His 1998 Blue Note debut, Nu Blaxploitation, is a funk and hip-hop inspired and "genre-bending" musical meditation with his band Existential Dred, with poet Sadiq Bey and rap icon Biz Markie in performances reminiscent of the spoken-word pieces of Gil Scott-Heron, Amiri Baraka and Henry Rollins; Romance With The Unseen (1999), features a quartet consisting of guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Jack DeJohnette playing a wide-ranging repertory, from obscure Ellington ("A Mural from Two Perspectives") to popular Beatles ("I’ll Follow the Sun") to Byron originals loaded with socio-political commentary ("Bernhard Goetz, James Ramseur and Me," a reference to the notorious 1984 New York City subway shooting). With 2000’s A Fine Line: Arias & Lieder Byron continued to blur stylistic borders by exploring and expanding the definition of the modern art song from Robert Schumann and Giacomo Puccini to Roy Orbison and Stevie Wonder. His most recent album, You Are #6, (2001), once again finds Byron in the company of his longest-standing group, Music for Six Musicians, paying tribute to the Latin and Afro-Caribbean rhythms at his musical roots.