Artist · chart history
Kamasi Washington
Solo artist Los Angeles United States US jazz saxophonist
Kamasi Washington is an artist from Los Angeles. Kamasi Washington has 7 chart appearances on 7 radio countdowns from 5 stations on RockLists, spanning 2018–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Street Fighter Mas”, which appears on 3 lists with a best position of #277. The station that charted Kamasi Washington most often is WXPN (Philadelphia, PA), with 2 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2018.
Kamasi Washington, a Los Angeles saxophonist born in 1981, came up the long way. He went through the Academy of Music at Alexander Hamilton High School in Beverlywood, then into UCLA's ethnomusicology department, where he ended up playing alongside faculty heavyweights Kenny Burrell, Gerald Wilson and Billy Higgins. Higgins took a young quartet under his wing, Washington, pianist Cameron Graves and the brothers Stephen "Thundercat" and Ronald Bruner, and they cut a debut album, Young Jazz Giants, in 2004 for Birdman Records. Washington is also a founding member of the West Coast Get Down collective, and he joined the Gerald Wilson Orchestra on its 2005 album In My Time.
2015 was a busy year. His saxophone runs through Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, he played on Thundercat's "Them Changes", and his own debut, The Epic, arrived that May.
Heaven and Earth, from 2018, is the record that carried him onto the radio countdowns, and "Fists of Fury" is its battle cry: a big, cinematic eruption that swings like a kung fu soundtrack played at full tilt. "Street Fighter Mas" rides a looser, strutting groove. Along the way he has also collected a Libera Award for Record of the Year.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Kamasi Washington on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Street Fighter Mas | 3 | #277 | – | – | |
| 2 | Fists of Fury | 3 | #23 | – | 2018 | |
| 3 | Dream State | 1 | #123 | – | 2024 |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Year-end chart timeline
Combined year-end countdown points per year. Taller bars mean more songs placing higher across more stations.
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