Kamasi Washington, born in Los Angeles in 1981, is the tenor saxophonist at the center of the contemporary spiritual jazz revival — you've heard him on Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. The triple album The Epic (2015) is the statement piece; Heaven and Earth (2018) follows it well. Find Kamasi Washington vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Kamasi Washington was born in Los Angeles, California on February 18, 1981. He attended UCLA on a jazz scholarship and worked extensively in the LA jazz scene through the 2000s and early 2010s. He was a member of Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder roster and contributed to Kendrick Lamar's landmark To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), Run the Jewels collaborations, and dozens of other crossover hip hop / R&B / jazz projects. His own triple album The Epic (2015) launched his solo career as a defining figure in contemporary spiritual jazz revival. He has continued releasing material across multiple decades.
Kamasi Washington's sound combines spiritual jazz, post-bop, modal jazz, jazz fusion, contemporary jazz, and avant-garde jazz with his distinctive tenor saxophone voice and arrangements drawing on John Coltrane's classic spiritual jazz, Pharoah Sanders, and broader spiritual jazz traditions alongside contemporary hip hop and electronic reference points.
Brainfeeder and Young Turks / XL pressings of the Kamasi Washington catalog have been issued in multiple color variant editions and limited deluxe pressings.
Listeners new to Kamasi Washington typically start with The Epic (2015) or Heaven and Earth (2018).
