Take a look at Blue Note Records’ release schedule for 2022 and it’s hard to miss the significant percentage of electronic-oriented music. In March, the label released Blue Lab Beats’ debut LP, Motherland Journey, which found the London-based duo—NK-OK and Mr. DM—assembling an enticing amalgam of jazz, R&B, hip-hop, and Afrobeat. Later this year, it plans to launch a series called Blue Note Beat Tapes, overseen by rapper/podcaster/Kinda Neat YouTube channel founder Lee Shaner. The first release is produced by beat maker Dibia$e, who developed his skills in Los Angeles by attending “Sketchbook” gatherings outside the Little Temple in Echo Park and at the Low End Theory in the early aughts, alongside other noted instrumental hip-hop artists such as Flying Lotus, Daddy Kev, Daedelus, Gaslamp Killer, Ras G, and Jonwayne; the series will continue with entries created by Elaquent and Linafornia. Also slated for this year is Blue Note Re:imagined, Vol. 2, the follow-up to the 2020 compilation that highlighted some of the U.K.’s finest artists on the contemporary jazz and DJ scenes.
That spate of releases comes on the heels of last year’s Deciphering the Message, the sample-heavy Blue Note debut from drummer/producer Makaya McCraven, and the Bluewerk compilations, a collaborative effort with the electronica imprint Astralwerks involving nifty downtempo tracks. And the aforementioned are barely the tip of a very large iceberg. For more than a quarter-century and counting, Blue Note has been building a burgeoning discography that both documents and deepens its relationship with DJ culture.
Danceable grooves and distinctive drum breaks have long been Blue Note touchstones, and that insistently seduces DJs, the label’s president Don Was argues. “If you put on a Blue Note record from just about any era, you
