Kassa Overall

Kassa Overall is a Grammy-nominated artist known for being a musician, emcee, singer, producer, and drummer, combining avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production to push jazz and rap into new territories. Hailing from Seattle, Overall relocated to New York City in 2006, where he lived with the renowned bassist and composer Bill Lee, father of Arnold and Spike Lee, renting a room for just $200 a month. After being mentored by trumpeter and Miles Davis-protégé Wallace Roney, he toured in 2007 with Roney's then-wife, pianist Geri Allen, whom Overall regards as his musical mother. He then contributed to the albums of the Brooklyn alternative hip-hop group Das Racist, "Sit Down, Man" and "Shut Up, Dude," meeting them in Bushwick/Williamsburg while playing with the electro-funk group Gordon Voidwell. Since then, he's worked with various artists like Vijay Iyer, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Francis & the Lights, Arto Lindsay, Yoko Ono, Marc Ribot, Mayer Hawthorne, Ravi Coltrane, Cass McCombs, Carmen Lundy, Aaron Parks, Marisa Monte, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Gary Bartz. Overall spent five years with pianist Geri Allen's Timeline band and nearly a decade with trumpeter Theo Croker, co-producing the album "Escape Velocity." He also served as DJ for Jon Batiste and Stay Human, the house band for “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” He independently released his debut album, "Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz," in January 2019. His sophomore album, "I THINK I'M GOOD," debuted in February 2020 under Gilles Peterson's Brownswood Recordings, followed by the jazz remix mixtapes "Shades of Flu" in 2020 and "Shades of Flu 2" in 2021. Even while making beats and rapping, Overall stays true to the rhythm of jazz drums inspired by his mentors Elvin Jones, Billy Higgins, and Billy Hart, with whom he studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. A graduate of Garfield High School, the alma mater of Quincy Jones, Jimi Hendrix, and Ishmael Butler of Digable Planets and Shabazz Palaces, Overall counts Macklemore, his former classmate, who features in the music video for his album "I Think I'm Good."