The Jazz Age is almost a century gone, yet a new generation of jazz virtuosos are proving that the genre is as relevant as ever.
DOMi & JD BECK's debut album, NOT TiGHT, is a rapid fire coalescence of keys and drums that is both studied and incredibly contemporary. At 22 and 19, respectively, Domitille Degalle (keys) and Beck (drums) are bringing a distinct Gen Z attitude and awareness into the world of jazz and its environs.
"We just do what we do and we have fun doing it," the band tells GRAMMY.com via email.
The two have been playing together since 2018. In that time, they've served as a backing band for Thundercat (with an occasional guest appearance from Ariana Grande) and have performed on sessions for celebrated instrument manufacturers like Nord and Zildjian. Now, Domi and Beck are the first signees to Anderson .Paak’s new label, APESHIT, an imprint of the paragon jazz outfit Blue Note.
Such endorsements demonstrate the duo's stylistic diversity — an uncanny ability to hop between J Dilla-esque grooves (Beck spent many years practicing Dilla beats) and bebop-velocity runs at unconventional meters like 7/8, even when vocalists like Mac Demarco and .Paak are singing.
Reaching this adept point took a journey for Domi and Beck, both individually and side-by-side. That journey began for both at a very young age.
Domi was born in Metz, France and by age five was studying music at Conservatoire Régional du Grand Nancy. She then went on to Conservatoire de Paris followed by Berklee College of Music in Boston where she graduated in 2020. Domi first began playing drums at the age 2 before switching to keys at 3 years old.
"I would love to be crazy on drums. But I guess I don’t need to anymore, since I have JD!" she tells GRAMMY.com.
Beck also started lessons around the age of five, enrolling in various music programs throughout his preteen years around his hometown of Dallas. By 10, Beck was playing with Cleon Edwards of Erykah Badu’s band, and Robert "Sput" Searight of Snarky Puppy was his mentor.
Around the same time, Searight discovered Domi via social media videos filmed by her peers at Berklee (some of which now have hundreds of thousands of views). In 2018, Searight invited her and Beck to play a jam session at the NAMM show in Anaheim.
The musical bond was there from the start, and soon after Domi joined Beck in Dallas to play Badu’s birthday followed by a few days of jamming. Of course, those jams were posted to Instagram, and with their sudden and massive increase in followers (one of which was Anderson .Paak) they became DOMi & JD Beck.
But grabbing and keeping the internet’s attention in the present era requires more than sheer talent. That’s where their short and sometimes vulgar meme-ready sense of humor comes in, and it touches everything from their social media to their website.
Each song from NOT TiGHT has its own post on Instagram with a visual animation from their whimsically colored photoshoot, and within each caption lives some dank-meme content. In the post for track 14, entitled "SNiFF," they share that the original title was "u can sniff my butt." The post for "TAKE A CHANCE" with .Paak only gets the caption "bunch of s—."
Domi and Beck’s website expands upon this jejune approach with a narrative that is equal parts confusing, intriguing and hilarious.
Apparently, Domi is a saxophone prodigy and the only living theoretical physicist. Beck is a sheep investigator who has devoted his life to smooth jazz, and together they hosted bodybuilding masterclasses on TikTok back in 2018.
It’s not difficult to discern the intentional inaccuracies among these statements, but every word is authentic to Domi and Beck’s uproarious give-and-take.
"Most music isn’t about music anymore. It’s just used as a tool for money and selling bulls—. Hopefully we can help change that," the band says. "It’s also fun reading all the social media debates arguing into which genre or style we should be categorized! It’s very entertaining."
If people are arguing about their music on social media, the internet generation is clearly on board. The album feeds those genre-debates with its wide-ranging aural palette.
Much of NOT TiGHT is pure instrumentalism, demonstrating the high-speed chemistry that Domi and Beck have shared for years. On "SPACE MOUNTAiN," it feels as if the two are trying to literally trade off sixteenth-note hits of drums and and keys. It's a classic call-and-response format, performed at the fastest and most micro level possible.
With .Paak and Blue Note on their team, Domi and Beck also enjoy collaborators such as jazz legend Herbie Hancock — a standout entry whose 60-year age difference is inconsequential on "MOON." Domi clearly doesn’t mind passing off some piano-time to Hancock, and the three maintain an uptempo barrage of rhythms and beats that will have jazz students and veterans transcribing for years to come.
The elevated status of their guest artists doesn’t prevent a musical equilibrium from taking form; the features evoke the feeling of a hang. "Just vibes" as people their age might say on social media.
Rather, Domi and Beck create space for the vocalists, using their experience serving as a rhythm section for Thundercat to implement restraint without sacrificing sophistication. While Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes harbor completely different styles of flow, they align on "PiLOT." The veterans take direction from Domi and Beck, providing their lyrical input to the duo’s sonic vision.
That dynamic shifts slightly when it’s .Paak’s turn to sing and rap. In those moments it feels more like .Paak is a member of the group as opposed to a featured artist, which makes sense given the hands-on approach he’s taken with Domi, Beck and NOT TiGHT.
.Paak directed the music video for "TAKE A CHANCE", which the three of them performed live together on "Jimmy Kimmel." .Paak also gave them songwriting credits on the roll-bounce funk tune "Skate" for his GRAMMY-winning project with Bruno Mars, Silk Sonic, the bones of which were an instrumental from Domi and Beck.
"He really believes in us, which is the coolest s— ever," Beck told Okayplayer in August of 2022.
Domi and Beck first met .Paak (whom they refer to as "Andy") in 2019 when they were playing a gig as a part of Thundercat’s band in New Orleans. The three of them remained connected and before long they were working together on NOT TiGHT.
Throughout the process working with .Paak, Domi and Beck never felt discouraged from being authentic in their music and personalities.
"We never dealt with pressure from Andy or the label," they say. "The only pressure we really dealt with was fans always commenting and messaging us, 'Release the album or I will come to your house and murder your family,' but that motivated us to work as much as possible and stay on track."
One hundred years after the Jazz Age the passion for this music remains. Death threats over social media may be Gen Z’s way of expressing it, but Domi and Beck know the best way to respond is to give even more authentic love to the music:
"We’ll always try to write the best song that we possibly can. If it’s going to be impossible to play live, well,s—; we’ll try."