Us3

Us3 was London producer Geoff Wilkinson's big idea, and a cheeky one: raid the Blue Note vaults and set the old jazz records to work under hip-hop beats. Even the name is a tip of the hat, borrowed from Us Three, a 1960 Horace Parlan album produced by Blue Note founder Alfred Lion. Blue Note itself released the group, and the debut album, Hand on the Torch, was stitched together from samples of records Lion had produced, with Kobie Powell, Rahsaan and Tukka Yoot in the lineup from 1993 to 1995.

"Cantaloop", out in 1992 and also heard in its "Flip Fantasia" version, is the one alternative radio grabbed: a loose, head-nodding groove that made jazz rap sound like the most natural thing in the world. After that first crew moved on, Wilkinson kept the name alive with a revolving cast of voices, KCB and Shabaam Sahdeeq in the late '90s, then Alison Crockett, Mpho Skeef and others in the years after. The records have come out on Blue Note and EmArcy.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.