With Drunk, Thundercat gets a little more real even as his music gets a bit more cerebral. True to the album’s name, the music is self-deprecating, anxious, spaced out, and hilarious — often during the same song.

“A Fan’s Mail” sees Thundercat dreaming about turning into a cat (and literally meowing about it). “Uh Uh” has some unreal bass lines that feel like the product of Nintendo and cosmic drugs. “Walk On By”, which features Kendrick Lamar, sounds like it belongs on To Pimp a Butterfly. But “Show You the Way”, the preceding track, is a soft rock track that features both Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins.

Despite their myriad of differences, these songs are united by their common love of jazz and jazzy experimentation. Make no mistake, even when he’s experimenting with synths and pop beats on album standout “Friend Zone”, Thundercat is channeling his favourite jazz icons.

All of this makes Thundercat’s latest record as hard to classify as always. But one thing is certain: Drunk is certainly more upbeat than Thundercat’s last record, The Beyond / Where Giants Roam. While They Beyond dealt with death and transcendence, and what happens in “the beyond” after our lives are over, Drunk seems to embrace our morbidity in life and celebrate it (with a healthy dose of partying and drinking). Hence the title.

In a lot of ways, Drunk feels like a reaction to 2016. The songs aren’t all politically charged, but there are many that deal with being black. Thundercat’s take on this is racially charged, of course, but also lyrically ironic (which isn’t surprising). But on the flip side of that, Thundercat’s leaving his wallet at the club and getting drunk and friend zoned as he tries to sort out the mess that is life.

It all feels like a poor way or dealing with stress — which maybe we can all relate to, at least a little bit.

In it all of its idiosyncrasies, Drunk feels like Thundercat being his most relatable — even if it is drowning in experimentation. It’s a can’t-miss record that celebrates life and runs away from it, often in the same breath.

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Robert Glasper’s reworking of some of these classic songs makes much of Miles Davis’s songs almost completely unrecognizable. Usually, that would demean the original artist’s intent, but in this case, it’s easy to let it slide. After all, Glasper (known for his work with Kendrick Lamar) isn’t trying to make another jazz record, but more trying to bring jazz music into mainstream light.

And in that end, Everything’s Beautiful is a monstrous success. Tracks like Ghetto Walkin’ and Violets feel like extremely modern takes on the jazz legend, allowing rappers to come in and break beats the way they’d break bread. It’s some of the best hip hop you’ll hear this year; at once familiar, but also meditative and willing to wander.

Tracks like I’m Leaving You and Right on Brotha (which features Stevie Wonder) are more likely to remind you of some of Miles Davis’s work, but they add a good deal of soul to the song. Occasionally, some of Davis’s trademark trumpet sneaks through, but the songs really use his music as a backbone more than they do recreate it.

That Davis’s music is so fundamental to modern jazz as to be the foundation for a record like this is astounding. The album is paying homage, yes, but it’s doing it by suggesting that without Davis jazz, hip hop, soul, and so much more wouldn’t exist. Robert Glasper is insidiously burying Davis’s work within this record to suggest its foundational requirements. I love that. To me, this is the purest way to honour the legend. It’s graceful, bold, and courageous.

Like everything Robert Glasper touches (and like everything Miles Davis ever touched), Everything’s Beautiful feels like it’s heralding a new era of jazz without leaving behind the groundwork. I wouldn’t describe Everything’s Beautiful as essential listening, but I don’t hesitate for a second in saying it should be celebrated by music lovers from all walks of life. Everything’s Beautiful is a triumph.

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It seems that the fame got to her, in the way that sudden fame can seem suddenly alienating and confusing for many musicians. Emily’s D+Evolution feels like a direct response to that success, as Spalding runs in the opposite direction of much of what she was known for and chooses to grow by pushing jazz into unexpected, prog-rock like directions.

Good Lava and Judas both feel positively polyrhythmic, with unpredictable and jazzy guitar riffs guiding pummelling alt-rock tracks from beginning to end, and Spalding’s voice somehow uniting all of these wild elements together. The two tracks are great summaries of what you can expect from the rest of the album: although Spalding’s gone electric, her musicians are still playing jazz. Wild drums, virtuoso guitar parts, driving bass lines that completely ignore the main riff while tying the whole track together, time signatures that are difficult to predict and harder to understand, all these things are key components to the jazz experience.

This is an authentic jazz record, but it’s done with rock music. And while plenty of people have played jazz rock before, this feels like a rare time when it’s a jazz band becoming interested in rock music — not the other way around.

At the centre of it all is Emily, a character that Spalding recently told NPR came to her in a dream. And while she claims Emily, which is also Spalding’s middle name, isn’t some sort of Slim Shady-style Id being worked out through her Ego, it seems sort of obvious that’s the case in a lot of ways.

fHaving naturally taken chamber jazz as far as it could go, moving into alt-rock territory could be perceived as an evolution or de-evolution by Spalding’s audience. As a character, Emily is a way for Spalding to avoid taking the brunt of the weight that comes with criticism, a way for her to use an alter ego to explore something new without allowing it to hurt the goodwill she’s built up as a jazz performer — much the same way that Slim Shady allowed Eminem to become completely, publicly outrageous without ever necessarily being perceived as a total lunatic or real menace to society (at least, not by his fans).

All that being said, Emily feels more attuned to social justice and hippy love than Esperanza is. It’s not that Emily allows her to explore lyrical insanities, so much as Emily allows her to experiment with the form without sacrificing her jazz roots. She’s taking the form electric the same way that Dylan took folk rock electric — and it’s incredible.

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