Kassa Overall Announces New Album 'Cream' - Out 12 September

Today, GRAMMY-nominated jazz visionary and Doris Duke Artist Award winner Kassa Overall announces his new album CREAM, out digitally, on CD and vinyl September 12 via Warp Records. With CREAM, his fourth solo studio album, Overall pays homage to the twin passions of his youth — hip-hop and jazz drums in the tradition of Elvin Jones. Across 8 instrumentals, the visionary drummer and producer transforms hip-hop classics by The Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan, Dr. Dre, A Tribe Called Quest, OutKast, Digable Planets, and Juvenile into timeless standards that are rhythmically adventurous, witty, and often sublime.

Dan Charnas, acclaimed author of Dilla Time lays the scene in his liner notes for the record: “Enter Kassa Overall, with new notions. What if, instead of covering only the songs that it can easily see itself in, jazz mined a broader swath of hip-hop... for its rhythms, for its humor, for the clever way it frames its source material?...Kassa Overall’s album, CREAM, perhaps the first of its kind, answers that question with jazz explorations of eight canonic hip-hop songs.”

Overall shares, “This album is almost a boomerang response to all my previous work. No edits, no overdubs, no samples or drum machines. Just a great group of musicians playing together. It just so happens that the compositional material we are drawing from is rap records I grew up on!"

Today’s announcement includes CREAM’s debut single, “REBIRTH OF SLICK (COOL LIKE DAT),” a burning 15/4 odd-time arrangement of the Digable Planets 90s hip-hop classic, which Overall learned from the inside out during a year on the road opening for the band and touring with them as their drummer. In his version, the conga pattern of the Digable original becomes a drum break, the lyrics “we be to rap what key be to lock”become a drum fill, and the swing feel of the original Art Blakey sample is restored. Overall says, “It nods to Digable Planets’ smooth flow and Art Blakey’s ‘Stretching.’ Knowing the song so well, I was able to flip the script with odd time rhythms and utilize many elements from the original, from vocal parts to production details. This one is high energy and still crispy.”

Kassa Overall also recently announced his new Fall 2025 tour, playing clubs and festivals all across the country in North America, Europe, and Japan. For the full list of dates and tickets, visit his website here.

CREAM was fueled by years of non-stop touring and the need to whittle down Overall’s elaborate electronic-driven stage setup in favor of something simpler. While his previous solo projects relied heavily on drum machines, micro-edited programmed sounds, Ableton Live, and samples, CREAMutilizes Rudy Van Gelder-style sound engineering in the vein of classic jazz recordings like Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue or John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, with performances recorded in the same room with little separation, no overdubs, and no edits. Following now-canonical jazz interpretations of showtunes like John Coltrane’s cover of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things”, here Overall ironically reframes rap anthems to illustrate each song’s hidden rhythmic and harmonic potential.

“CREAM isn’t just covers—it’s a full-on reimagining of hip-hop through jazz, digging into the musical guts and soul of both,” Overall explains. “It’s a fresh take on how these genres talk to each other—not just a collision, but a conversation that’s been brewing since the ‘90s.”

Reversing the convention of rap albums sampling jazz, Overall pulls off another backflip in a stunning career arc, illustrating his mastery as a producer, drummer and arranger who aggressively mines the continuum between jazz and hip-hop from every angle without any shortcuts.

CREAM Tracklist

1. FREEDOM JAZZ DANCE

2. BIG POPPA

3. C.R.E.A.M. (CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME)

4. REBIRTH OF SLICK (COOL LIKE DAT)

5. NUTHIN BUT A “G” THANG

6. CHECK THE RHIME

7. SPOTTIEOTTIEDOPALISCIOUS

8. BACK THAT AZZ UP

Kassa Overall Live Dates

July 2025

11th - Siligo - Sardinia, IT

12th - Gaeta Jazz Festival - IT

13th - North Sea Jazz Festival - NL

17th - Gretchen - Berlin, DE

18th - Bari Jazz Festival - IT

19th - WROsound - Wroclaw, PL

September 2025

3rd - Solar Myth - Philadelphia, PA, USA

4th - Mannys - State College, PA, USA

5th - Otis Mountain Get Down - Elizabethtown, NY, USA

6th - De La Luz - Holyoke, MA, USA

8th - The Falcon - Marlboro, NY, USA

9th - Cafe 939 - Boston, MA, USA

10th - Jimmy's Jazz & Blues Club - Portsmouth, NH, USA

12th - Jazz Gallery - New York, NY, USA

13th - Jazz Gallery - New York, NY, USA

14th - Keystone Korner - Baltimore, MD, USA

16th - Snug Harbor - Charlotte, NC, USA

17th - Missy Lane's - Durham, NC, USA

18th - Missy Lane's - Durham, NC, USA

October 2025

8th - Blue Note Tokyo - Tokyo, JP

9th - Blue Note Tokyo - Tokyo, JP

10th - Blue Note Tokyo - Tokyo, JP

23rd - Minaret - Los Angeles, CA, USA

25th - Earshot - Seattle, WA, USA

31st - JazzKlub - Frankfurt, DE

November 2025

6th - Mladi Ladi Jazz - Prague, CZ

8th - Rockit - Groningen, NL