Badbadnotgood, Kamasi Washington, Thundercat

I'm going to give you a somewhat leftfield recommendation here, because I'm not going to recommend you an album or a song, but a film and a book:

The film is "Jazz on a Summer's Day" which is a wonderfully expressionistic concert film of the 1958 newport jazz festival, which has lots of classic jazz musicians playing and even besides it being a fantastic film, it also really helps seeing the performers in action if you want to understand the music.

The book is "How to listen to Jazz" by Ted Gioa (which you can find on libgen but I can't seem to connect right now). The thing about Jazz is that it's a genuinely different type of music compared to all Rock/Pop that developed as a mostly independent tradition. As such if you want to get into it your previous listening experience isn't going to help you much and might actually get into your way.

some fusion suggestions:

T-SQUARE - PIOGGIA DI CAPRI

T SQUARE Crown and Roses Live in Tokyo 1995 (love the combo of an EWI and a brass band here)

Casiopea - Once in a Blue Moon

Casiopea - Sailing Alone

Casiopea - Twilight Solitude *Live 1985*

Dimension - Beat No. 5

something modern and weirder:

exigence mvmt 1 - [have you ever had a dream like this?] MxE live @ roulette

Theres a few kinds of jazz, which I don't know really know much about. I've never really taken a liking to euro jazz, but I know some people love it.

A couple of albums that I keep going back to from the 50s American jazz era are:

Modern Art by Art Pepper https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVG1KRr_9ktEye--z0sf8ChytezlgiTht&feature=shared

The Jazz Piano of John Coates Jr https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mWvsBp7kmz03sn67vzxKektbbhA1Z3Mfg&feature=shared

Also anything by Buddy Rich

Louis Armstrong.

hot five

You might not like it, but this is what Peak Jazz looks like

If you don’t know jazz the most accessible entry is probably swing era jazz, which was basically the pop music of the 30s but infinitely more interesting than modern pop music. Billy Hollidays early music (the stuff she did on Columbia Records) is very good.

Listen to Grant Green Alive!, and Donald Byrd’s Places and Spaces. Two fun albums not by the people already listed.

If you've got to ask, you'll never know