When Karriem Riggins performs with Chicago rapper Common as the artist-in-residence of this year’s Detroit Jazz Fest on Sunday, it will be something of a full-circle moment for the Detroit-born drummer.
Common will join Riggins for “J Dilla Lives Forever,” a tribute to the late influential Detroit hip-hop producer who they both worked with starting in the late ’90s. Riggins first met Common while drumming with jazz trumpet player Roy Hargrove, and Common would later introduce Riggins in a professional capacity to Dilla.
“Every week he would go to this jazz showcase to see a show,” Riggins says of meeting Common. “When we came to town, I guess he had never seen a band with all young musicians. So he was really into what we were doing. He came to our dressing room, and when he came in, I was like, ‘Wait a minute, who’s this?’ I had just bought his album maybe six months prior. So I knew a lot of his music.”
Though Riggins had previously met Dilla in passing at a club, one day he accompanied Common to Dilla’s basement home studio in Detroit’s Conant Gardens neighborhood. The two quickly bonded, both having grown up in jazz households — Riggins’s father is keyboardist Emmanuel Riggins, while Dilla’s father Beverly Dewitt Yancey was a jazz bassist, and his mother Maureen, aka “Ma Dukes,” is a former opera singer. Riggins is primarily a live drummer and Dilla is best known for his pioneering use of the Akai MPC drum machine, but the two swapped tips and tricks and collaborated up until Dilla died in 2006 at age 32, following a battle with a rare blood disease.
“I feel like every opportunity that we meet like-minded people that we work with is life-changing,” Riggins says. “I learned a lot from him, and we created a lot of music together, and he was a brother to me. I feel grateful to have crossed paths with him. He was a special, special person.”
Riggins grew up watching his dad perform with jazz greats like Marcus Belgrave, and as a kid played trumpet in his school band before switching over to drums. But he says he also listened to plenty of hip-hop, and merging the two was a natural progression.
“I was always into hip-hop,” he says. “I started listening to hip-hop before I could even speak on my instrument. So once I started to play drums, that was already there. The things I listen to come out in my instrument. We are what we listen to.”
After meeting Common, Riggins served as bandleader for the rapper’s live band, dubbed A Black Girl Named Becky, and also appeared on Dilla’s albums. Riggins also joined forces with Dilla collaborator Madlib, a California producer and rapper. Their project Jahari Massamba Unit was described by Pitchfork as “experimental jazz” that “feels like a beat tape.”
“I feel like hip-hop may be one of the only genres that’s an umbrella of all different genres that fuse into hip-hop,” Riggins says. “Jazz is definitely one of the elements of hip-hop. It’s a fusion of classical, a fusion of rock, a fusion of afrobeat. And that’s what's really dope about hip-hop, is that we can go anywhere.”
Riggins will kick off his Detroit Jazz Festival artist residency at 9 p.m. on Friday at the Carhartt Amphitheater stage in Hart Plaza with a set called “Interplay,” which will feature Madlib along with L.A. DJ J. Rocc and Detroit guitarist Sasha Kashperko. “We’re gonna be just taking a ride through a lot of different genres, a lot of different styles and sounds,” he says.
The residency continues with “J Dilla Lives Forever” at 9:15 p.m. on Sunday at the JPMorgan Chase Main Stage at Campus Martius. The tribute will feature other artists from the Dilla extended universe, including Detroit poet jessica Care moore and T3, who founded the rap group Slum Village with Dilla and the late rapper Baatin.
“I want to revisit a lot of Dilla’s repertoire to keep his name alive, especially for people who don’t even know who he is,” Riggins says. “We’re trying to create awareness of Dilla because his music is so important. I feel like it’s the new standard. We kept the Great American Songbook alive, so I feel like we have a new songbook that should come alive and stay alive, and that’s why I call it ‘J Dilla Lives Forever.’”
Riggins’s artist residency ends at the JPMorgan Chase Main Stage on Monday with a set starting at dubbed “Karriem and the Erratic Specialist,” which starts at 7:40 p.m. and features special guests like singer BJ the Chicago Kid, Atlanta vocalist PJ, rapper Nick Grant, and Common collaborator DJ Dummy. “We’re going to mix it up and bring different colors and sounds to the festival,” Riggins teases.
Other festival highlights include the fact that three out of the four recipients of the 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship are from Detroit and performing at this year’s event. They are violinist Regina Carter, Kenny Garrett (alto and soprano saxophone and flute), and drummer Louis Hayes. And 23-year-old jazz singer Samara Joy of New York City, who recently won Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album and Best New Artist, is also set to perform. (See the Detroit Jazz Festival website for the full schedule.)
Though Riggins has performed at the Detroit Jazz Festival many times before, this is his first year as its artist-in-residence. He praises Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation president and artistic director Christopher Collins for having the vision to present hip-hop prominently at the festival. This year has been declared the 50th anniversary of the genre.
“Chris Collins totally understands what I do,” Riggins says. “And he gave me free reign to do exactly what I do. The music that I present is music that’s close to my heart. That says a lot about him and what people want.”
He adds, “I think they’ve given me the platform to do this because they know that this is in my soul.”
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