Karriem Riggins

Karriem Riggins moves fluidly across jazz and hip-hop realms, yet the deep ties between those styles make it more accurate to view him as a versatile multi-instrumentalist who also produces. Though drumming remains his core pursuit, he performs on additional instruments and delivers rhymes too. Raised in Detroit, he began studying music young and, by seventeen, was already handling the drum chair for Betty Carter. Prior to turning twenty, he made a short-term move to New York, where steady session work, live dates, and production opportunities soon followed. In the second half of the 1990s he appeared on dates alongside Mulgrew Miller, Rodney Whitaker, Ray Brown, and Roy Hargrove. At the same time he forged an enduring partnership with Common that began on the 1997 release One Day It'll All Make Sense. Through the 2000s he maintained jazz affiliations while joining forces with fellow Detroit natives Slum Village and J Dilla, plus the Roots, Consequence, and Erykah Badu. Among his notable contributions was finishing the posthumous J Dilla project The Shining.

After supplying drums for Paul McCartney’s Kisses on the Bottom in 2012, Riggins issued his own material for the first time. The paired projects Alone and Together—abstract, sample-driven beat collages reminiscent of J Dilla’s Donuts—appeared on vinyl and as digital files, then were issued together under the title Alone Together on compact disc. In the ensuing years he earned credits on sessions by Theo Croker, Diana Krall, Kanye West, Esperanza Spalding, and Norah Jones, among others. He also sustained his close association with Common, producing every track on the rapper’s Black America Again. Remaining connected to Stones Throw, Riggins issued Headnod Suite in 2017.