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On June 3, 2022, drummer, vocalist, composer Bryan Carter will release I Believe — a semi-autobiographical coming out and coming of age LP. I Believe showcases Carter’s immense musical talents: the multi-hyphenate drummer-singer-songwriter delivers an all-encompassing, powerhouse performance across a series of originals and carefully chosen revivals.

Featuring a kaleidoscopic tracklist — “Black American music through the lens of a jazz musician,” as Carter describes it — I Believe takes listeners on a journey of love and self-acceptance, with a who’s who of jazz’s finest young players providing the score. From the fantasy-like opening “You and I,” to the bluesy, world weary closer “I Believe,” Carter and company set out to “create a tapestry,” in his words, with their wide palette of sounds. “I don’t see stories like this in jazz being told,” says Carter, “so I think it’s really, really important that we nail it and tell it the right way.”

In everything Carter does on I Believe, there is a grandness of scale, and of vision, that is impossible to miss. He is telling a story that is as personal as can be. And he is writing music that, in its diversity of grooves and feel, and in the breadth of its instrumentation, is astounding. I Believe practically doubles as Carter’s artistic autobiography: one that illustrates the wide-ranging love of music he has carried throughout his entire life.

“I grew up in a really unique situation where my dad was a jazz musician,” says Carter. “But at three years old, I started playing violin. I was going to see the St. Louis Symphony and the Chicago Symphony. People would ask my mom, ‘how do you get your son to sit through this?’ And my mom would be like, ‘he wants to, he wants to go see the symphony.’ I was in church six days a week, so I loved Gospel music. And I have older brothers, so TLC and Boyz II Men and whatever was on pop R&B radio at that time, that was also in my household. And I loved jazz. I loved Miles Davis. I had posters of Art Blakey on my wall — my hero, you know? And so I had all these different influences and all these different things that I loved. Genre wasn’t introduced to me. I didn’t see any differentiation in the music. It was all just music. And that was something that was introduced to me later: oh, that’s jazz. That’s classical. If you like this you can’t like that. I didn’t understand the difference between Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner and Ella Fitzgerald and Renee Fleming. It was all just good music.”

Carter has put absolutely all of this into I Believe. “The goal was to make an album that takes you on a sonic journey from start to finish,” he says, understating the sheer size of the journey he’s crafted. The groove of “Not Yet” gives way to the haunting strings of “Jeremy’s Lullaby.” The happy-go-lucky swing of “Crazy ‘Bout My Baby” transitions to the eight-minute long epic “Bye Bye Love,” whose shifts in form mirror “all the ups and downs of a relationship.” It’s music on a scale few can execute, let alone imagine, and Carter does both.

At the heart of all this, of course, is I Believe’s deeply personal narrative. “It’s about coming to terms and finding peace with who you are,” Carter says. “And after you’ve accepted the inevitability of ‘this is who I am,’ finding solace in who you are, and finding comfort in identity.” Nor does he shy away from the challenges of his story — one that, in his own experience, does not fit easily into a conventional structure.  

“It’s a coming out story, it’s a coming of age story,” Carter explains. “It’s along the same lines as mine. But mine is a lot more messy, and it’s hard to weave into a narrative. Those coming out videos on YouTube ten years ago, they were really helpful for me. When you actually speak to those people, you just realize that this shit is not that organized. ‘I realize I wanted to come out, then I came out, then everything was better.’ That’s a nice thing to say, but that’s not how this stuff works. The honest to God truth is when you come out, you come out every day. Every time you meet someone new, it’s like you have to come out again. That’s what coming out really is.”

On the second half of I Believe, Carter moves his narrative into new territory, exploring the first steps of living and loving as an openly gay man, and the challenges that come with it. “’There’s more to love, I know, than making love,’” Carter says, reciting his lyrics. “It’s more than just the hookup. How do I have a normal socialized relationship with this person? How do I learn to hold their hand at dinner in the park? Can I kiss them in the park? Is that okay? Is someone going to say something?”

I Believe shows listeners what to expect when you press play on a Bryan Carter record: dazzling showmanship, breathtaking musicality, and fearlessness in storytelling. Live audiences in New York and elsewhere have long known and enjoyed this in his performances. I Believe puts it down for all to hear.