| Yo, whats up this is Tre Hardson | 
| Also known to you all as Slim Kid Tre | 
| And the topic of today is uh | 
| The influence of jazz | 
| Now, jazz has come a long way | 
| Back in the days | 
| There was bebop | 
| And now its hip hop | 
| Jazz was revolutionary | 
| And hip hop is also revolutionary | 
| Unlike rap | 
| Rap’s not really getting the message across | 
| Like our forefathers | 
| Like the Gil Scott-Herons, you know | 
| They paved the way | 
| They set the pace | 
| They set the tone | 
| Like the Last Poets | 
| All of these are great people, great minds | 
| To do things to carry the torch of our ancestors | 
| To let us know what’s really, really going on around the world | 
| Hip hop has definitely carried that torch in a positive way | 
| Rap was a vehicle for stopping the violence | 
| Just as jazz was back in the days | 
| Back in the 60s, back in the 30s | 
| Quincy Jones, McCoy Tyrner, Grant Green | 
| Wes Montgomery, Elvin Jones, Miles Davis | 
| Eric Gale, Phil Sanders, Freddie Hubbbard | 
| Billy Higgins, Jimmy Smith, Wayne Shorter | 
| Ahmad Jamal, Thelonius Monk — all big influences | 
| For what it is that we do | 
| And what it is that we are | 
| As we take our stance in music | 
| Jazz was also like a secret conversation | 
| I mean, it was a universal language | 
| So no matter what culture you came from | 
| You would still hear the music | 
| And feel the story even if you didn’t know the words | 
| In hip hop | 
| We have to put our all into it | 
| So you can feel the energy coming across just the same as the saxophone player | 
| Who played with the same intensity and feeling | 
| And that’s what we’re all here for | 
| To feel that love and vibration in music | 
| To uplift the people, indeed | 
| To uplift the people, indeed | 
| So that is indeed an influence on me |