Jamila Woods poetically modernizes soul music

With "Water Made Us", Jamila Woods poetically modernizes soul music

Between social meditation and intimacy, the Chicago singer and poetess adorns herself with sonic lightness to better strike at the heart.

Contemporary R&B is a music of withdrawal. It's as if its most inventive exponents curled up inside themselves, exploring their inner selves therapeutically, only to let them escape in music. Few people are as happy with fictional stories as they were twenty-five years ago, the kind that made people fantasize. Today, it's the intimate universal that drives musicians like Jamila Woods, whose third album, Water Made Us, is a good illustration of this new paradigm.

Often classified as neo-soul, the Chicago singer fully embraces the modernity that is now the norm, while disseminating her complex sonic personality through interludes and quiet moments where her poet's hat resurfaces, embedded in the confidences. But this is a far cry from the collections she has been publishing alongside her music for over ten years.
A tasty and singular middle ground


Water Made Us also ventures into existential questions, not just sentimental ones, in keeping with the black social conscience that animates its author's literary work and discography. D'Angelo also knows how to do this, notably on the album Black Messiah (2014), in an even more frontal way.


Jamila Woods evolves in a delicious and ultimately singular middle ground. A balance where musical lightness actually serves a kind of sonic meditation in which immersing oneself is necessary and soothing.

https://youtu.be/4Qu2Aq1FusU?si=JrEP2NLeqIVpqCFQ

BW