Kassa Overall is a drummer/producer from Seattle who has had a long career in New York, mostly behind the scenes as a drummer who worked with jazz musicians like Christian McBride, Ravi Coltrane, Jon Bastite, and Geri Allen. However, with the passing of Roy Hargrove in 2018, Kassa felt the need to step out and work on solo material, resulting in his first album in 2019, Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz. He has been working at a steady pace since then, with a second album and a series of mixtapes following the release, all raising his profile as a solo artist. Now, he makes his debut on Warp Records with his third full-length album, Animals.

Kassa Overall might have waited until his late 30s to start releasing solo projects, but he clearly had an idea of what he wanted to do once he got started, and it’s been a sharp climb in the course of only a few years as he has refined his sound and approach to these projects. It didn’t take long in listening to Animals to realize that I was in for something special. “Ready to Ball,” with its rich jazz piano, stop-and-start hip hop/jazz drumming, manipulated voices, and smooth rapping, opens up to a world of possibilities over the course of the rest of the album. Throughout this journey, we are joined by a plethora of guest artists, including Danny Brown, Wiki, Tomoki Sanders, Bendji Allonce, Mike King, Ian Finkelstein, Nick Hakim, Theo Croker, Andrae Murchinson, Laura Mvula, Francis and the Lights, J. Hoard, Vijay Iyer, Lil B, and Shabazz Palaces. That’s a lot of different guests bringing a lot of different things to the table, but Kassa Overall steers the ship with a steady hand, finding all of these natural connecting points between modern jazz, classical, soul, funk, hip hop, pop, experimental electronic music, and more. He makes the journey feel natural and unexpected all at once, which is no small feat. It’s like you never know where the music is heading, but once you get there, you’re just like, “Of course! That’s how it all fits together!” The majority of the album works together as whole more than it does as individual songs, and the best way to listen is to put the world on hold for about forty minutes and just let the music wash over you and gradually sink in. That said, there are two songs that hold up as singles. One is the unexpected hip hop tango of “So Happy,” which finds Francis and the Lights and Laura Mvula dancing around each other vocally in a very thrilling way that keeps me coming back for more. The other is the meditative and beautiful closing track, “Going Up,” which features Lil B, Shabazz Palaces, and Francis and the Lights. It is so compelling that it doesn’t feel nearly as long as the six-minute song actually is, mostly because the musical composition and beautiful and introspective poetry of the vocalists just put you in this beautiful headspace where it feels like you’re in the middle of a conversation with old friends.

Animals is a bold and ambitious album from Kassa Overall that feels like the culmination of what he’s been working towards over the last four or five years. It brings together all of these different musical genres, schools of thought, and artists, and brings them together under the umbrella in such a way that feels like you’re putting NNAMDI, Gorillaz, Handsome Boy Modeling School, and Kariem Riggins in a blender. Except then you have Kassa Overall coming in with his own unique vision and style, adding just the right flavor to make it completely his own. I keep coming back to this album over and over again, and not only am I nowhere near sick of it, I keep discovering new nuances each time through.