That Time Robert Glasper Covered Radiohead

Track 7 of Robert Glasper’s third studio album, In My Element, features Glasper’s trio playing a medley. It starts off with covering Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” before transitioning into Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage”. The Radiohead cover isn’t as haunting as the original, but it carries the same mood. Analyzing this, I’m not at all surprised Glasper would want to cover Radiohead. In general, I’ve found musicians respect the work of other musicians, regardless of genre. But, Glasper is also heavily influenced by hip-hop, particularly artists like Common, The Roots, Yasiin Bey, and J Dilla, all of whom he’s been friends with. What does that have to do with Radiohead?

I can’t confirm, but I would not be surprised if Glasper spent some time on the message boards of Okayplayer.com. Okayplayer was the creation of drummer Amir “Questlove” Thompson of The Roots. Originally being the ground zero online for The Roots, it also became the space websites for Common, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, A Tribe Called Quest, and a few other like artists were housed.

There were also the message boards, which were social media for so many before we knew what social media was. I was on those message boards in the early 2000s. For reference, I was “skoo402”. Like many on the boards, I was college-aged at the time. I spent most of my time in the sports discussion, mostly because I knew my shit, but also because I could keep up with the pace of this board. When I had downtime, I would head over to the faster-paced The Lesson, a board for deep music conversation. For someone like me who lived in a very white city with no Black radio stations, it was my window into what was worth investigating in Black music.

Up to this point, I was firmly entrenched in Hip-Hop, R&B, and some Jazz. I didn’t really venture outside of that scope much. I may have liked an alternative or rock record here or there, but for the most part, my musical palette was limited. Around 2001 or so, that began to change. One trend I started to pick up on with the boards was underground hip-hop fans becoming tired of the genre.

Flashback to 1996, there was a split in hip-hop that could be linked to two albums. There was Nas’ It Was Written, which saw Nas diving headfirst into the commercial trends of the time: money, cars, clothes, and so on. On the other end of the spectrum was De La Soul’s Stakes Is High. That album was the answer to everything commercial. It was the traditional boom bap hip-hop album in many ways. Lyrically, it called into question the aspirations of mainstream hip-hop, especially in light of the murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. I gravitated more towards the latter as I found more in common with this side.

By the early 2000s, I found many listeners of underground hip-hop grew tired of the constant complaining from artists about the mainstream’s antics. On the boards, I found the musical tastes of many begin to expand, and Radiohead was one of the artists I saw many gravitating to. I knew Radiohead mostly from their hit “Creep”. A decade later, they were less commercially friendly and far more experimental, some would even say weird. I forced myself to embrace the weird. I didn’t like fitting in necessarily. I liked finding the weird new thing none of my friends knew about, so OK Computer was right up my alley.

Radiohead became a gateway drug for me. I backtracked into the grunge era, learning to appreciate Nirvana and Alice in Chains more. I also learned to love artists like Beck, The Hives, Portishead, and The Pixies. My Seattle connections had me looking up bands from there, which is how I got into Death Cab for Cutie and Minus the Bear. I learned to live outside of a box. In doing so, I lost the bounds of what I was willing to like. I got more into jazz, discovering artists like Glasper and Roy Hargrove. I often found I was the only one in my social circle listening to these artists, and I was good with that.

So, I can see how a jazz artist like Robert Glasper would end up covering Radiohead and how he would later cover Nirvana. Some of us don’t like being stagnant in the same old thing all the time. We need to hear and experience something different. My tastes are still varied even today. My roots are still in Hip-Hop and R&B. But, I’m open to everything and find my tastes will change with my moods. Mostly, I refuse to live in a box.