musicians poorly, instructing them not to make eye contact and threatening to half their pay because she was unhappy with how they were ″learning the music″.

Glasper has also drawn wide attention for his prominent role on Lamar's acclaimed album To Pimp A Butterfly. He has written/performed on albums by Mac Miller, Anderson Paak, Banks (remix), Big K.R.I.T., Bilal, Kendrick Lamar, Q-Tip and Talib Kweli. In September 2017, Glasper appeared on a live stream with Esperanza Spalding while recording "Heaven in Pennies" for Spalding's album Exposure, which was released in December 2017.

In addition, Glasper released Everything's Beautiful on May 27, 2016, marking his first release with Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings. The album serves as a tribute to Davis and includes remixes and reinterpretations of several of his original works. Although Davis died in 1991, he is credited as a co-artist of the album. The album includes features from Stevie Wonder, Bilal, Illa J, Erykah Badu, Phonte, Hiatus Kaiyote, Laura Mvula, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Ledisi, and John Scofield.

On September 16, 2016, Glasper released "ArtScience". This is the first Experiment LP where all members write and produce, and the first with no guest vocalists. It features saxophonist and vocalist Casey Benjamin, bassist Derrick Hodge, drummer Mark Colenburg, and Glasper himself—sings. It was recorded in New Orleans.

On June 16, 2015, The Robert Glasper Trio released the album Covered, which features instrumental covers of songs from an eclectic variety of well-known artists, including Radiohead, John Legend, Kendrick Lamar, and Joni Mitchell. The entire album was recorded live at Capitol Studios in 2014. Covered was GRAMMY-nominated for Best Jazz Instrumental Album.

Glasper served as producer, composer, and arranger for the 2015 film Miles Ahead, a biopic documenting the life of legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, whom Glasper cites as being one of his major musical influences. The soundtrack primarily consists of arrangements and interpretations of some of Davis' most well-known compositions, with the exception of a few tunes written by Glasper himself.

On October 29, 2013, Glasper released Black Radio 2, another genre-defying effort that took the Black Radio blueprint and built to even greater heights. The core remained the Experiment, featuring Robert Glasper on keyboards, Derrick Hodge on bass, Mark Colenburg on drums, and Casey Benjamin on vocoder and saxophone. Providing the vocals throughout included Common, Brandy, Jill Scott, Marsha Ambrosius, Anthony Hamilton, Faith Evans, Norah Jones, Snoop Dogg, Lupe Fiasco, Emeli Sandé and Erykah Badu on the stella album highlight afro blue. Lalah Hathaway and Malcolm-Jamal Warner were featured on a cover of Steve Wonder's "Jesus Children of America", which was dedicated to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings and won the GRAMMY for Best Traditional R&B Performance in 2015.

"I'm obviously influenced by Miles Davis – even just the psyche of how he thinks about music...how he moves through, and always wanted to reflect the times he's in. That's what I'm doing now. He opened that door."

In February 2012, Glasper released Black Radio, which featured performances by many neo-soul and hip hop artists including Lupe Fiasco, Bilal, Lalah Hathaway and Yasiin Bey. Black Radio laid out a new paradigm for creative music, reaching beyond entrenched genre boundaries to create a singular vision that drew from all reaches of contemporary black music and beyond. The album was met with both commercial success (a #10 debut on Billboard's Top Current Albums chart) and wide acclaim, with Rolling Stone declaring "Glasper heads down the fraught path of hip-hop jazz and gets it right," adding that "with music this smart and inviting, the implied diss of mainstream doesn't feel like sour grapes; it feels like a blueprint forward." The album won the 2013 GRAMMY Award for Best R&B Album. In November 2012 Black Radio Recovered: The Remix EP was released with five remixed tracks from the prior album, including remixes by Questlove, Solange, Georgia Muldrow, Pete Rock and 9th Wonder.

Glasper has worked with Bilal and Mos Def as musical director, Q-Tip (The Renaissance), Kanye West (Late Registration), Meshell Ndegeocello (The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams), J Dilla, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Jay-Z, Talib Kweli, Common, Slum Village, and Maxwell, with whom he toured extensively on 2009's BLACKsummers'night tour.

Glasper's 2009 album Double-Booked is divided between songs performed by Glasper in an acoustic piano trio and funk-influenced tracks played on electric instruments, such as the Fender Rhodes and the vocoder (used on a version of Hancock's "Butterfly"). The album features guest vocals and spoken-word appearances by Bilal and Mos Def. Bilal received a 2010 Grammy Award nomination for Best Urban/Alternative Performance for the track "All Matter".

Blue Note Records released Canvas, Glasper's major-label debut, in 2005. The album features nine original songs and again a version of a Hancock composition, "Riot". Glasper plays the Fender Rhodes electric piano on three tracks, and Bilal sings on two. In My Element, released in 2006, includes songs written in honor of Glasper's mother ("Tribute") and hip-hop producer J Dilla ("J Dillalude"). The pianist also revisits Hancock's "Maiden Voyage", which segues into a version of "Everything in Its Right Place", and quotes Duke Ellington's "Fleurette Africaine".

Glasper's first album, Mood, was released by Fresh Sound New Talent in 2004, after the pianist's stints playing in bands with guitarists Russell Malone and Mark Whitfield, bassist Christian McBride, and trumpeters Terence Blanchard and Roy Hargrove. The album features six original compositions by Glasper alongside versions of the jazz standards "Blue Skies", "Alone Together", and Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage". Glasper has said that his arrangement of the Hancock tune was inspired by the Radiohead song "Everything in Its Right Place". Mood is mainly a piano trio recording, with Bob Hurst on bass and Damion Reid on drums. Two tracks feature vocalist Bilal, two others adding Russell Malone, and saxophonists John Ellis and Marcus Strickland.

Glasper attended Elkins High School in Missouri City, Texas, and the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts . He was in the second Vail Jazz Workshop in 1997, and went on to attend the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City. At the New School, Glasper met neo-soul singer Bilal Oliver. They began performing and recording together, which led to associations with a variety of hip-hop and R&B artists parallel to Glasper's emerging jazz career.

Robert Andre Glasper (born April 5, 1978) is an American pianist and record producer. He has been nominated for seven Grammy Awards and has won three Grammys and one Emmy Award. His 2012 album Black Radio won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album at the 55th Grammy Awards. His 2014 album Black Radio 2 was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album at the 56th Grammy Awards. The song "These Walls", on which Glasper plays keys, from Kendrick Lamar's album To Pimp A Butterfly won Best Rap/Sung Collaboration at the 57th Grammy Awards. The soundtrack for the film Miles Ahead, for which Glasper was a producer, won Best Soundtrack Compilation at the 58th Grammy Awards. The song "Letter to the Free", written with Common for the Ava DuVernay documentary 13th, won the 2017 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.