Robert Glasper with Bilal
The Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre
2600 Atwater St.
Detroit
August 12, 2026
Summertime in Detroit just isn’t complete without at least one outing to the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre.
Located right on the riverfront, the venue offers a welcome reprieve from the muggy Michigan heat with a cool, rejuvenating breeze blowing off the water. You’ll even typically spot boaters floating behind the stage, enjoying a free show from the best, unofficial seats in the house.
It’s primarily known for its jazz and hip-hop concerts, and on Wednesday evening Detroiters got both rolled into one with a performance from Robert Glasper as part of its summer-long Jazzy Nights series. The Los Angeles-based pianist is acclaimed in both worlds, earning Grammys for his 2012 fusion album Black Radio and his musical contributions to Kendrick Lamar’s career-defining To Pimp a Butterfly, released in 2015.
An artist like Glasper makes for a quintessential summertime show at the Aretha, even if the choice to book a comedian as the opening act, local comic J Will, was a bit of an odd one. Maybe his jokes about “females” didn’t really land, or maybe it’s just hard for laughter to carry in an open amphitheatre. It also didn’t even matter that the DJ had to restart his computer mid-set due to technical difficulties. It’s hard to really ruin the vibe at the Aretha, especially when you’re enjoying the venue’s signature drink — a slushy blue tequila-based cocktail served in a plastic pouch.
Glasper took to the stage before long as part of a quartet that included Burniss Travis on bass, Justin Tyson on drums, and DJ Jahi Sundance on the ones and twos. The show took a little while to really get going, with Glasper lazily noodling on the keys and Travis sitting on an amplifier, but soon the quartet was locked into tight, head-nodding grooves. Tyson delighted with an extended, polyrhythmic drum solo.
The concert was billed as featuring special guest Bilal, the mononymous singer from Philadelphia, who joined Glasper mid-set. The long-time collaborators took a moment to reflect upon their first meeting in 1999, both as freshmen at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City, where they met onstage during roll call.
“And we never left the stage,” Glasper said.
The two said they immediately formed a friendship based around music, and were encouraged to record a demo together. That led to Bilal landing a record deal working with none other than J Dilla — the Detroit producer whose woozy, jazz-inflected beats led him to become one of the hottest names in hip-hop and R&B, collaborating with acts like Erykah Badu, the Roots, Common, and others before dying of complications from a rare blood disease at age 32 in 2006.
Onstage at the Aretha, Bilal reminisced how Dilla’s legend loomed large; he compared traveling to Detroit with Glasper to meet Dilla as like pulling back the curtain to “meet the Wizard of Oz.”
“Nobody knew what J Dilla looked like,” Bilal said. “We was all in college like, ‘Yo, it’s this cat, he makes beats outta nothin’ ... he drops a mic on the floor and makes it a hi-hat! He kicks a fuckin’ wall and makes it a goddamn kick drum! He’s a genius. Nobody knows who he is.’”
According to the duo, their weeks with Dilla in Detroit were split between daytime recording sessions and nighttime drives in his Range Rover. To test and share their new music, Dilla would pass CDs to DJs at local strip clubs.
“Detroit has incredible strip clubs,” Glasper noted.
The group was then joined by a super special guest: the current incarnation of Dilla’s former hip-hop group Slum Village, now a duo made up of sole original member T3 and longtime collaborator Young RJ. Once Glasper began plucking out the piano riff from the group’s “The Look of Love,” a track beloved by Detroit hip-hop heads, swaths of the audience got up out of their seats to dance. As the song dissolved into an extended groove, the group was joined by rapper and Slum Village collaborator Black Milk, completing its tribute to Dilla.
Detroit, there are only a few shows left at the Aretha this season. (And if you have a boat, we should become friends.)
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