Jamael Dean: Black Space Tapes

Young LA jazz prodigy Jamael Dean counts the cream of the scene as collaborators (he played on Kamasi Washington’s Heaven and Earth at just 15 years old), and on November 8 releases his debut LP, Black Space Tapes, on Stones Throw.

“Black is used to give reverence to the spirit of nothing that preceded all in the universe which, throughout the album, is referred to as Akamara. Space is used to allude to the ever-expansiveness of our beings, matter, and time itself. Tapes shows the marriage of those two ideas (i.e the stickiness of tape) and how the album is a vessel of sound that grows with you (i.e. cassette tapes). Black Space Tapes shows the evolution of how music played a role in my life, from jazz to rap and beyond that. It’s a river of shifting patterns, and temperatures that show we as humans are instruments striving towards harmony in nature.”

Listen to the track Kronos below and pre-order the album here.