Jamila Woods - BALDWIN

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece-by-piece to the story of how they were made. My name is Taowin. This episode is sponsored by LinkedIn, anyone who's ever had to spend money on marketing knows how tricky it can be to feel like you've spent that money wisely. Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can be sure that you'll get a great return on your investment. You can target your campaigns by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/songexploder. That's LinkedIn.com/songexploder. Terms and conditions apply. Thanks to Quince for sponsoring Song Exploder. I have this Quince Cashmere sweater that's become my go-to in the fall. It's one of those pieces where as soon as I started wearing it, I couldn't really remember what I used to wear before I had it. It's the Mongolian Cashmere Quarter Button Sweater in black. And those kinds of staples are what Quince is known for. Jeans, t-shirts, jackets, sweaters, and actually a lot more too. And everything at Quince is priced 50-80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. After 100% Mongolian Cashmere sweaters started just $60. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to Quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. It's now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know that it was Song Exploder. You'll be supporting the show. Sheila Woods is a singer, songwriter, and poet from Chicago. She's released two albums, and she's collaborated with artists like Chance the Rapper, No Name, and Macklemore. In May 2019, she put out her second album, Legacy Legacy, to critical claim. NME called it one of the albums of the year, Rolling Stone called it a Revelation, and Pitchfork named it Best New Music. In this episode, Jamila and her producer Slat A break down a song from that album called Baldwin, named after the late author and civil rights activist James Baldwin. My name is Jamila Woods, and I'm a singer and musician poet. This song was inspired by James Baldwin's Letter to My nephew. I was working as a teaching artist at a non-profit young Chicago author's teaching poetry, and I often return to reading James Baldwin. The whole essay is written to his nephew, and he's kind of giving him perspective and advice about the world, like navigating the world as a black man. There is no reason for you to try to become like white men, and there is no basis whatsoever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them, and I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love for these innocent people have no other hope. They are in a fact trapped in a history which they do not understand, and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years and for innumerable reasons that black men are inferior to white men. And part of it, he says, is like it's going to cost us more to meet injustice or oppression or prejudice with that same energy of hatred and so kind of tasking us to meet it with love and compassion instead, which I thought was very beautiful, but also very difficult to kind of put into practice. So for this song, I started out by playing around in Garage Band. I'm not a producer, but I really want to hone those skills, and so I was trying to make more beats for myself. I started with that sample. It was this SWV song that I really liked, called "I'm So Into You". SWV is a 90s R&B group. I just really loved the beat of that song and wanted to flip it into something different. So I just ripped the audio from YouTube and looped that part and then started writing over that. In that first version of the song, it was more like being frustrated at the fact that so many white people around me would be like, "Oh, well, I have a black friend, so I'm good." So I listened to rap music, so that's all I have to do to kind of show that I'm good with black people. You know, that idea of being good, these ways in which it's like, "Oh, look, CBS has a whole aisle of hair products now, I mean cool, but that doesn't mean that corporation is supporting black lives in a tangible way." So it was kind of like this macro and micro tongue-in-cheek critique of what does it really mean to be for black people. The first draft that I made I saved at Baldwin January 28th, 2014, so it was a while ago. There was definitely a lot of time spent sitting with the song and being like, "It's not right, but I don't know how to work on it again." I was kind of, you know, in that place of, "I don't know where this song should go like I know, but I don't know how to get it there." The breakthrough moment of the song was when I was working with slot A who was producing most of legacy legacy. What's up, my name is slot A. She didn't really know about the letter to my nephew, so I told them about that. We kind of like read this section and then I was just telling him where I was trying to come from with the song and how I was trying to approach it, but also that I was feeling like all of my writing was just sounding a little too basic or too simplistic. The point that she kind of let me notice, she was something to make, was they don't necessarily understand this all the way. I wanted to forgive them, but I'm having a hard time, and so we were trying to figure out a perspective that wasn't so attacky. And then he was saying, "Well, this idea of writing towards an enemy, not in the mortal sense of that word, but just kind of like an opponent, someone who's not on the same side as you, he kind of compared that to battle rap." He was saying, "In battle rap, you have to know your opponent so well, it's almost like you have to love them, like you have to know what their mom looks like, what shoes they have on, where they live, all of these intimate details about them." It's an assault, but it's an assault with, "I have knowledge of you. I know you inside and out," instead of saying that you're a bum and disrespecting you. If I come at it with the thought of, "You probably had positive intent, but let me educate you and show you the other way," then it means a little bit more, it's something less to laugh at, has a little bit more weight to it. So attacking it with love versus just attacking you with malice, and that takes a different level of maturity. And so that kind of shifted in my mind and helped me come at the song from more of a place of empathy, as opposed to seeing how many cute things I could put in a bar, but more so saying like, "There's a reason why there's a wall here, like there's a reason why you don't understand what black people have experienced," and there's a reason why sometimes you don't want to or you feel like you can't. So the very first version of the song was a lot about my interactions with white people who I've been encountering, but I thought that it was more interesting to talk about these larger things that happen on a broader scale in black people's lives. And so I was doing a lot of research, there are all these articles about the perception that black people don't feel pain as much as white people. And so that shows up with the doctors, not believing pregnant black women when they're saying something's wrong, or police officers using excessive force. There was a study done saying how fear is always the weapon that is used to justify violence. It's like, "Oh, the officer feared for his life," therefore he took a black person's life. And the things that evoke that fear are just black people living, you know, existing often. And so I was like ingesting all of that and then writing the new lyrics. I was coming at it from an angle of not accepting that as an excuse, but saying your precious lethal fear that you cling to is doing this violence. Your silence, when things happen, that's also violence. Like a white person crossing the street when they see a black person. I was trying to sing in like a deeper register than I had previously, where it's like you took a long sigh before you say it as opposed to coming at it. So aggressive and angry and at a certain point there's this level of exhaustion where it's like I've already seen the story so many times I can't believe this is happening again, but it's like that truth is motivating me to speak through my exhaustion. We always worked out of Slot A's house he has like a setup in his apartment. I had him re-download the SWV song, so he started with that sample, but then we buried it and then deleted it. We just decided to go a totally different direction and restart. I wanted some more sparseness so there would be times when you would just be listening to the words and I had re-recorded the vocals so we just worked from the vocals that he built around them to make the final version. I found the key and then we kind of started messing with the roads from there. I wanted something that sounded a little bit more electronic, but analog at the same time and roads kind of falls like right in that little sweet spot. That's kind of what we started with. The initial drums were all done in my NPCs, so the kick, snare, I tapped that out. I recorded it in live and then tried to make sure I fixed the timing, just so it wasn't like all over the place, but still felt natural. The move is one of my favorite basses and so that was the first bass sound that we used for Stevie Wonder. That was really the first person that I heard as a child using MOOG synths. He was like a lot of the inspiration for it. Once we had the skeleton of the beat, then it was kind of going back and forth and adding more of the vocals, the verses and the choruses kind of directed at different audiences because we're tied, but there's kind of like two conversations happening at the same time. The verses are writing towards white people, but then in the choruses, it's like we talking about black people. And then there's choir vocals that come in. I just wanted it to feel like there's more than one voice participating to make it feel like it's my perspective, but it's not only my perspective, and that was something that reading Baldwin and all of the black writers that I read is like, oh, I'm not alone in this feeling that I've been feeling. It's actually way bigger than me. And so I wanted to have that bigness come through in the hook and to be very prideful. It was my two sisters and two of my friends who are singing in the hook with me. We were all in the Chicago Children's Choir, which was founded by this man who wanted to bring together all different races of children in Chicago because Chicago is super segregated and have them sing together. And so part of the ethos of the choir is to feel what you're singing. They would always be like, "I browse up, be present and feel the music and let us see on your face what it is that you're singing." And so it was really beautiful to watch them singing, and it was cool to think of all the different experiences that we've had together that helped that moment come together. Once I had the full hook with the choir vocals, the horns were added. So it was Nico Segal who's playing, and I love the texture of Nico's horns. I feel like I could just recognize them anywhere. There's like that one part where you can kind of hear like the note roll off. And that just totally elevated the sound of the beat. It punctuates the hook and makes it have that kind of explosive power. I came up through like spoken word poetry and slam poetry, and there's a community there. And also there's community around battle rap. And it's really interesting to think about being in community with people like that and how to have the vulnerability and honesty to say, "You're fear or you're just comfort." That's a mask. And digging underneath that to expose it. That's a lot of what Baldwin would talk about. And that's kind of what he's saying in the letter. These men are your brothers. Your lost younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means. That we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend. Do not be driven from it. We're in this country, like we're in this America together. We don't really have a choice to separate ourselves. So we might as well come at each other with love. And now here's Baldwin by Jamila Woods in its entirety. We want to steal my baby shot. All my friends, when I know why you ain't forget it, I've just yet. All my friends, buried in a books by my rescindermost. All my friends, buried in a books, buried in a books, you wait wait. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Somebody's daddy always say that on the street and for what? We on the street and for what? Your precious lead the fear. Could change a hood just by showing your face. Got no climb in high now the black is erased. You don't get it. Crutch on your purse now you cross in the street. Brother, cut your eye now you calling police. You get the casual violence in your speech in your silence. It's a natural science. You too comfortable, I ain't. We don't go out. It's always just a way. We've been burning, buried, hey, hey. You don't know I think about a story. Tell it wrong all the time. Don't know I think about a glory, want to steal my baby. Show my friends. Think I should love you anyway. My friend James says I should love you anyway and that's okay. Oh yeah you're making it high for me. Oh yeah you're making it so high. We don't go out, can't waste just the way, we've been burning, but every day, we don't go out, can't waste just the way. We were burning, but every day, you don't know I think about a story, tell it wrong all the time. Don't know I think about a glory, wanna steal my baby, shine my free. Wanna know why you were figuring it out just yet, I'm a fool, every day, we books by my son and was all my fun. Wanna know why you were figuring it out just yet, I'm a fool, we didn't have books, we didn't have books, you ain't wait, ain't. We didn't have books, you ain't wait, we didn't have books, you ain't wait, we didn't have books, you ain't wait. Visit songexploder.net for more information about Jamila Woods. You also find a link to buy or stream this song. Song Exploder is sponsored by DistroKid. If you're an independent artist, DistroKid is now offering a new way to start selling merch without dealing with inventory or running an online store. DistroKid direct automatically turns your existing album artwork into merch products like shirts and hoodies, posters, totes, all kinds of things. And you choose what to sell, you set your prices, you connect PayPal, and DistroKid handles the printing, the shipping, and the customer support. They don't take a commission, so you keep 100% of your merch sales. It's a simple way to add another revenue stream to your music career without adding more work to your plate. Artists can learn more and launch a merch store at distrokid.com/direct. This episode is sponsored by Title. If you're an artist or if you know somebody making music, you should know about Title Upload. It's a way to share and sell music without the usual barriers. You can upload your music directly to Title at no cost. You decide how you want to release it, you can share it publicly with Title listeners, or you can keep it private until you're ready, or you can sell your music directly through Title Upload. Your music will also be considered by Title's editorial team for their playlists, and if your track is selected for their spotlight program, you'll get $1,000 bonus, and you'll be on one of their marquee playlists. 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You can shop for thousands of products across every style and budget, whether it's furniture or an appliance or just the perfect little accessory. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair rewards. Join Wayfair rewards today and get 5% back on every purchase. Head to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's w-a-y-f-a-i-r.com. Wayfair. Every style. Every home. Song Explorers is made by creator Rishi Keish hereway, producer Christian Coons, and me, the guest host for this year. Carlos LeRom is our illustrator. He makes portraits for every episode, which you can see on the Song Explorer website. Special thanks to Al Letson, who read the excerpts from Baldwin's essay Letter to My nephew. If you want to hear more of his great voice, he hosts the award-winning investigative reporting podcast Reveal. Song Explorers, a proud member of Radio Topia, from PRX, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts. You can learn about all of our shows at radiotopia.fm. You can also find Song Explorer on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Song Explorer. And you can find me at Tal Get Stay Down. My name is Tal Win. Thanks for listening. Radio Topia. From PRX. There's a great show here on Radio Topia called Only If You Get Caught. It's a podcast that's dedicated to taking a closer look at Cheating Scandals. This season, they're covering stories like The Rise and Fall of FTX and Sam Bankman Freed. Plus, they investigate why people keep cheating at marathons, despite getting nothing out of it. What can Cheating Scandals teach us about the world? Listen and find out. Only If You Get Caught hosted by Patrick Redford and produced by Alex Su Jonglofflin from Defector Media and Radio Topia. They're releasing episodes all fall wherever you get your podcasts, including on YouTube.