When Robert Glasper released his album Black Radio in 2011, it was difficult to predict the ways in which his work would shape Black music as a whole. A virtuosic young player who had previously cut his teeth recording for the famed jazz label, Blue Note, Black Radio found Glasper exploring the commonalities between three of the most storied traditions in the history of Black music: jazz, R&B, and hip-hop. While hip-hop had produced some truly thrilling uses of jazz through the magic of sampling, and R&B had a long history of integrating jazz’s musicality, Black Radio succeeded by infusing these genres with jazz’s complexity to create a cool, and urbane sound. Constructed like a hip-hop mixtape, Black Radio’s guest stars—Erykah Badu, Lalah Hathaway, Lupe Fiasco, Yasiin Bey, Bilal, and more—read like a who’s who of progressive contemporary Black music. Black Radio and its 2013 follow up Black Radio 2 blew up, topping the charts and winning multiple Grammys.

In the winter of 2019, Glasper recorded “Better Than I Imagined” with H.E.R. and Meshell Ndegeocello, a song that inspired him to begin work on Black Radio III. The onset of the pandemic presented a significant roadblock: Black Radio, as a series, is based on real-time musical exchanges in the studio. But Glasper, undeterred, went to work on the album, creating songs and ideas and recruiting an impressive list of collaborators including Jennifer Hudson, Gregory Porter, Ledisi, Ty Dolla $ign, Yebba, and Esperanza Spaulding. Ranging from the heavy, head-nodding hip-hop cut “Black SuperHero” (featuring Killer Mike, BJ The Chicago Kid, and Big K.R.I.T.) to the dreamy dance tune “Everybody Love” (featuring Musiq Soulchild and Posdnous of De la Soul), Black Radio III doesn’t just move fluidly between genres, it erases many of the barriers that existed between them in the first place.

We talked with Glasper about recording Black Radio 3; creating a workable fusion for jazz and popular music; and his recent work supporting the few remaining Black-owned record stores in the U.S.