Jamila Woods - HEAVN (2017)

Jamila Woods's cultural lineage - from her love of Lucille Clifton's poetry to letters from her grandmother and the late '80s post-punk of The Cure - helped structure the progressive, delicate and minimalist soul of HEAVN. Her debut solo album, HEAVN was originally released in the summer of 2016 on Closed Sessions and is now set for a re-release by Jagjaguwar and Closed Sessions in October 2017. "It's like a collage process," she says. "It's very enjoyable to me to take something I love and mold it into something now." A frequent guest vocalist in the hip-hop, jazz and soul world, Jamila has emerged as a once-in-a-generation voice on her soul-stirring debut. Born and raised on the Southside of Chicago, Woods grew up in a family of music lovers. She is an artist of substance creating music crafted with a sturdy foundation of her passions and influences. You'll find the bits and pieces of her past and present that make Jamila: family, the city of Chicago, self-care, and the black women she calls friends. True and pure in its construction and execution, her music is the best representation of Jamila herself: strong in her roots, confident in her ideas, and attuned to the people, places, and things shaping her world.