Courtesy of Innovative Leisure.

In 2010 three students at Humber College in Toronto decided to forsake degrees and education to pursue fusion jazz. Matthew Tavares, Chester Hansen and Alexander Sowinski met in the university‰’s jazz program, bonding over their shared love of hip hop.

The next year, they released their first full length studio album under the moniker BADBADNOTGOOD. They loaded the album up with covers of rap songs. The self-titled album made it onto the radar of Tyler, the Creator, who paired up with them to do some low-key in-studio performances. In music, a bump from a more famous act sometimes means nothing more than an extra fifteen minutes of fame. For BBNG, the question became what they could do with fifteen minutes.

Three years and two albums later, BBNG does not really hit the radios. Their American live shows do not always sell out or strike the big venues. But the band proved their mastery, taking two flares from opposite spectrums and marrying them. They have created their musically polygamous collective of sound and now they have to carve a niche out for it.

Though the road ahead may look long and winding, rarely has a band fit their path better than BBNG. In interviews they are just three awkward young twenty-somethings nervously breaking new ground. However, when they hit the stage or the studio nothing but their vision shows. They use heavy hip hop synthesizers and boosted bass to blast open a new path for jazz. 

Their new album, III, moves away from their familiar ground of rap covers but never waivers from its path.  The album‰’s carefully placed hooks, rising action that ramps up like a roller coaster but the aggressive energy still falls perfectly into fluid jazz rhythms. III makes the marriage of hip hop and jazz work better than counseling ever could. It is the absolute synthesis of everything they have done since 2010.

III delivers on every angle that an album should. As a whole work it flows seamlessly between each song. Not a hiccup at the start or end of any song disrupts the album‰’s direction. And it knows its direction. The entire set of songs fit together towards BBNG‰’s driving theme of making modern, hip-hop- and pop-infused jazz.

III‰’s tracks can stand alone as well. Each one fits into the larger puzzle but still keeps a hold on its own separate sound. Songs like “Since You Asked Kindly‰” and “CS60‰” create a funky, bobbing rhythm that‰’s easy to follow, but also to get lost in. But where “Since You Asked Kindly‰” floats along on high pitches, “CS60‰” creates a chorus by plunging into low valleys with heavy bass beats and echoing drum strikes. Other songs like “Sustain‰” run for longer and take on their own form. That one builds from a slow and peaceful drone into a hurried and anxious meltdown, led the entire time by the keys of Tavares‰’s piano.

But an album alone only means so much. The band has to deliver on the expectations it makes in the studio. If the album sounds wonderful through headphones, listeners expect it to sound even better coming from a stage. BBNG delivers on that expectation too. During live shows the band plays everything perfectly, and adds in more where they can. They clearly love to play their songs and pour all their energy into them, pushing it above good.

The hype pushes BBNG‰’s live shows to another level entirely. Early on BBNG understood the importance of hype. The band‰’s drummer, Alex, in  an interview with Vice, called on jazz as a genre to bring back the hype. “The whole music industry is hype,‰” Alex claimed, and so far BBNG has brought the hype. BNNG strives to pump up the audience.

I have only seen the band play twice, but each time Alex asked the crowd to bring everything they had, to go crazy and let loose when the beat hit. Sometimes he would make the call while the action was rising, while Matt still tapped lightly on the keys of the piano and Chester kept the beat going until a wave of heavy bass shook the rafters. That stage presence paid off each time, hyping up small audiences into a rowdy pack pushing towards the stage. I have seen metal shows that could not match the energy BBNG gave to the crowd.

If you’ve slept on BBNG, or heard about them and never delved into their discography, now is the time to join the mounting hype. With an album of originals out and covers and collaborations starting to pour in with acts like Future Islands and Ghostface Killah, BBNG is still growing in interesting ways. They have probably not hit a peak yet, nor have they plateaued out into one single sound. They tour heavily and their tickets still sell for pretty cheap. After each show the band members stick around for a while and talk with fans. The hype train will head out of the station sooner or later. Climb on board before it gets crowded and the tickets get more expensive.