We’re in a new era for Brasstracks—a now “amorphous, artist hivemind.” With a series of EPs and a major label debut album in Golden Ticket, under their belt, Brasstracks as a project has all the industry know-how to go the distance. After parting ways with their label in 2020, returning to indie status, founder Ivan Jackson sounds renewed and ready to take on the Brasstracks project with a fresh insight into what makes him happy.
The Brasstracks rap sheet runs for miles. The group scored two GRAMMY wins for their production work on Chance The Rapper’s seminal “No Problems” in 2017—one for Best Rap Performance, and another for Best Rap Album. They’ve also since been nominated for their work with Harry Styles during the 2021 GRAMMYs for Best Pop Vocal Album, ultimately taking home the Best Pop Solo Performance award for their work on Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar,” which itself is critically acclaimed across the board and on the charts since it’s 2019 release.
The group has appeared on Saturday Night Live as well, performing alongside Miley Cyrus and Mark Ronson, the latter of whom is a frequent collaborator. Other collaborators include Anderson .Paak, Mac Miller, Khalid, and K-pop sensation BTS. In 2020, they made their TV debut on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, performing “Basket Case” and “Golden Ticket” from their debut album. “Golden Ticket” went on to be synced as the song of the NBA finals in 2020.
As a GRAMMY-winner, Jackson remains down-to-earth and excited about the prospect of making music with his friends—and getting even deeper into boxing. Over the years, Brasstracks has evolved from a hip-hop-jazz-big-band-duo to an ever-morphing landscape where Jackson sets the framework. Collaborators are free to come and go so long as they leave the project better than they found it through working together with Jackson on some of the strangest, most compelling music of his career to-date.
The new Brasstracks era sees Jackson as an architect for this larger project of incubating artists and allowing them the space to grow, and eventually, move on from Brasstracks entirely. This is a stark development for the group founded out of a pure love for “making cool shit,” as Jackson explains it. It’s not a revolving door—it’s a home in constant state of incredible renovation.
“At the end of the day, I’m still building the framework,” Jackson concludes. “People can come and go and that’s gonna be okay. Everybody else is their own artist, too! The house changes, the landscape changes. When my trombone player leaves, somebody else will step in, and it’ll be a different band. The one constant will be me putting out shit with my friends. That’s the one thing I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of.”
