The group combines jazz musicianship with a hip hop production perspective and are well known for their collaborations with artists like Tyler, The Creator, Daniel Caesar, Mick Jenkins, Kendrick Lamar, Ghostface Killah, Charlotte Day Wilson, and MF DOOM.
[7] After they released the track on YouTube as The Odd Future Sessions Part 1, it got the attention of rapper Tyler, The Creator, who felt differently and helped the trio's video go viral.
[9] BadBadNotGood uploaded their first EP BBNG to Bandcamp in June 2011, which included covers of songs from A Tribe Called Quest, Waka Flocka Flame and several tracks from Odd Future.
Dante Alighieri on Sputnikmusic called the album "a welcome reinterpretation of modern jazz without the pretense of snotty wine parties and thick rimmed hipster dinosaurs.
[1] In the following year, they also connected with other Odd Future members like Earl Sweatshirt and Frank Ocean and their contemporaries Joey Badass and Danny Brown, among others.
"[19] The album has original material as well as covers of songs by Kanye West, My Bloody Valentine, James Blake, Earl Sweatshirt, and Feist.
[23] The third single, "Can't Leave The Night", was released on March 11, 2014, with the B-Side "Sustain" and would later feature in the third season opening episode of Better Call Saul.
[26] Leland Whitty joined the band unofficially at this time, with BBNG needing a fourth musician to play tracks from Sour Soul on the road, and continued to work with the group in the studio.
[27] In December 2015, the band posted covers of some holiday classics on their YouTube channel, including a performance of "Christmas Time Is Here" in collaboration with Choir!
[28] Additionally, they produced "Hoarse" on Odd Future member Earl Sweatshirt's studio debut, Doris, and "GUV'NOR", a remix on JJ Doom's Key to the Kuffs (Butter Edition).
It features several guest collaborations including Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring, saxophonist Colin Stetson, Kaytranada, hip hop artist Mick Jenkins, and singer-songwriter Charlotte Day Wilson.
[30] In the following two years, the group would release a series of unreleased tracks from their IV sessions as singles, namely collaborative songs with Colin Stetson, Sam Herring, and Little Dragon.
[38] In 2018, the band served as the musical opener and instrumental backdrop to the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2019 Collection runway show held in the gardens of the Palais Royal.
[39] The band worked with Benji B and Virgil Abloh, both frequent collaborators with Kanye, to refine the creative direction of the music of the show.
[40] During and following the production of IV, the members of BBNG took time to develop other musical projects together and bringing other artists into their Toronto studio to produce and record.
This included artists like Kali Uchis and Mick Jenkins, as well as fellow Torontonians like Charlotte Day Wilson, Jaunt, and Jonah Yano.
In a February 2020 interview with Sowinski and Whitty regarding their collaborative film score for the indie thriller Disappearance at Clifton Hill, the two noted that BBNG was currently working on a new album, tentatively due later in 2020.
[49] In June 2021, their track "Time Moves Slow" featuring Samuel T. Herring received renewed attention when it was sampled in "Running Away" by musician VANO 3000 in his viral Adult Swim trend on TikTok.
To support the album ahead of the release, the band announced a limited zine series Memory Catalogue distributed via independent record stores and published sheet music for the lead single "Signal from the Noise" on their website.
[55] On September 8, 2021, the band released "Beside April" as a second album single and announced touring dates in three legs: Canada in December 2021, the United States in March 2022, and Europe in Fall 2022.
We’re not the top musicians of the genre, so we don’t try to assume ourselves as prolific innovators because jazz has this history of boundary-pushing limitless constant progression, eight hours a day of practice.
Put simply: BBNG is jazz if people think they are.”[83] BBNG has cited a wide range of influences, including Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai, Miles Davis, saxophonists John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, Sam Rivers, drummers Tony Williams and Art Blakey, Sun Ra, producer J Dilla, Kurt Cobain, and Wu-Tang Clan.
[84] Early on, in 2012, a Prefix magazine review called BadBadNotGood "a jazz trio on paper -- but often strange, forever imaginative, and ultimately revolutionary hip-hop and electronic beatmakers at heart.
"[17] In describing BadBadNotGood's hip hop influences, the Huffington Post wrote that the group "deconstruct the four bar loops, understanding how to work crescendos by stretching out and reshaping the music into their own vision of silky smooth key progressions, pounding drums, and tasty bass lines.
The band was quick to walk back some of their comments and have been increasingly complimentary of their jazz contemporaries; in the following years, sentiments on both sides have relaxed and reversed.