Album Review: Jamila Woods – Legacy! Legacy! (Jagjaguwar)

Following up on her acclaimed 2016 debut album, Heavn, Chicago-based singer, poet, teacher and activist Jamila Woods pays tribute to her personal heroes on Legacy! Legacy!

It’s a tough tightrope to walk…enlightening and educating your audience without coming across as preachy or sanctimonious, but it’s a tightrope that Jamila Woods crosses with ease on this, her second album.

The inspiration for this album, 13 tracks with names such as Miles, Basquiat, Sun Ra and Muddy, came from a poetry class Jamila was teaching at Young Chicago Authors. And while it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who Miles or Sun Ra may be about, other tracks such as Zora, Sonia or Giovanni may call for a bit of research on the part of the listener.

And chances are you will want to know more about these people after hearing the songs and the performances that Jamila Woods and her co-producers have attached to them.

Take album opener Betty, for instance. The Betty in question is Betty Davis the 70s funk artist briefly married to Miles Davis, and who turned the ground-breaking trumpet player on to Hendrix and Sly.

Woods’ lyrics sounding stream of consciousness here, address what Betty went through, but also what many contemporary women experience:

What is it with you independent men? It’s always something
Threatening your masculine energy, you think it’s fleeting
Nothing you ain’t give to me I can take away from you now
Let me be, I’m trying to fly, you insist on clipping my wings

Meanwhile, musically, the sound is a unique blend of r&b, hip-hop and jazz that never fits neatly into one genre…sounding like no one else.

After hearing this, you’ll want to check out Betty Davis’ own recordings…and you won’t be disappointed.  (I can recommend 1975’s Nasty Girl)

Woods’ co=producers include Oddcouple, Peter Cottontale and Slot-A, all of whom add their own musical stamp without interfering with Jamila’s overall vision.

There are a few guests, showing up to rap or sing a verse or two including Saba, Nico Segal and Nitty Scott.

Nitty Scott offers up a rap during Sonia, a song about poet Sonia Sanchez that ruminates on slavery and female empowerment.  Meanwhile Saba turns up for a co-write and a frenetic rap on Basquiat.

The tracks named after other musicians…Miles, Muddy, Sun Ra…never sound like Jamila is trying to ape the artist…there are no blues riffs in Muddy, no jazz trumpet in Miles…instead Woods pays tribute to these musical titans with her own version of how their music has infused itself into contemporary pop, r&b and hip hop.

It seems pointless to attempt to describe what it is exactly that Jamila Woods has accomplished here, other to say, please listen to Legacy! Legacy! As a whole, then send yourself off on your own exploration of these iconic authors, poets and musicians.

Marty Duda