The sound

Black Voltron’s sound is built on hip-hop and jazz, with soul, gospel, and future soul woven through. Their players come from classical, gospel, jazz, and self-taught backgrounds, so the music moves between tight, composed arrangements and open, expressive playing. Spoken word is part of Black Voltron's shows, with messages of affirmation and inspiration. They celebrate gender-expansive people, people at multiple intersections, and weirdos who don’t fit in a single box. They draw inspiration from collectives like The Roots, The Internet, and Gorillaz, who treat genre as a starting point rather than a boundary. Video game and anime scores add the cinematic scale and emotional pull they want listeners to feel. The result is genreless but rooted. It’s grounded in Black American music, open to influence from around the diaspora, and accessible enough that you don’t need to be a hip-hop fan to connect with it.

• Alternative Hip-Hop
• Jazz
• Hip-hop
• Soul
• Experimental

Selected Releases

• 2026 — Motion "EP"
• 2025 — Black Voltron Live From Cleveland
• 2025 — Rest In Beats: A Tribute to J Dilla and Nujabes
• 2025 — Operation Doomsday: A Tribute to MF DOOM

The name

Black Voltron is a Voltron of Black music. Like the robot formed from separate lions, the band combines hip-hop, jazz, and music influenced by the Black diaspora around the world into one larger whole. The name is also a nod to the nerd side of the band: they play video game, anime, and other nerdy soundtracks, so it carries a second meaning: nerd culture seen through a Black, alternative lens.

The people

Black Voltron operates as a musical collective, a group collaboration behind a leader. Its members come from all corners of the city, representing different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives that contribute to the Black Voltron sound.

Main Players: Robin "Hyperius" Blake (founder, composer, arranger, alto/baritone sax, vocals), Elijah Khalil (vocals), Bobby Belairs (tenor sax), Vandarrel Woods (trumpet), Randall Hoyle (keys), Tyler Jasterbowski (guitar), Crystal Burks (drums), Morgan Fox (bass)

Rotating Members/Collaborators: Neo Kiio (vocals), Garrett Folger (trumpet), Max Schlenk (saxes), Joe Rangel (guitar), and others.

The founder

Once described as “a maestro in a flowing robe,” Robin “Hyperius” Blake is a Cleveland composer, arranger, producer, saxophonist, DJ, and curator who makes room for music that won’t stay in one box. A queer, neurodivergent Black Indigenous artist, Robin often found himself caught between communities, too Black in some spaces and too queer in others, so he built a community of his own. A 2025 Verge Fellow of the Cleveland Arts Prize, he is the founder and bandleader of Black Voltron, a collective that blends hip-hop, jazz, soul, funk, house, and anime and video game music into one live sound rooted in Black American tradition. Robin studied composition, music therapy, and saxophone performance at Cleveland State University before he built an independent degree in Black American music (based on ethnomusicology). His senior thesis argued that hip-hop is a continuation of jazz. It grew into a recital-lecture called “A Sound Experiment,” and the musicians who played it stayed together as Hyperius Blake & the Sound Experiment. “Hyperius,” is the self he steps into on stage, while Robin stays his own. In 2023, after years of balancing music with a career in tech, a life-changing health crisis led Robin to leave his job and begin intensive therapy. He started to question measuring his worth by what he could produce. Black Voltron grew out of that turn, as a way to make what he needed to make rather than what he thought others wanted to hear. That reckoning also shaped his spoken-word piece “Impression,” which says a person’s worth isn’t tied to productivity. Black Voltron has been named Best Hip-Hop Group at the Cleveland Music Awards and has played the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Bop Stop, Brite Winter, and Larchmere PorchFest. Black Voltron's live EP "Motion" captures what Robin says the band sounds like: “It sounds like Blackness. It sounds like queer joy. It sounds like beauty.” Beyond the stage, Robin founded Creation Festival, which started with no budget, turned a profit, and gave its proceeds to Cleveland organizations that share its values, as well as Renaissance Noire, an all-Black local concert series. He also curates through Cleveland Rocks PPF, XCSB, and the Cleveland Public Library People’s Playlist (2026).

Featured performance

Operation Doomsday @ Crobar, Cleveland OH, 2024

Awards & honors

Articles & interviews

Press resources (coming soon!)

Electronic Press Kit

Black Voltron EPK

[Biography, photos, music, performance links, and contact information.]

Download EPK (PDF) (coming soon!)