If the name The Midnight Hour isn’t immediately familiar, the music almost certainly is. Ali Shaheed Muhammad is a founding member of A Tribe Called Quest, one of the most beloved groups in hip hop history. Adrian Younge is the Los Angeles-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer who has shaped the sound of some of the most critically admired records of the past two decades. Together, they have been architects of the sound that serious listeners point to when they try to describe what great music feels like.
The music they had been making together had a life of its own. By 2018 it had become The Midnight Hour: their self-titled debut, recorded to tape with a live rhythm section and a full orchestra, and released to widespread acclaim.
Tag Archive: Ali Shaheed Muhammad
The first 2026 release from Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s Jazz Is Dead label is a collaboration with legendary Brazilian singing/songwriting duo Antonio Carlos & Jocafi. The pair — both from Salvador, Bahia — have been working together since the late 1960s and have not only recorded their own hits but delivered them for dozens of other artists as well. This is the pair’s first new recording since the 1990s. Muhammad and Younge were in Brazil in 2022 when they were introduced to Antonio Carlos & Jocafi by Baiana System’s Beto Barreto. The men hit it off and made tentative plans to record together. In 2025 Antonio Carlos & Jocafi came to play the Jazz Is Dead club. Younge and Muhammad set them up in their studio with a hip band, and a backing…
Jazz Is Dead continues its journey of honoring musical legends with Dom Salvador JID024, an album that revisits and revitalizes the pioneering spirit of one of Brazil’s most influential musicians. Dom Salvador, the trailblazer who fused samba with jazz, funk, and soul in the late ’60s and early ’70s, is the cornerstone of a movement that shaped the sound of Black Brazilian music.
…Salvador’s influence on Brazilian music is immeasurable. As the architect behind the groundbreaking album Som, Sangue e Raça (1971) and the leader of the pioneering group Abolição, he carved out a space for Black consciousness in Brazil’s music scene, fusing American jazz and funk with Afro-Brazilian rhythms. His work set the stage for the emergence of bands…