Love Jones still hurts. The best soundtrack of the 90s is a musical kaleidoscope that connects post-modern jazz man mountain Duke Ellington to R&B go go gals Xscape, neo-bop disciples Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra to neo-soul saviour Lauryn Hill. The centrepiece of the set though is Marcus Miller's 'Rush Over', a sanctified, sultry duet with Me'shell N'degeocello. Placed between Cassandra Wilson's 'You Move Me' and Brand New Heavies' 'I Like It, Rush Over' stands as a flavasome bridge between jazz and R&B.

It's an awesome piece of music, a minor key confessional whose theme sizzles with soulful urgency. Compositional prowess aside, 'Rush Over' is a key piece of music in the evolution of Marcus Miller, bassist/keyboardist/bass clarinettist and producer. It is a summary of several chapters of his rich personal artistic story that is done so artfully you hear myriad voices within a single coherent narrative. In the song's sensuality you hear Luther Vandross - the iconic soul man of the eighties with whom Marcus worked on Caister anthems such as 'Never Too Much'.

In the moody synthscapes you hear the sharp production that defined David Sanborn, a platinum-plated fusioneer of the same decade with whom Miller formed a vital partnership.

In the sly, sinister bass clarinet fills you hear faint echoes of Miles Davis' Tutu, the finest of three albums that Miller wrote, performed and produced for the dark prince during what was arguably his last bout of greatness.

This distillation of voices and vibes was brought into sharper relief on Tales, the 1997 album whence 'Rush Over' came. In its heady brew of ill improvisation and soul medicine, the album is practically a blueprint for Love Jones.

Alongside other Miller originals, Tales has covers of the Lewis Allan penned/Billie Holiday defined 'Strange Fruit', the Stevie Wonder invoked/Albert Ayler blessed 'Visions' and the Beatles constructed/George Benson deconstructed 'Come Together'. Right in the middle of all this, there's a take on 'Brazilian Rhyme' by Earth,Wind &Fire, the electric eclectics who beguilingly brought together most of the aforementioned references. They are Marcus' favourite group.

Miller's new set M2 takes him further along the road to sin city or into greater depths of musical freemasonry, depending on where your spirit lies. The album features originals such as 'Boomerang', a superb sequel to 'Rush Over', alongside new takes on John Coltrane's 'Lonnie's Lament', Charles Mingus' 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' and Billy Cobham's 'Red Baron'. Talking Heads' 'Burning Down The House' sneaks in there too.

While I might question the wisdom of the last choice, there's no doubt that Miller has both the literal talent as a musician and the lateral mindendess as a producer to tie all those disparate threads together. The sheer range of the guests on M2 - Chakha Khan to Raphael Saddiq via Miles old boys Wayne Shorter, Kenny Garrett, Mino Cinelu and Branford Marsalis - tells you where his mind's at.

Interestingly enough, at her last London gig, Miller's homegirl Me'Shell N'degeocello unveiled a repertoire that could have been his. In between funky originals like 'If That Was Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)' and 'Deuteronomy (Niggerman)' she quoted Trane's 'A Love Supreme'. It was almost a prophetic nod to M2.

Miller contends that the apparent distance between different areas of black music can be bridged. He's done so virtually all his career and in his world an artist such as Rafael Saddiq, whose recent collaborators Dawn Robinson and Ali Shaheed Muhammad are modern figureheads of R&B and hip hop, does belong next to a master jazz musician like John Coltrane.

'You can take the fire and improvisation of jazz and combine it with the communal dance side of R&B and really make something new,' says Miller on the line from his home in Los Angeles. 'It's happened before. It can happen again.

'The thing that bothers me about jazz is that, as a listener, you're really passive. You kind of have to sit there and let the artist bestow their shit on you. R&B is more African. Everybody has to get involved. Everybody has to know the words. Everybody has to know the beats.

'People get together to communally enjoy that. I like to take elements from both of those musics and combine them because when jazz and R&B get together, unbelievable things happen. It's all black music.'

But genre segregation, is a defining feature of modern music marketing, and more worryingly, radio?

'True and within jazz itself there are divisions. The way I see it the jazz "art school" is still surviving but the soul jazz school, the R&B and improv thing I'm feeling, that kind of took a hit."

Miller is perfectly placed to make that comment, having come up through both the arthouse and the people's parades over the years. In fact the New Yorker who started on b flat clarinet at the age of10 before taking up electric bass three years later, grew up in a household where his piano playing father identified jazz soloists from the front room radio.

Miller's debut on record was Lenny White's 1976 Big City. That might have marked him out as a prospective fusioneer but he went on to become one of the few electric bassists to play with the grand masters of acoustic improvisation. Like Stanley Clarke, he took his skills into the recording studio with McCoy Tyner (Double Trios). Then, in between extensive work on the New York incidental music and jingle scene, he made his CV enviably eclectic.

In contrast to work with post-bop heavyweight Sonny Rollins, there was lighter fusion fare with Dave Grusin and Tom Browne. In parallel to sessions with original soul diva Roberta Flack there was a stint with Miles Davis with whom he recorded We Want Miles and The Man With The Horn in the early 80s.

Miller subsequently shuttled between jazz, R&B, and pop in the same way that E,W&F linked arms with anybody from Ramsey Lewis to The Emotions to The Beatles. His credits were significant. There were soul giants Luther Vandross and Aretha Franklin and big time fusioneers such as Grover Washington jnr, David Sanborn and Bob James. As the 80s wore on, the latter edged suspiciously towards smooth jazz terrain and featured an increased use of drum programmes and synth sequencing against which Miller pitted his sharp, metallic Larry Graham-tinged bass. Coming from gigs with McCoy and Rollins, working with Grover, Sanborn and James must have been a strange experience?

'It was all part of my development,' he reasons. 'Looking back on it, my style has really come from a desire to be heard and playing with all those machines, having to compete with synths that were very bright and sharp, that helped.

'I was always trying to figure out a way to distinguish myself from other players. When I was doing a lot of TV commercials I'd tell my mom and she'd say "I can't hear the bass on the Coke ad". So I started doing the commercials with my thumb getting a tone that would come through the TV speakers so mom could hear me!'

As a vital part of the late 70s/early 80s session scene Marcus Miller saw drum and bass programmes render the likes of proto rap label Sugarhill record's house band - the brilliant Skip McDonald, Keith Leblanc and Doug Wimbish - redundant. But he still saw the creative potential in machines.

'I don't ever blame bad music on the tools. Put a drum machine in Prince's hands and you got something else. You can't blame synthesisers and overdubbing for a lack of soul in music. Listen to Songs In The Key Of Life . Stevie overdubbed that whole record and that thing is just bad.'

Miller embraced the science of the studio alongside the art of the instrument and in many ways his role as a producer is a defining feature of his artistic evolution. Like its predecessor Tales, his new album M2 is as much a produced as a played album.

It is a work in which the wide sweep of influences and collaborators is given coherence by the quality of the arrangements.

While the record's eclecticism impresses, it is the production values that stand out; they are more what you'd expect from an R&B or hip hop record. More sharp than smooth.

But then again Miller's desire to master rather than smash the machine just contributes to more reconciliation among the divorced substrata of black music.

It's that same embrace of both programming and playing that allows neo-soul sugarmeister D'Angelo to connect with young gun improvisers Roy Hargrove and Charlie Hunter.

Ditto diva in waiting Vinia Mojica bridging the gap between hip hop holy man Mos Def and M-base uberlord Steve Coleman via Andy Milne. And Erykah Badu and a A Tribe Called Quest meeting a virtual Miles Davis through a real Ron Carter.

This is where Marcus Miller is coming from. He has a twin identity; a producer conversant with current technology and a virtuoso musician who defies expectations associated with his instrument. Fact is that Miller is a rare beast; a virtuoso electric bassist who understands swing.

'They know that I came from an era where you could drive a band on electric bass. Now I go to a club to sit in and the cat looks at my electric bass bag and says "oh man, you don't play upright?"

'I say "no I don't" and he's like "well it's gonna be kind of tough". Then he asks me my name. So I say "I'm Marcus Miller" and he says "Oh, c'mon man, c'mon up here"!' In the 80s, Marcus Miller meant diffrent things to different record buyers only because he was everywhere at once. Studio by day for album sessions, jingles or TV ads. Clubs by night for chops maintenance. A typical day for the New York session man in the early 80s went like this; a 9 o'clock session for a Coca Cola jingle. A twleve o'clock session with Paul Simon. Then an afternoon session with Bob James. Or Miles Davis. Decisions. Decisions.

'I said "Bob, I can't do it. I'm with Miles." So he said "what studio you working at?" So I said "Columbia." So he says "great, that's where I am. What floor you on?" "I'm on the second floor" He said "I'm on the fourth, so whenever you get a break from Miles session just run up the stairs, plug in and overdub". That's how crazy and fun that period was.

'There was another time I did a session for Aretha Franklin in the morning then went to the airport to catch my gig with Miles in Boston. I showed up about five minutes before the downbeat and he was a little upset with me. He just looked at me and said "you gotta tell me when you're gonna take another gig".'

As the decade wore on things changed. The major thing that happened to Marcus Miller was Luther Vandross. 'Never Too Much' made the singer a megastar and the bassist one of the most in demand musicians in New York.

Work with Aretha Franklin on Jump To It and Get It Right only made Miller's stock rise further. But his proximity to R&B inevitably took him away from jazz and that showed on his disappointing 1983 debut Suddenly and the 1984 sequel Marcus Miller, where the bassist's breakdancer-meets-Michael Jackson styling on the cover didn't bode well.

'I kind of short changed myself,' he reflects. 'I really didn't have a strong musical identity and maybe needed to wait a little longer. I was heavily influenced by Luther and that R&B thing so my album reflected that.

'I needed to hold off a little because I wasn't really sure really who I was. When I started again I had a much clearer sense of who I was and started to include a lot more jazz elements from my past.'

Miller would eventually change labels leaving American major Warner to sign with French independent Dreyfus and in many ways that change has come to symbolise a renewed creativity. But before he could realise that goal he needed to negotiate changes in the New York session scene.

As the machines came in, the jingle scene dried up and sessions became less band-oriented, he felt the need to experiment. In the mid-80s he became part of the Jamaica Boys, a trio formed with funk-fusion-jazz subterfuges Bernard Wright and Lenny White.

'I think we were different,' Miller reflects. 'We used live drums while everybody else was on programmes. We mixed genres. It was a transition. We started to incorporate a little more jazz and non-confessional R&B elements. A lot of things that I did in the late 80s grew out of the Jamaica boys.'

The most significant of which was Miles Davis' Tutu, one of the defining records of the decade, that Miller largely wrote and produced. This is the work that brought the bassist back into the frame as a smart sonic alchemist, the man who gave Miles access to an alien world of digi-funk and synth pop sensibilities that would serve his own extra-terrestrial creativity.

Musically Jamaica Boys and Tutu are at times very close, propelled by the same mechanical pulse that plugged dub into pop/R&B and electronica. And sociologically there are parallels. Where Jamaica Boys cut 'South Africa' as a protest against the country's brutal segregation, Miles dedicated his work to Bishop Desmond Tutu, the fearless anti-apartheid campaigner.

Those references also struck an eerie chord with racial politics prevalent in the US in the mid-80s. Spike Lee, on whose School Daze soundtrack Miller appeared and Public Enemy had brought the plight of young African-Americans in Reagan-ite times to a media boiling point while Prince, a musician Miles admired and Michael Jackson, a singer Miles covered, injected confusing craziness into cultural iconography.

Aids and crack were ravaging the inner cities. Record numbers of young black males were languishing in prison while hip hop expletives triggered moral panic. Roberta Flack's Trying Times was the sample pushed deep into the rap generation's subconscious. 'It was tough being a black man then but it was an interesting time,' recalls Miller. 'So much was happening. Hip hop was really starting to dominate with Public Enemy, there was a lot of anger. My thing was to create some beauty as a distraction. South Africa was heavy. Miles was so angered by it. There was a state of emergency. I think we all felt it at times.'

Tutu was done quickly. Veteran producer Tommy Lipuma, having worked chart topping magic with George Benson, figured Miller, the man who'd been a major factor in David Sanborn's success, would be perfect for a Davis restoration job. He asked the bassist for material for Miles. Miller duly wrote and flew to Los Angeles soon after.

'We recorded the same day I played the stuff for Tommy!' he chuckles incredulously. 'He wanted it to sound just like it did on the demo. So I overdubbed the parts the same way I did when I demo'd.'

So you originally conceived Tutu as a skeleton that would be fleshed out by a full band, a sketch for further orchestration?

'Right, but the thing is that I'd been doing all these records with Sanborn where we used overdubs so extensively that it was a very natural way for me to make music. The demo sounded pretty good and so different from Miles' shit up to that point that Tommy kind of dug it.

'The harmonies and layers were directly influenced by Herbie Hancock but I came to find that Herbie was very influenced by Gil Evans.' That link became more explicit on the film soundtrack Siesta.

'Yeah, by the time I did that I'd heard the Gil Evans references. I went straight to the source. The movie people had temporarily laid in Sketches Of Spain. My task was to come up with a contemporary version. The only thing I did was try to change the palette.' Tutu, Amandla and Siesta are many things. The juxtaposition of Miles' brooding trumpet and electronic soundscapes created an energy as wry and mysterious as the dark prince's increasingly gaunt features. These are works of reason and resistance, warmth and coldness, compassion and aloofness. They have an epochal sound.

'That's the 80s,' responds Miller spontaneously. 'The good part of the 80s. We were just starting to learn how to interface with these machines. There was a struggle both in the States and in Africa. Things were changing.When I hear Tutu now of course there are things that I would change but it is very clearly a product of that time.

'The bad part of the 80s was not just about music. At the beginning of the 80s everybody was sharing. White folks were talking like black folks. Black folks were talking like white folks. Everybody was in the middle. The 60s hadn't worn off we were still under the illusion that things were getting better Then things started to polarise again.

'The jazz guys ran back to the real far end of jazz. They're all wearing suits and doing the jazz of the sixties. And I don't just blame Wynton Marsalis. The thing is a lot of people followed him because they were getting uncomfortable with not being able to define things.

'There were a few blacks who were into Wynton but it was primarily a white thing. Black folks, we went to R&B all the way hard, right through to hip hop. You went to a club to see Wynton and it was mostly like white and Japanese people.

'Musically everybody ran to the edges. R&B got really hard and primal. Hip hop took over, then classicist jazz took over, then all of a sudden people weren't interacting anymore. And that was always my thing. You know E,W&F and Herbie. I grew up loving that music and I refused to let that go.'

So Miller bided his time and eventually made the transition to the eclectic solo artist that his rich cross-section of experiences made inevitable. In the 15 odd years that have elapsed since those crucial collaborations with Miles Davis, Marcus Miller has continued along the road to complete artist; producer, programmer, soundtrack composer, electric bassist and bass clarinettist.

Pioneering sociologist/cultural critic Paul Gilroy wrote in The Wire in 1989: 'The 80s belongs above all to Marcus Miller whose conspicuous skill as a player, writer, producer and thinker mark him out as its central and dominant musical figure. Mr Miller has shown an unflagging and apparently intuitive capacity to do the right thing.' The Spike-ian parting shot only reinforces Miller's status as an essential black cultural voix d'epoque.

Yet in many ways he has been at times a victim of his own talents - R&B, jazz, funk, electronics, what to play? Who to be? The conflict to which he was subject in the early part of his career - which environment to evolve in without being too influenced (i.e. the Luther period) has now been greatly resolved by the fact that Miller can just as easily produce himself as somebody else. He's more inclined to be Marcus Miller as opposed to Marcus in Miles mode. Or Luther mode. Or Sanborn mode.

But of course plain ole Marcus is a contradiction in terms. He still remains a figure of beguiling agility; a man who understood how Miles' choice of a corny tune like Scritti Politti's 'Perfect Way' extended the jazz-popular song continuum that reached back to 'If I Were A Bell'.

A man who applied Miles' sense of space and drama to a soul setting with arguably as much coherence as Michael Henderson, the bassist who preceded him in Davis' band, and Mtume, the percussionist whose use of synths and programmes helped usher in 80s pop-R&B.

Marcus Miller is the musician whom Kenny Garrett calls when he wants groove as well as swing and whom Zawinul and Shorter might well enlist if Weather Report were to ever reform. And in an era when slapped bass is predominantly unfashionable, Marcus Miller is wearing his style very well. Then again the electric bass is not all the eclectic brotherman is about.