Adrian Younge

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Adrian Younge draws together strands from every corner of Black music through the lens of a dedicated crate digger. In 2009 he supplied the score for the blaxploitation tribute Black Dynamite, then issued a run of conceptual solo works that stretched from the psychedelic pop-soul of Something About April in 2011 to the synthesizer explorations of The Electronique Void in 2016. Parallel studio work produced complete albums spotlighting formative figures including the Delfonics and Ghostface Killah. Ali Shaheed Muhammad emerged as a steady partner in both creative and commercial endeavors. Together they completed The Midnight Hour in 2018 and, in 2020, launched the Jazz Is Dead imprint along with its associated studios and album series, which soon generated an ongoing sequence of joint recordings with veteran artists. The initial JID run extended through 2021, after which a second cycle covered 2022 and 2023. In 2024 the duo revealed plans for a third cycle that would explore Ghanaian funk alongside Brazilian MPB, soul, and samba. That October they released the preview collection JID 021, followed in November by Adrian Younge Presents Linear Labs: São Paulo and then JID 022, spotlighting African guitar legend Ebo Taylor, in January 2025.

Raised in Los Angeles, Younge first engaged with sample-driven hip-hop production in his late teens during 1996. Over time his interest shifted toward the live playing and studio methods behind the original recordings, so he set aside beat construction on an MPC 2000 and TASCAM Portastudio in favor of teaching himself multiple instruments, composition, and production while steadily broadening his range. Early band work on bass and keyboards left him dissatisfied with dependence on others, prompting a move toward total artistic autonomy. In 2000 he issued his debut under the name Venice Dawn, an album shaped by Italian film scoring, particularly the work of Ennio Morricone, and by progressive rock; it appeared on CD in a limited run of 1,000 copies. He pursued further studies in music and entertainment law and was already instructing the latter subject when he began his next recording effort. Black Dynamite, directed by his friend Scott Sanders, debuted at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival to strong critical response, partly owing to Younge’s informed score, which Wax Poetics put out that October.

The acclaim surrounding Black Dynamite encouraged Younge to revive and enlarge the Venice Dawn idea into a full performing and recording ensemble. Released by Wax Poetics in November 2011, Something About April presented a nostalgic yet singular narrative of star-crossed lovers steeped in psychedelic soul, with longtime associate Loren Oden among the principal vocalists and Motown guitarist Dennis Coffey among the players. Although much of its content invited sampling, the project placed clear weight on songcraft and overall production. Around the same period Wax Poetics issued a digital-only EP drawn from five tracks of the 2000 album.

Younge kept sharpening his approach across a continuous string of solo and collaborative releases into the later 2010s. A listener connected him with William Hart, whose group the Delfonics had influenced the Something About April standout “Turn Down the Sound,” resulting in the third Wax Poetics album, Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics, issued in March 2013. Only a month afterward came the cinematic collaboration Adrian Younge Presents Twelve Reasons to Die with Ghostface Killah on RZA’s Soul Temple label. While producers traditionally draw samples from decades-old sources, several began mining Younge’s own recent output almost immediately. The Delfonics record had been out only three months when Prodigy’s Albert Einstein appeared carrying “The One,” an Alchemist production that credited Younge alongside the Delfonics track “To Be Your One.” Weeks later Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail included two Timbaland and J-Roc productions, most prominently “Picasso Baby,” constructed from material first heard on Something About April.

Over the following two years Younge founded the Linear Labs label and sustained a busy production schedule. Adrian Younge Presents There Is Only Now, a Souls of Mischief comeback issued on Linear Labs in August 2014, also marked the start of his partnership with album narrator Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who supplied remixes for the project. The compilation Linear Labs: Los Angeles followed in May 2015, mixing earlier Wax Poetics highlights with previews of upcoming material. Within the next two months two further albums carried Younge’s name: Bilal’s In Another Life on eOne and Ghostface Killah’s Twelve Reasons to Die II on Linear Labs. At the same time, two tracks from the deluxe edition of Common’s Nobody’s Smiling and all nine songs on PRhyme’s self-titled album drew on Younge compositions, adding No I.D. and DJ Premier to the roster of golden-age producers who had reworked his music. During this stretch he also received co-production credit, alongside RZA, for two tracks on Wu-Tang Clan’s A Better Tomorrow.

Younge devoted 2016 to another mix of personal and joint releases. Linear Labs issued the Venice Dawn follow-up Something About April II in January, featuring Raphael Saadiq and Laetitia Sadier, and The Electronique Void in October, an analog-synthesizer concept album narrated by longtime associate Jack Waterson. A Younge/Muhammad demo reached Kendrick Lamar, who used it as the basis for the sixth track on untitled unmastered. The pair also composed the score for Marvel’s Luke Cage. Activity slowed somewhat in 2017 as Younge and his wife moved The Artform Studio, which they had run for more than a decade, to a new Los Angeles site that included retail space for records and books open to the community.

Younge’s 2018 releases began in March with Voices of Gemma, a vehicle for vocalists Brooke deRosa and Rebecca Engelhardt whose sound recalled David Axelrod and the Rotary Connection. In June the self-titled album by the Midnight Hour, another Younge/Muhammad project, presented a polished version of the earlier Kendrick Lamar demo (“Questions”) along with lead vocals from several recurring Younge collaborators, while an original Luther Vandross vocal for “So Amazing” received fresh orchestral bossa-soul accompaniment. Soon afterward the score Younge and Muhammad created for the second season of Luke Cage appeared, anchored by their collaboration with Rakim on “King’s Paradise.”

In 2019 Younge helped Waterson complete a solo album issued as Adrian Younge Presents Jack Waterson and, with Muhammad, assembled Jazz Is Dead 001, drawn from sessions with admired jazz and MPB figures including Roy Ayers, Gary Bartz, João Donato, and Marcos Valle. The album surfaced in March 2020, the same month as the duo’s score for the film Run This Town, and served as an introduction to a sequence of individually focused LPs that began with Roy Ayers JID002 and Marcos Valle JID003. After two additional full-length productions by Younge—Angela Muñoz’s Introspection and Loren Oden’s My Heart, My Love—two more collaborative volumes, Azymuth JID004 and Doug Carn JID005, closed out 2020.

During Black History Month 2021 Younge released the solo album The American Negro as part of a larger multimedia undertaking that also encompassed the short film T.A.N. and the podcast Invisible Blackness, both addressing the impact of systemic racism on Black America. Younge performed every instrument and supplied spoken interludes, joined by several vocalists. Loren Oden led a track written from the viewpoint of James Mincey, Jr., a Los Angeles resident killed by police chokehold in 1982; Mincey was Oden’s uncle. That April, Younge and Muhammad returned with JID006 featuring saxophonist Gary Bartz. In June they issued JID007 in partnership with Brazilian musician João Donato. Later that year they fulfilled a longstanding goal by enlisting keyboardist and composer Brian Jackson, best known for his 1970s work with Gil Scott-Heron, on JID008, released in August.

After JID009 and JID010, which contained instrumental versions and remixes of selections from earlier volumes, Younge and Muhammad inaugurated “series two” of Jazz Is Dead in May 2022, introduced by the compilation Jazz Is Dead 011 and formally opened by JID012, which highlighted the voice and writing of Jean Carn. They altered course for JID013, recorded with the nine-piece ensemble Katalyst. By year’s end JID014 and JID015 had appeared, spotlighting West Coast bassist Henry Franklin and pianist/composer Garrett Saracho respectively. Reed player Wendell Harrison and trombonist Phil Ranelin, central figures in Detroit’s Tribe Records, joined Younge and Muhammad for JID016 to open 2023. That January release was followed in April by JID017 with keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith and in July by JID018, built from studio recordings made with Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen before his passing in 2020. In September 2023 Instrumentals JID019 arrived, offering the label founders’ buoyant take on the music that had shaped both them and the artists featured throughout the series. That December, Remixes JID020 concluded the second series.

After pursuing separate and shared projects between 2021 and 2023, Younge and Muhammad revised the Jazz Is Dead format to foreground musical explorations spanning Ghanaian funk and Brazilian MPB, soul, and samba. They released the preview anthology JID 021 in October 2024, gathering artists from the new series. Adrian Younge Presents Linear Labs: São Paulo followed in November, with Linear Labs serving as the label that preceded Jazz Is Dead. They then issued JID 022, paying tribute to African guitar legend Ebo Taylor, in January 2025.