Jamila Woods – Water Made Us LP arctic swirl vinyl

While 2017's HEAVN saw Jamila celebrating her community within a lineage of Black feminist movement organizing, and 2019's Legacy! Legacy! reframed her life's experiences through the storied personas of iconic Black and brown artists, Water Made Us is self-revelatory in an entirely new way, making this her most personal album yet. Made together with LA-based producer McClenney, and boasting features from longtime friends and Chicago natives such as Saba and Peter CottonTale, Water Made Us is a sprawling and intimate portrait of self-reflection, cleverly designed to echo the different stages of a relationship: the early days of easy compromising, flirtatiousness, and fun; the careful negotiation through moments of conflict or hurt; the grieving of something lost; and the tender realization at the end of it all that the person who is gone never really leaves, but stays with you as you find yourself ready to try again, refreshed and reassured.

The album's title -- taken from a line in album highlight "Good News" – is a subtle reference to the famous Toni Morrison quote "All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was." It's this sentiment – of memory, place, and returning – that acts as a pillar for the album's arc. Water Made Us reminds us that at its best love is a warm, still ocean. Deep, shimmering, and endless in its wonder. And at its worst love can be a riptide that takes us so far away from ourselves we can hardly find our way back, hardly even remember how to swim. And yet Jamila surrenders to this surf — every wave and undertow – because maybe even the most painful endings can in fact be an invitation that calls her back home, back to shore, back to herself.

Label: Jagjaguwar – JAG442

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Arctic Swirl

Country: UK, Europe & US

Released: Oct 13, 2023

Genre: Funk / Soul

Style: Contemporary R&B, Neo Soul

Tracklist

A1 Bugs

A2 Tiny Garden

A3 Practice

A4 Let The Cards Fall

A5 Send A Dove

A6 Wreckage Room

A7 Thermostat

B1 Out Of The Doldrums

B2 Wolfsheep

B3 I Miss All My Exes

B4 Backburner

B5 Libra Intuition

B6 Boomerang

B7 Still

B8 The Best Thing

B9 Good News

B10 Headfirst