Jamila Woods drops a 13 track album entitled “Legacy! Legacy!.” Available for download and stream, is her first full-length project since 2016’s HEAVN. LEGACY! LEGACY! includes production from oddCouple, Peter Cottontale, and Slot-A. It features Saba, Nico Segal, Nitty Scott, and others. The tracks are named after influential figures like Eartha Kitt, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sun Ra, James Baldwin, and Octavia Butler, among others.
Continuing the theme from BLK Girl Soldier, a song on her 2016 debut album where she pays homage to freedom-fighting women such as Assata Shakur and Rosa Parks, each song on her new album Legacy! Legacy! is named after a black luminary, such as Zora Neale Hurston, Octavia Butler or Sun Ra.
Jamila Woods is a thoughtful soul. Not just in her music and poetry – with its emphasis on black ancestry and feminism – but in the way she acknowledges those that came before her, her native Chicago, and the young people there that she teaches. Part of a poetic and soulful local sound alongside Chance the Rapper and Noname (she’s worked with both). Her mission is to champion forgotten voices in black art by building on the legacies they left behind.
Woods is not just a poet, musician or youth worker but a beacon for self-empowerment in a city that gets a bad rep for violence.
One song is dedicated to Eartha Kitt. “I was inspired by the way she thinks about love and relationships,” she says, namechecking a viral video where Eartha Kitt scoffs at the idea of compromising for anyone. “My inspirations gave me permission to speak up; the aim with my teaching is that it gives the young people of Chicago the same opportunity.
Download, stream, listen and enjoy below.
Leave a Reply