"I'm not really preaching to the musicians and the other artists," Martin says. "I do music for the person that's nine months late on their rent [and] ain't got no job but got two kids." Samantha J Photography hide caption

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Samantha J Photography

We've had the legend of Robert Johnson wrong this whole time. The deal he made at the crossroads wasn't with some mythical devil at all. The truth is he sold his songs — i.e. his soul — to a predatory music industry. A devil that would outlive him by four score and eight years. A hellhound that would generate billions off the blues he suffered and sold for decimals on the dollar.

None of that had truly occurred to me until my Zoom call ended with producer and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin, the cat who hatched a 21st-century jazz revival, spearheaded by he and his West Coast Get Down superfriends, before injecting it pure-and-uncut into rap's main artery.…