The Headnod Suite

Karriem Riggins is best known as a jazz drummer and hip-hop producer for artists like Common, Kanye West, The Roots, and Kaytranada.

Riggins spent much of 2016 at work on Common's much-heralded Black America Again album, which included a performance at the White House as part of NPR's "Tiny Desk" series. The son of late keyboardist Emmanuel Riggins, names of some of the jazz artists he's backed reads like the genre's hall of fame: Hank Jones, Oscar Peterson, Milt Jackson, Donald Byrd and Ron Carter.

For Headnod Suite, his second album on Stones Throw Records, Riggins expertly builds on his credentials with 29 tracks of pure hip-hop-each track deftly crafted with swing that only a drummer would know. Swing is the weapon. And there's always a message, be it verbal or instrumental.

"Headnod Suite is a concept of several rhythmic ideas fused together," Riggins says. "I wanted to explore the power of interludes and marrying different styles and harmony together."