Makaya McCraven – Deciphering The Message

Across numerous albums and mixtapes, Makaya McCraven has proven his mastery of the loop. His practice resembles that of hip-hop’s most celebrated beatmakers—J Dilla, Madlib and the like—but where their music excavates obscure sounds from the past, McCraven, a Chicago-based drummer and producer, samples himself, playing improvised sessions throughout the world, then molding the audio several times to pull contrasting moods from it. “And then we can pass it onto another person who can flip that,” he said in 2020’s Universal Beings documentary. “And then that could be re-flipped… I like to find more creative ways to pull a fifth or six dimension out of the music.” Not only has this process afforded McCraven his own lane in jazz, it’s made him a star amongst those with an affinity for rap and ambient as well. With his new remix album, Deciphering The Message, McCraven digs through the annals of the famed Blue Note Records to put new spins on Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Clifford Brown, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Dorham, and Eddie Gale, among others. McCraven comes to this project having remixed Gil Scott-Heron’s final album, 2010’s I’m New Here, into an equally emotive LP titled We’re New Again that reimagined the poet’s wrestling with loss, daily existence and regret. Though Scott-Heron’s distinctive baritone remained the focal point, McCraven crafted an album closer to the vocalist’s natural aesthetic of soul and jazz. For Deciphering The Message, McCraven wanted to maintain the integrity of Blue Note’s original music, but with a modern bounce, appealing to those who might only know the label from their grandparents’ old vinyl collection.