Jamila Woods
LEGACY! LEGACY!
Album · R&B/Soul · 2019
There’s nothing all that subtle about Jamila Woods naming each of these all-caps tracks after a notable person of colour. Still, that’s the point with LEGACY! LEGACY!—homage as overt as it is original. True to her own revolutionary spirit, the Chicago native takes this influential baker’s dozen of songs and masterfully transmutes their power for her purposes, delivering an engrossingly personal and deftly poetic follow-up to her formidable 2016 breakthrough HEAVN. She draws on African American icons like Miles Davis and Eartha Kitt as she coos and commands through each namesake cut, sparking flames for the bluesy rap groove of “MUDDY” and giving flowers to a legend on the electro-laced funk of “OCTAVIA”.