Nate Smith | The drummer everyone else studies
Nate Smith has won three Drumeo awards across jazz and soul. His feel, his writing, the Kinfolk records, and his Ludwig and Zildjian rig explained.
Ask a group of professional drummers who their favourite drummer is and one name keeps coming up. It is very rarely the one the public would pick.
Nate Smith has won Drumeo’s Jazz award and its Soul/Funk award — twice — which tells you most of what you need to know. He is a genre problem: too funky for jazz, too harmonically literate for funk, and better than almost everyone at both.
Here is why the drumming community treats him as a category of one.
Who is Nate Smith?
Nate Smith is an American drummer, composer and bandleader from Chesapeake, Virginia.
He came up through the jazz education system and into the New York scene, and spent years as a sideman of the highest order — most visibly with saxophonist Dave Holland and in Holland’s various groups, plus Chris Potter, José James, Vulfpeck’s Fearless Flyers, Cory Wong and a very long list of others.
Then he started making his own records, and the picture changed.
Kinfolk
KINFOLK: Postcards from Everywhere (2017) is the album that moved him from “great sideman” to “artist”. It is modern jazz composition fused with R&B, hip-hop and pop, and it earned two Grammy nominations.
KINFOLK 2: See the Birds followed in 2021.
He has also released instructional and solo material, and his drum-focused releases circulate among drummers the way guitar records circulate among guitarists.
What Nate Smith actually does
His feel is the whole thing. There is a specific, identifiable Nate Smith lope — a slightly elastic placement of the backbeat against the hi-hat that makes everything he plays sound like it is leaning. It is not late, exactly. It is loose, and it is instantly recognisable.
He is a composer at the kit. His drum parts have shape: an idea, a development, a return. That is why his solo drum pieces work as music rather than as demonstrations.
He ghosts everywhere. Like Matt Garstka, the space between the notes is full of quiet snare activity — but where Garstka’s is linear and mechanical, Smith’s is conversational.
He can play very simply. The Cory Wong and Fearless Flyers material is mostly straight funk, and he plays it without a single unnecessary note.
He swings hard. Underneath the R&B and the hip-hop, this is a jazz drummer with a proper ride cymbal.
The awards
Jazz Drummer Of The Year in 2021, then Soul/Funk Drummer Of The Year in 2022 and again in 2025 — the 2025 citation naming his “touch, feel and rhythmic inventiveness”, which is exactly right.
Nate Smith’s drum kit
A warm, vintage-voiced setup rather than a modern bright one.
- Drums — Ludwig Legacy. Mahogany-poplar shells with a woody, dry, slightly old-fashioned voice. He is also the drummer who, with Lenny Kravitz, gifted a Legacy kit to Nandi Bushell.
- Snares. A Ludwig Supraphonic LM400 14”x5” — the most-recorded snare drum in history — and his own Ludwig “Waterbaby” signature, a 14”x5” seven-ply North American maple drum in a custom Blue Imperial finish.
- Cymbals — Zildjian. Dark and dry: 15” K hi-hats and a 22” K Constantinople Bounce ride are typical, and he will happily play a whole gig on one ride.
- Pedal — a DW 5000 single. No double kick anywhere.
- Sticks — Vic Firth Nate Smith signature. Slightly thinner than a 7A in the grip, longer, with a medium taper and a rounded barrel tip. That is a cymbal stick: it is built to pull sound out of a ride rather than to hit drums hard.
- Heads — Evans.
Every era, with buy links, is on Nate Smith’s Rig Vault page.
Want the sound without the rig?
Two purchases, both cheap, and one thing that costs nothing.
A Supraphonic. Used, if you like — they are everywhere, and it is the most versatile snare drum ever made. Our snare buying guide explains why.
A thinner stick. Going from a 5A to something closer to a 7A changes your relationship with the cymbals more than any cymbal purchase will. Our drumstick size guide covers the trade-off.
Then practise placing the backbeat late. Metronome on 2 and 4, and deliberately land just behind it. Do it until it feels like home rather than like a mistake. That is the Nate Smith lope, and there is no shortcut. The Gear Guru will do the shopping while you work on it.
Where to start listening
- “Bounce (Parts I & II)” (2017). The one that gets sent round.
- “Retold” (2017). Composition and drumming as the same activity.
- Dave Holland — Prism (2013). The sideman years at full stretch.
- The Fearless Flyers — anything. Him playing very simply, very well.
- “Square Wheel” (2021). KINFOLK 2, and the feel at its most exposed.
Final thoughts
Smith is the rare drummer whose influence spreads by feel rather than by lick. You cannot really transcribe what makes him special — you can transcribe the notes, and they will not sound like him.
That is also why he is a drummer’s drummer rather than a household name. What he is doing is subtle enough that a general audience hears “good groove” and a drummer hears an entire philosophy.
Three Drumeo awards in two different genres is about as good a summary as an awards list can manage.
See Nate Smith’s full rig in the Rig Vault, or read about Questlove — another drummer whose whole reputation is built on where the notes land.