Terrace Martin - PEACE (2026) Hi-Res

Solo piano meditations from the artist/producer and Kendrick collaborator. Terrace Martin’s been working at the intersection of jazz, hip-hop, and R&B since the mid-2000s, building one of those quietly enviable careers whose breadth captures the traditions and evolution of modern Black pop. Of all the writers and producers on Kendrick’s To Pimp a Butterfly (Martin worked on about half of it), Martin—a teenage saxophone prodigy who turned down CalArts to tour with Kirk Franklin’s gospel choir before moving on to produce LA rappers like Snoop Dogg and Kurupt—was the only one who also played the horn.

The mostly piano miniatures on PEACE—15 tracks in about 30 minutes—condense a big vocabulary into a pretty tight space: the tranquil Bill Evans-isms of “Wrong Path,” the playful dissonance of Paul Bley (“Dry Rain”), stuff that sounds like European classical music (“Beginnings and Ends”) and American boogie-woogie (“Psychic Ads”) and the ever-unclassifiable rainy-dayness of Erik Satie. He’s thinking aloud here, compellingly and fluently, not always knowing where he’s going, but always knowing where he is.