Jamila Woods reduce her enamel on the Chicago poetry circuit – she printed her first assortment in 2012 and later helped manage Louder Than a Bomb, an annual youth poetry competition. A couple of years later, Woods determined to set her poetry to music. Her debut album, HEAVN, launched in 2016 to widespread essential acclaim, established the now 34-year-old as an instantaneous and important new voice within the overlapping worlds of neo-soul and R&B. Woods’ 2019 follow-up Legacy! Legacy! additional cemented her as a power, effortlessly merging heady concepts with creative melody.
Woods’ first two albums explored massive subjects – womanhood, household lineage, slavery, and the realities of being Black in America. Water Made Us, Woods’ third, and finest, album,tackles an much more grand and common expertise: relationships. However she does so with a fine-tooth comb, crafting songs bursting with intimate particulars on a diorama-sized scale that loosely hint the connection lifecycle: the boundless starting, the comfy center, the abrupt finish, and, crucially, the reflective aftermath.
Woods begins this journey with “Bugs,” the place she wrestles with an internal voice imploring her to place up a “moat” slightly than let a brand new suitor into her world. Swiss producer Alissia Beneviste conjures chords that sound like butterflies within the abdomen. Woods is exact in detailing the self-protective “bugs” that may snuff a brand new spark earlier than it’s lit – “You bought a lotta hair”; “Chew too loud, discuss an excessive amount of.”
These granular particulars are Woods’ strongest trait as a author and elevate materials that in any other case may really feel cliche. Woods is deft at producing pictures and metaphors that floor lofty ideas and concepts – budding love is a tiny backyard, emotional misconnection is a thermostat, jealousy is a low flame. Much more than in her previous work, Woods appears straight into the water’s reflective floor, coaching the lens straight upon herself, shedding any pretense.
Water Made Us excels when Woods channels her poetic flare into heat neo-soul tracks that wouldn’t really feel misplaced in a 1998 Soulquarians session. The primary single “Tiny Backyard” is a sprightly ode to the persistence required to are inclined to a younger love that has but to seek out its toes: “It’s not gonna be an enormous manufacturing/It’s not butterflies or fireworks/Mentioned it’s gonna be a tiny backyard/However I’ll feed it each day.”
Co-producer Chris McClenney – who government produced the whole album – wraps Woods’ hopeful lyrics in instrumentation heat sufficient to thaw her “iceberg coronary heart.” McClenney and others, together with longtime collaborator Peter CottonTale, maintain the vibe gentle and bouncy, even on tracks that contact upon the heavier facets of a relationship.
“Backburner,” a tune about previous loves, jealousy, and remorse, begins with a muted acoustic guitar earlier than upping the tempo with Afrobeat thrives, regardless of the uncooked lyrics: “My jealousy is teachin’ me the empty cups that want filling.” Equally, McClenny and firm (NAO co-produces right here) flip “Boomerang” – the place Woods doubts the viability of a relationship – into an effervescent dance ditty.
Water Made Us sees Woods letting go and recognizing the boundaries of management and the advantages of give up. That is evident within the making of the album itself – Woods collaborated with extra producers and co-writers than on previous initiatives. Throughout these 17 tracks (4 of that are spoken interludes), Woods finds peace amid the ebbs and flows of a relationship by taking off the stress and dodging expectations.
“Follow,” a transparent album spotlight, repurposes the famed Allen Iverson quoteinto an earworm about having fun with every relationship for what it’s, slightly than solely looking for “the one.” Woods refuses to attract clear, definitive conclusions on “Wolfsheep,” a folksy dirge with the deceptively profound chorus, “Everyone’s good/Nobody is.”
By the tip of the album, Woods emerges with readability: relationships do not need a transparent starting and finish; they aren’t morality tales with a protagonist and antagonist. Relationships are messy, unpredictable, and irrevocably make us who we’re, for higher or worse. Higher buckle up and let the water take you.
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