Everything's Beautiful

Glasper's keen-eared stewardship throws up some astonishing alchemy. [Aug 2016, p.75]

Erykah Badu lends a childlike charm to the sunburnt fizz of Glasper’s bossa nova version of “Maiysha (So Long)”, with Miles’s trumpet shining through towards the end.

Everything’s Beautiful is not the real tribute; it’s Glasper’s determination to evolve the genre that is, and I don’t think Miles Davis would have it any other way.

A trio of cuts toward the middle of Everything’s Beautiful suffers from feeling less robustly reimagined than the rest of the set--placing a slight drag on momentum.

Glasper and his confreres have used Davis' inspiration to craft a moving and misterioso assemblage that, true-to-the-living Davis, refuses any scent of museum entombment.

Considering the disparate source material and the quantity of vocalists, instrumentalists, and producers involved, it's remarkable how smoothly the album flows from one track to the next. Unsurprisingly, it's most appealing to fans of Glasper and those he involved.

Glasper is undoubtedly a class act, but the lacks the wildness a Madlib or a Flying Lotus might have brought to this project. [Jun 2016, p.54]

Smooth soul or hip hop tropes being largely the order of the day here. [Jul 2016, p.95]

The middle of the album is a problem, especially the Hiatus Kaiyote number, “Little Church,” a strange, bloodless clunker that drags down the Mvula (“Silence Is the Way”) and KING (“Song for Selim”) features that follow. The Badu track, the electro-bossa nova “Maiysha (So Long),” is fine but familiar. Miles Davis concept aside, Glasper’s still in “Black Radio” mode. It works, but it needs a little dirt, and probably a new challenge.