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Oct 25, 2023 Web Exclusive By Kyle Mullin Photography by Elizabeth De La Piedra

Jamila Woods blinded herself while readying her new album, Water Made Us, for release. Specifically, the Chicago neo-soul singer and poet worked with Birdee, known for ethereal underwater photography, to shoot album artwork that would reflect the album’s title, lyrical motifs, and overall themes about the ebb and flow, tumultuous currents, and ocean depth of love.

Woods, who had only just learned to swim so she’d be ready for the shoot, found herself relishing in the relinquishing of control in order to embrace the water’s unpredictable flow. But once she surfaced, any fear of drowning was usurped by her sudden inability to see.

“I was freaking out, like: ‘Oh my God, did I lose my vision on the shoot?’ But she was she was telling me ‘No, it’ll come back.’ And I was like, no, no, no, you don’t get it,” Woods tells Under the Radar about being buoyed beyond that panic, then diving into a new revelation. She went on to reassure us her vision “did come back.”

As it turns out, the rigidity and wariness that hinders swimming is similar to the insecurities that impede love, inspiration, personal growth, and more. Below, Woods tells us more about being awash in such hard won wisdom, working with her uniquely supportive clique of Chicago artists, the studio ingenuity that deepened her new album’s most moving moments, and how featuring her uncle’s adorably earnest confession on an interlude amounted to a lesson her listeners (and their romantic partners) are sure to benefit from.

Kyle Mullin (Under the Radar): What was it like to work with Birdee on the photo shoot?

Jamila Woods: With her, it’s not only about the picture, it’s about the process of being comfortable in the water and being comfortable in your body. I was like: “I love that.” I’d heard her speak on a podcast about how working underwater requires you to relinquish control. We can prepare, but it might not go how you planned. So I just DM’ed her on Instagram to ask if she’d use that process for my album art. The swimming lessons, and getting into the mindset to do this, was really cool.

But it’s pretty scary, as an adult, to learn how to swim, right? Compared to a child, who can relinquish control more easily.

Yes, very tough. There were lots of moments that day where I was like: “Oh my gosh!” My clothing would be floating away. And my eyes—I wanted to open them under the water, because that makes for a better picture. But after two hours of that, when I got out of the water, I couldn’t see anything. And I was freaking out, like: “Oh my God, did I lose my vision on the shoot?” She was telling me: “No, it’ll come back.” And I was like: “No, no, no, you don’t get it.” But it did come back.

Do you see parallels between all that and the lyrical content on your new album. I certainly do!

Yeah, I definitely. I can’t remember which year it was, maybe 2022 or 2021, but I would pick a “word of the year,” then dive into its meaning, and infuse my life with a bit more of that word. When I chose “surrender,” I realized there was so much choice involved in that word. “Surrender” can seem like a really passive thing, like “giving up” or something. But instead, like you were saying about swimming, it takes so much unlearning and releasing of things you think you’re “supposed to do.”

So, in a way, that shoot mirrored the whole process of the album. Because I’ve released two other albums. You might assume it’s going to be easier. But, as the saying goes: you know how to write that last album, and you have yet to learn how to write this next one. So a lot of it was just accepting that I’m always going to be a little bit of a beginner every time I start a new project. And just embracing that.

If artists don’t embrace that, I guess they’re just repeating themselves.

Staying in what’s comfortable? Yeah, you could keep making that album, especially if it’s very popular and successful. I have admiration for artists who find a way to enjoy that. I think that’s great because if they’re making something people love, that’s amazing. I’d feel stagnant, though. The process will always feel a little different, new, and uncomfortable for me. This project taught me a lot about that.

What are some of those specific differences?

Usually, I pick an executive producer to partner with early on, and pretty much only work with that person. On this album, I worked with a bunch of different people. I just wanted to really feel free. Like I was exploring. So whenever they would ask me “What does your album sound like?” I’d tell them: “I don’t want to really tell you anything. I just like this sound right now. Let’s do this today, and be really free.” Then I brought all that material to [co-producer] Chris McClenney, and once I got in the studio with him, I was really explicit about what I wanted to do next with him. As a Libra, and a kind of introvert, managing this larger group of collaborators than I’m used to was a growth process for me.

Another difference that will be obvious for listeners: you’re singing from your point of view on Water Made Us, as opposed to LEGACY! LEGACY! which was a concept album where every song centered on an African American icon.

Yeah, when I made LEGACY!... I always thought: “I can make a LEGACY part two. Because this is so easy.” I could have picked more famous Black people’s names, and kept writing from there. But I learned something important from shedding that frame of writing through the lens of other people. Instead, I could see what it’s like for myself to be that primary source material, for the music to be like my journal, or something I’m just thinking about.

When you mentioned all your new collaborators on this album, it made me think of “Wolfsheep” and whoever was playing that heart-wrenching acoustic guitar.

Yeah! That was McClenney. This was after we’d had a collection of songs I’d made with other people, and we were trying to fill in the gaps of the album’s story. A relationship arc, or cycle through a relationship. I had listened to this interview with Liz Phair, a songwriter from Chicago. She would go into sessions with producers and be like: “I’m a little out of my comfort zone here. So when I try to talk this producer language with you, I want you to do something that’s out of your comfort zone. If you usually play piano, play guitar. Switch it up. Then we can be on the same level.”

I told McClenney about that, and he thought it was so cool. So he and I would agree: “For today, let’s just do guitar. Or let’s just start this way, or that.” I think “Wolfsheep” is really special because of that, because it really holds the lyrics in a different way. It kind of sounds like folk music. My mom loves acoustic guitar music. I grew up listening to a lot of it. And in this case, it really emphasizes the story in the lyrics. And it’s about something really intimate. So I’m happy that made it on there.

If going out of your comfort zone also results in songs as unique as “Wreckage Room,” then it’s certainly worth trying! How did you attain the strange vocal effect on that song?

That one was with my longtime collaborator and friend Peter CottonTale in Chicago. I wanted to write this dirge. I’d made this list of songs that I wanted to write, like one that “sounds like the space below crying.” Or “like a dirge for a relationship.” I brought that prompt into the session, and played this Björk song called “Unravel,” that I think is a perfect song. And Peter liked the idea. He had just bought this tape recorder and was like: “I’ve been playing with this, recording vocals through it.” We tried that, and it had this really haunting, muffled quality. It made the song sound like it’s coming from below the water.

Then I decided to end that effect part way through, to open the song up. So yeah, that came from Peter’s idea to play with the tape recorder. He’s always playing with different gadgets, but this one really fit the tone of what I was trying to convey.

So you’ve got the underwater sound on that song, the underwater photo shoot, your lyrics about someone diving into your protective moat on the opening track “Bugs,” the line about having an “iceberg heart” before asking your lover to “look below” and see beyond that tip on “Tiny Garden.” Water is a huge motif on this album!

Definitely. Just organically, I use a lot of water imagery. Like many artists, I struggle to decide the titles of some of my albums. A good trick for many musicians is to go through the songs you’ve made, and try to find a title in the lyrics. I was doing that, and when I got to the lyric “The good news is: water made us,” I was like, “Oh, I like this! This is kind of it.”

There’s also flood imagery on “Send a Dove.” Like when your emotions overflow, and how that can spill out onto someone. Then asking for there to be a boat, or a dove to kind of rescue us from that. There’s the watering on “Tiny Garden.” There’s just water everywhere.

Then I started promoting the album and hosting listening sessions. And we partnered with this organization called Earth Sessions because they like working with artists to get people in the room to talk about environmental activism and climate justice. I told them I didn’t set out to write an album about that. But it makes so much sense. And now, the universe is like, “Here. This is what you need to be focusing on right now.”

That was a convoluted answer! But yeah, water is a really potent image. And I like the Toni Morrison quote about artists holding memories that feel like they’re made of water. That was a big point of inspiration for me.

Speaking of inspiration: on the song “Bugs” you have a spoken portion with some of the most powerful imagery on the album, like the moat lines that so many people are praising, or the lyrics about “love being the warmest weather.” What inspired you to speak those lines, instead of sing them?

It was always a goal of mine to have poetry on this album. Because I’m a poet also. Although my lyrics are always very poetic, I knew it would be really cool to actually have this straight up poem on the album. Then I remembered how, in poetry, there’s this method where you write to a visual art piece. Like, I have another poem about a Frida Kahlo painting. That made me wonder: what if I did that with my own song? So I just went and wrote a poem inspired by bugs. Then I did it again with [Water Made Us midway track] “I Miss All My Exes.” I’m glad I figured that out, because it helps the poems fit really well with the songs. At least I hope they come across that way. It’s really fun to use the tools of mixing, engineering, and vocal production on a poem versus on singing.

Then McClenney and I started nerding out. We thought of putting a filter on my voice for “I Miss All My Exes,” so that it’s like my younger self at first. And then on certain lines I’d sound a little bit older, as if it’s later on in the relationship. I played it for friends later, and they didn’t pick up on that. But they noticed something about the difference in the texture of the voices. I love getting really nerdy on things like that. Especially with a poem. When you’re putting words on the paper, you’re playing with the line breaks, and being really specific about how the white space looks. Recording “I Miss All My Exes” felt the same, except sonically. Which is really cool.

It’s great that you were able to fuse your poetic and musical sides on this album. You’ve long been known as a poet in Chicago. I’m curious about that creative community, and your relationships with artists there like Peter CottonTale and Saba.

I’m so grateful for those relationships. Peter, Saba, and others like Nico Segal. I really grew up with Nico and Peter—we’ve been making music together since I was in my band, before I even went solo. There’s a beautiful safety that I feel working with them. And an ease in how we create. Working with them is like meeting an old friend, and even though you haven’t spoken for awhile, you can get right back into it with them.

I appreciate the way I’ve learned to create in Chicago. But sometimes it makes me feel a little bit like an alien when I go to other places. There’s a sense of generosity and reciprocity that comes really naturally in Chicago. Because we build relationships and trust with each other. And there’s not this, like, industry hovering, making people ask, “Who wrote what? What splits are you gonna get?” I appreciate having that perspective, and I hope I bring that to whoever I’m working with. It’s just a sense of respecting their craft and creating a space where we can both feel free to create without thinking too much.

I didn’t come up in a more industry intensive environment. So it can be jarring entering that. But I also respect that it is important to know. Especially the way things are set up. It’s important as an artist to protect yourself, and be aware of what situations are good for you to be in. But it’s also nice to set that aside, so that your spirit can play.

One of my favorite Chicago artists on the album is Saba. That song, “Practice,” has a catchy, borderline pop element that sounds new and exciting for you, while still retaining your famed idiosyncrasy. What was it like to make that song?

Sometimes when I try to explain things, it gets really convoluted. Which maybe makes my idiosyncratic side come through! But for this particular song, I remembered loving this Allen Iverson video where he talks about practices in the NBA.

Oh wow. I remember laughing at that when it first went viral.

But it’s not just funny! I’ve seen this artist break his rant down. I was like, “This is deep.” I’m not into basketball. But she was doing an artist talk at a college, and she analyzed the way he used repetition. Even his tone when he says “practice.” That made me think about the difference between a practice and a game, and the different emphasis we put on each.

It also reminded me of this Esther Hicks recording, where she was talking about dating. And the way that, you know, we often put too much pressure on a relationship to be everything or to last forever. I’ve done that. When, really, dating can just be like collecting data about what you like or don’t like. Or just practicing being liked, practicing the feeling of that. Practicing what makes you feel that way, and what doesn’t. So I combined those two ideas, while also wanting to make a song that felt really light and fun. Because we needed something that sounded that way at that point in the album.

I had multiple versions, but they weren’t banging hard enough yet. And then when we got Saba on there, it all came together.

How do you feel about the result?

McClenney has worked with a lot of big artists. He thought it was a bit weird to begin my single with lyrics about tomatoes and marigolds. [Laughs] And I was like, “Yeah, it’s random. But I love it, you know?” Eventually he was like, “No, you’re right. We gotta keep that.” It was like a meeting of our minds—he’s got this great pop sensibility, and I’ve got this really poetic, weird way of connecting ideas.

And when I listened to Saba’s vocals, I thought to myself, “Is this Saba?” He sounds so different, at least than on the work we’ve done together, and I think some of his work too. He’s so versatile. It was a really cool collaboration in that way, because we’re all doing what we do. But also pushing it in a different way, because of how we’re responding to each other.

Some of the most interesting contributions to this album aren’t musical. Can you tell us more about the interludes?

Yes, I feel it was so important to include the voices of my friends, quotes from Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, and an interview with my great uncle. These kind of feel like pieces of wisdom, or ways that I’ve built my world view when it comes to relationships. And I like thinking about how the album is not only about romantic love, but also all of the relationships you’ve witnessed that taught you how to love.

What was it like to include your great uncle on the project?

I had recorded it on my phone, but lost it. When I was making the album, I really wished I could include this conversation, ‘cause it was so interesting. He’s the one who I’m actually related to. And his wife was standing there during the conversation, while he admitted to being a scoundrel, and how she saved him. Just like, wow.

The fact that they’ve been together for 50 years and counting, and this is how the story started— there was something inspiring about that. Although I have questions about that too! [Laughs] You know, when I wrote “Wolfsheep,” it was so much about being hurt by a “scoundrel” like my uncle. But then I tried to break down that binary. Because there’s not just scoundrels and their victims. There’s something that keeps people in relationships like that. There’s goodness on both sides. There’s people trying to love on both sides. So I was lucky that my sibling had also recorded that conversation, so when I asked if she remembered that day, she was able to share the recording for my album. It’s an interesting epiphany to have—that there aren’t necessarily heroes or villains.

Are you looking forward to the debates that song might spark?

Yeah, I have been asked about it a lot in interviews by people who heard the song in advance. I hope people might respond to it on the album too. There is something that I think is important about the distinction between being in an abusive relationship—that’s a different thing, obviously. So I’m not talking about that. But just in terms of, you know, toxicity and how that can make people write off a relationship. It doesn’t sit well in my body to stay in that place. It feels better to inquire, become curious about it. To ask: “What made me attracted to this person? What made me want to stay?”And to understand those dynamics. To feel more agency in the situation, and to make different choices in the future. There’s an ease to saying something is all one person’s fault, and it’s a bit more difficult to look at your own role, and the patterns you might be repeating.

You’ve really tried to look at these things from a different angle.

I’m figuring it out every day. I write from an aspirational place sometimes. So it’s more like an affirmation. You might not actually believe it in the moment, but you say it because you want to. I think a lot of this album is songs that are sending me forward, into these conversations that I want to be having and these things that I have ideas about, because they challenge me. Even as I’m saying this to you, I know there’s a conversation I’m having in my life right now where I’m like, “No, you did that thing. I’m mad.” [Scrunches nose up in a scowl, narrows eyes dramatically, before laughing].

So the music makes me grounded into how I want to be. The perspective I want to have.

www.jamila-woods.com

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