The Genius of DOMI & JD Beck, Explained by Music Experts

The quintessentially Gen Z jazzheads DOMi & JD Beck came of age in the age of the internet, recording their jams to viral fame. In 2022, DOMi (22, keys) and JD Beck (19, drums) became the first signees to four-time Grammy winner Anderson .Paak’s label, APESHIT, an imprint of the legendary Blue Note Records to release their first album NOT TiGHT.

You may know the duo from their performance of “Them Changes” with Thundercat and Ariana Grande or their Madvillainy tribute or even from the Dallas jazz scene, which saw JD come up as young as a 10 year old. A few years later, he met French keyboardist Domi Louna online, later pairing up when she visited Dallas.

The duo took virtuosic jazz act was recognized at the 65th Grammys last week, with two nominations, including Best New Artist. NOT TiGHT debuted in July 2022, boasting a range of features from Herbie Hancock and Kurt Rosenwinkel to Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes. A Pitchfork review for NOT TiGHT underscores the technical grandeur of the album.

“For jazz heads and trained musicians, there’s a treasure trove of inventive drum and keyboard patterns and time signature mayhem to unpack,” the critic writes.

The genius of DOMi & JD Beck did not come out of nowhere — though it feels as if they’re cyborgs planted on Earth with superhuman musical talent to make jazz cool and thereby recruit a younger generation. The two have been training, performing and climbing through the music scene since their elementary school years.

And their story begins, in large part, within the Dallas jazz landscape as little JD’s parents dropped him off for Wednesday night jams at The Prophet Bar, long before DOMi flew in from Berklee to play with him.

As they began to earn some notoriety online,. Paak found the musicians and took them under his wing.

The album was recorded in Los Angeles and Dallas. Their recording space in Dallas was a small room with a laptop, a small 49-key MIDI keyboard and a drum kit. The genre-bending NOT TiGHT diverges from their past work into its own, singular opus. The entire album is a canvas for stylistic and structural musical discussion, but we are just going to focus on what jazz experts and critics have to say about some of our favorite songs.

The album’s second track, “WHATUP” sets the tone for the rest of the ride. DOMi’s boppish harmonic melodies explores scales to their end, displaying an extreme proficiency at fast tempos. This is not the jazz to which your grandparents slow-danced. “WHATUP” also introduces the dry style the duo will maintain throughout the album, especially with JD Beck on the drums.

Notably, they avoided any reverb on the album. In an interview with MusicRadar, Beck elaborates, “We don’t want the instruments to sound produced, like something it couldn’t sound like live. We wanted to write stuff that we couldn’t play live, but we never wanted it to sound like stuff we couldn’t play live.”

“BOWLiNG, the fourth track on the album, features the duo’s longtime collaborator, Thundercat, with vocals from the bassist and DOMi. The two stick to a lighter, falsetto sound throughout the song. Thundercat dances down the low end lines on bass as well, supporting the work of DOMi’s left hand on keys. All the while, Beck pushes the piece forward with a relaxed breakbeat on drums.

Brandon Miller writes for PopMatters, “What’s unique about his drumming is how precise he is without being precise. The drum hits lag either in front of the beat or behind the beat, emulating the button-pressing of a 1990s hip-hop drum machine.”

The song concludes with one of the only stretches of improvisation on the album, switching meters as Beck takes the lead on the outro.

Two songs later, the duo introduces “TWO SHRiMPS,” a fast-paced tune with simple hooks featuring Mac DeMarco on vocals. Besides this simplicity, however, the rest of the song is anything but. “TWO SHRiMPS” opens in the asymmetric 9/4 meter — as opposed to a friendly 4/4 common time or 6/8 waltz — and continues changing time from there.

The tension between the complex meters and the release of the simple melodic hooks is what DOMi and JD Beck are all about.

Throughout the album, the duo takes advantage of this pleasing dynamic. Grammy Award-winning Dallas jazz artist Shaun Martin, who has seen JD Beck play drums for about 10 years now, says “They make it a point for it to make no musical sense whatsoever and, in that effort to not make sense, it makes sense.”

With DOMi and JD Beck, there is always a surprise to keep you listening.

He goes beyond the idea of the classic jazz swing, with certain elements of hip-hop in his feeling of time. You can hear the innovations of [late producer] J Dilla.” – UNT associate professor Federico Llach

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On the 12 track, “PiLOT,” listeners are greeted by Anderson PAAK, then Snoop Dogg, then Busta Rhymes. This all-star posse cut is an exemplar to the duo’s close proximity to hip-hop in their technique.

“PiLOT,” unlike “TWO SHRiMPS,” is more about what is going on vocally. Speaking with Sequential, DOMi said, “I don’t care if I write a tune with 34 chords then another one with four chords. Complexity doesn’t mean inaccessible or hard, because chords are colors to me and I want to hear more music with character, emotions, and colors in them.”

DOMi repeats a core group of chords to the end of this song unlike other moments in the album where we see her right hand sore through virtuosic melodies. JD Beck adjusts to the style on drums as well.

University of North Texas’ commercial music associate professor Federico Llach notes JD Beck’s flexible drumming style.

“Every drummer has their own personality. He goes beyond the idea of the classic jazz swing, with certain elements of hip-hop in his feeling of time. You can hear the innovations of [late producer] J Dilla.”

The duo’s talent rests on their ability to absorb musical possibilities as if they were on a potential chess board, and execute them by infusing with their own style and personality.

Even though the duo did not take home the Grammy earlier this month, another jazz artist did. The stunning jazz of Samara Joy sounds wholly different from the hypnotic jazz of DOMi & JD Beck.

Both of their nominations speak to where the state of jazz is today — honoring its founders, pushing into new musical realms, and finding its place in the contemporary musical landscape. Wherever jazz goes, it’s safe to predict that DOMi and JD Beck will be two of the people taking it there. Samara Joy’s win, according to Dallas-based jazz vocalist Ashleigh Smith, is still a huge win for all jazz artists.

“Either of them winning is a huge step forward for the genre because it proves both [styles] are OK to exist in the realm of jazz,” Smith says. “In fact, it is welcomed, and what the genre is about.”