The Economist's Best Albums of 2022

Unique, strong, and sexy—that’s how Beyoncé wants you to feel while listening to *RENAISSANCE*. Crafted during the grips of the pandemic, her seventh solo album is a celebration of freedom and a complete immersion into house and dance that serves as the perfect sound bed for themes of liberation, release, self-assuredness, and unfiltered confidence across its 16 tracks. *RENAISSANCE* is playful and energetic in a way that captures that Friday-night, just-got-paid, anything-can-happen feeling, underscored by reiterated appeals to unyoke yourself from the weight of others’ expectations and revel in the totality of who you are. From the classic four-on-the-floor house moods of the Robin S.- and Big Freedia-sampling lead single “BREAK MY SOUL” to the Afro-tech of the Grace Jones- and Tems-assisted “MOVE” and the funky, rollerskating disco feeling of “CUFF IT,” this is a massive yet elegantly composed buffet of sound, richly packed with anthemic morsels that pull you in. There are soft moments here, too: “I know you can’t help but to be yourself around me,” she coos on “PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA,” the kind of warm, whispers-in-the-ear love song you’d expect to hear at a summer cookout—complete with an intricate interplay between vocals and guitar that gives Beyoncé a chance to showcase some incredible vocal dexterity. “CHURCH GIRL” fuses R&B, gospel, and hip-hop to tell a survivor’s story: “I\'m finally on the other side/I finally found the extra smiles/Swimming through the oceans of tears we cried.” An explicit celebration of Blackness, “COZY” is the mantra of a woman who has nothing to prove to anyone—“Comfortable in my skin/Cozy with who I am,” ” Beyoncé muses on the chorus. And on “PURE/HONEY,” Beyoncé immerses herself in ballroom culture, incorporating drag performance chants and a Kevin Aviance sample on the first half that give way to the disco-drenched second half, cementing the song as an immediate dance-floor favorite. It’s the perfect lead-in to the album closer “SUMMER RENAISSANCE,” which propels the dreamy escapist disco of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” even further into the future.

“The main objective was to be as honest as humanly possible,” drummer Femi Koleoso tells Apple Music. “The result is that this is the most Ezra-sounding record we’ve ever made.” Since they emerged at the vanguard of London’s jazz circuit in 2016, Koleoso’s quintet Ezra Collective have crafted their sound into a blend of jazz improvisation, Afrobeat fanfares, hip-hop swagger, and soulful melodies. It’s a potent mix, one that has seen them turn festival audiences into bouncing masses, rather than the chin-stroking group often associated with jazz, and it has also earned them a legion of famous fans. For their second album, following 2019’s *You Can’t Steal My Joy*, they have enlisted some of these chart-topping pals, including singers Nao and Emeli Sandé, rappers Kojey Radical and Sampa the Great, and words from artists such as Steve McQueen and the late Tony Allen. The resulting 14 tracks live up to Koleoso’s promise, embodying Ezra Collective’s vibrancy with the thundering rhythms of “Victory Dance,” the neo-soul warmth of “Smile,” and dubby dilations of “Ego Killah.” “It’s music to move you and make you feel moved,” Koleoso says. Read on for his in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. **“Life Goes On” (feat. Sampa the Great)** “We end each of our albums with a cover, and we start the next one with a cover too. It’s all about making the albums chapters of the same book of our lives. This record, therefore, samples the Fela Kuti tune ‘Shakara,’ which is the last track on our last album, *Steal My Joy*. I got really into amapiano in the lockdown, and that’s where the shaker and saxophone sounds come from. When it came to finding a feature, I knew Sampa would encapsulate Fela Kuti and UK jazz—she was perfect.” **“Victory Dance”** “I was training for a marathon during the lockdown, and it ended up being something of a spiritual journey to go on. I kept thinking about the pain that you endure for that single moment of victory and the involuntary dance you do when you get there. This track is meant to make people shake and dance like that, so the horn part was written like a fanfare, and then it drops into an Afro Cuban salsa where you can’t help but move.” **“No Confusion” (feat. Kojey Radical)** “Tony Allen was a great mentor of mine, and I wanted to pay tribute to all that he’s taught me on this track. The title is an allusion to the Fela Kuti number ‘Confusion,’ which is one of the few recordings of a Tony Allen drum solo, and it also refers to not being confused about who you are or what you’re capable of. The track opens with a recording of a conversation I had with Uncle Tony on Worldwide FM, and he’s telling me the greatest lesson of all: ‘no one can be you-er than you.’” **“Welcome to My World”** “Fela Kuti is one of the main influences for Ezra Collective, but this is the first record where we made a tune that really evoked his sound, which was composed by our trumpet player, Ife Ogunjobi. We couldn’t agree on the drumbeat because it defines the direction of the song, but once we landed on what you hear, it became one of my favorites. We’ve been playing this live ever since it was written, and it always goes off.” **“Togetherness”** “We’ve spent the record traveling through the music of Southern Africa so far, and this track takes us to another of Ezra Collective’s cultural touchstones: the Caribbean. Sound system culture is a massive part of my life, and I go to Channel One every Sunday when I’m in London. If you live in the city, you’d be hard-pressed to not hear the influences of Caribbean music everywhere, and this tune taps into the reggae and dub sounds that are all over town.” **“Ego Killah”** “Jorja Smith is like an extended member of the group and one of our best friends, so it was only right that she sings the opening to this track. ‘Ego Killah’ stays on the Caribbean influences and goes deeper into the bass vibrations of dub. I always feel that the core of jazz music is paying homage to what’s come before and changing what will come after, so that’s why I wanted to incorporate all these different sounds into our improvisations.” **“Smile”** “When we started Ezra, all we played were jazz standards, and we always tried to make them original. We’ve been playing ‘Smile’ for 10 years now, and our version is inspired by D’Angelo’s ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love,’ since it’s a neo-soul take on a standard. I like to alter the expectations of what we might be capable of playing in our shows or on our records, and this is just such a beautiful song that makes audiences cry every time.” **“Live Strong”** “I always try to get every person who is involved with Ezra Collective on the album as it’s a nice thank-you to have their names written on the vinyl forever. The clapping that you hear on ‘Live Strong’ is all the engineers and crew, as well as our manager, Amy, who was heavily pregnant at the time. Now the record’s out, I’ve credited her new daughter, Ivy, too. The track itself is influenced by the group Sault, especially their track ‘Son Shine,’ which has such a beautiful feel that takes its own time. This is one that will get the audiences two-stepping when we play it.” **“Siesta” (feat. Emeli Sandé)** “This track was written by our bass player, TJ \[Koleoso\], and has the same amapiano influences of ‘Life Goes On.’ It’s meant to be the moment of rest during the journey that allows you to keep going. I think it’s one of the most beautiful songs on the album, since it’s heavily influenced by Kokoroko and their laidback and pretty melodies, as well as the work of Khruangbin. I met Emeli at Steve McQueen’s birthday party a few years ago, and this was just the perfect marriage for her.” **“Words by Steve”** “Before lockdown, Steve McQueen reached out and asked to meet me for breakfast. Before I even sat down at his table, he went on the most incredible monologue I’ve ever heard, describing the effects that Black people have had on culture in the UK, and he ended it by saying that we belong in any building in London, since we have helped to make this city. This was the birth of the album concept, *Where I’m Meant to Be*. We became great friends, and I wanted to give him credit for all of his wisdom, so I featured this phone call between us.” **“Belonging”** “In 2020, we did a tour with Hiatus Kaiyote and as we got to see them play so much, we grew a whole new appreciation and love for their ability to weave time signatures and feels. This track is inspired by their work, but it plays like the most UK jazz number on the record, since it’s aggressive, complicated, and still has deep emotion. It is the song on the album that was hardest to make as it had the most arrangements, but it’s honest. It’s going to be a hard one to play live!” **“Never the Same Again”** “Dark and depressing songs don’t come naturally for us as a group—we’re all about spreading joy and positivity through our music. Our keyboard player, Joe Armon-Jones, wrote this track and it really encapsulates that feeling of optimism, using the same Sault-inspired sound that drove forward the feeling of ‘Live Strong.’” **“Words by TJ”** “We love giving context to our music with words, which is why we keep the mics on in between recording tracks, so we can always collect sound bites and stories from different band members. This interlude is one instance of TJ talking about playing Ronnie Scott’s and giving a testament to the power of the music. We only ever write songs to make people feel how he describes on the track.” **“Love in Outer Space” (feat. Nao)** “We always end with a tribute to someone who’s come before us. We’ve covered Sun Ra before, and this is one of my all-time favorite melodies of his on ‘Love in Outer Space.’ We have been playing the instrumental version of the track live for years, but I missed the vocals that Sun Ra sings on the original, so I knew Nao would be perfect for our recorded version. It’s a song that I’m so proud of and the best way to end the journey—it gives the listener permission to go anywhere.”

Ezra Collective’s new era, a venture in discovered maturity and raised stakes, will be defined by the anticipated second album. 'Where I’m Meant To Be' is a thumping celebration of life, an affirming elevation in the Ezra Collective’s winding hybrid sound and refined collective character. The songs marry cool confidence with bright energy. Full of call-and-response conversations between their ensemble parts, a natural product of years improvising together on-stage, the album - which also features Sampa The Great, Kojey Radical, Emile Sandé, Steve McQueen, and Nao - will light up sweaty dance floors and soundtrack dinner parties in equal measure.

“Just to be able to get together and make some music was enough of an impetus to pour lots of enthusiasm into recording and writing,” Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor tells Apple Music. “We had so much pent-up energy that came out in the recordings.” The 11 tracks that make up the group’s eighth album see Hot Chip pushing further into thumping, danceable territory on the infectious “Down” and “Miss the Bliss,” while other numbers like “The Evil That Men Do” and “Out of My Depth” touch on a new vein of introspection and social commentary. “We were responding to an uncertain time,” guitarist Al Doyle says. “We were hoping that, with these tracks, we’d all be able to come together and enjoy the music once more.” Read on for Taylor and Doyle’s in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. **“Down”** Alexis Taylor: “This was the first track we made, as Joe \[Goddard\] came into the studio with a sample from Universal Togetherness Band’s track ‘More Than Enough’ at the start of our session, and we all got to work right away responding to it. The song summarizes what it feels like to be back together with your bandmates and having fun at work, in the studio.” Al Doyle: “It came together very quickly. Everybody was throwing themselves at different instruments, and it didn’t really change from the original demo that we made in two days. It became a touchstone for a lot of the other songs on the record because it has this infectiously raw and raucous energy to it.” **“Eleanor”** AT: “‘Eleanor’ was written towards the end of the album. We were responding to Joe playing a few chords on the CS-80 synth in the studio, and I wrote the words right there and then. We can usually all tell when a song we’re making is going to be a single—we had the same feeling with ‘Over and Over’ and ‘Ready for the Floor.’ There’s an excitement about throwing in as many good ideas as you can and helping to make that single happen. This song was a bag full of hooks and we’re all very proud of it.” **“Freakout / Release”** AT: “Joe had an idea that, the whole way through this song, a bass riff should continue to play, going from loud to quiet and vice versa, in the same way that ‘Seven Nation Army’ by The White Stripes has a riff that drives the whole setup. That led to us getting the instrumental ingredients and the explosive moments of the track together, but we struggled with the rest of it.” AD: “We knew there was a really good song, but we couldn’t figure out how to find the best version of it. Then we had the idea to see what Soulwax would do if they were given the song, and they ultimately came up with something that we all really liked.” AT: “The lyrics are about people being stuck and locked down, and perhaps they’re freaking out at home. But we’re also talking about a moment of release, a moment of being able to freak out publicly with other people in a crowd, and we were projecting forward to when we could do that together by playing this song.” **“Broken”** AT: “I was feeling emotionally quite exhausted at this point in our writing period, and I had a few friends of mine who were going through difficult times in their personal lives too. I wanted to sum up that feeling of approaching desperation and trying to find the language to express yourself, since then somebody might be able to support you. It came together quite quickly in the studio, which was exciting because we all contributed to it as we were recording. Musically, we were thinking of George McCrae, Robyn, and ABBA.” **“Not Alone”** AT: “This was, perhaps, the last song we wrote on the album. Joe had recorded this very heavily processed vocal sound at home, and the words I’m singing in response to him are partly about having your outlook changed by collaborating with somebody new and also about questioning the morals and values of those you might have once idolized. It’s all pretty hidden away in the song, but it was what I was thinking through at the time.” **“Hard to Be Funky” (feat. Lou Hayter)** AT: “I thought of this as a solo track first, before playing it to the band. I came up with the demo and I was imagining Bill Callahan singing it in his low voice, since when I think of giving a track to someone else, I can explore a different facet of how I write. The track is playing with the idea of what it means to be funky and how that is intrinsically linked to the idea of sexiness.” AD: “We collaborated with Lou Hayter quite spontaneously, since she only lives around the corner from the studio. We wanted somebody else’s voice and perspective on the chorus, and we knew she would do a great job, so we called her in. She nailed it all in one afternoon.” **“Time”** AD: “‘Time’ went through a hell of a lot of iterations. Joe and I worked on it a bit as a separate venture, and then Alexis had this very catchy chorus that came out as a response to that. We ultimately let it be something that was quite dance-floor-oriented, since we wanted it to be representative of that side of Hot Chip.” **“Miss the Bliss”** AD: “Joe had been working on this for a while. The track has a choral aspect of group vocals, and he decided that it would be fun to get his brother to come in and do some of the backing for it. Having him in the studio was fantastic because he’s a wonderful spirit that we have known for years.” AT: “Joe’s kids and my daughter and my younger brother and various other friends joined in, too, to create a choir of voices. The song is all about offering support to each other and encouraging people not to be afraid to reach out if they need to.” **“The Evil That Men Do” (feat. Cadence Weapon)** AT: “We have written songs that are political before, but nothing quite so overt as this. The song is telling men that they need to recognize and take responsibility for their own behavior and the behavior of those who came before them. We can’t ignore the atrocities that continue to go on around us. We had Cadence Weapon opening for us on tour in America and Canada years ago, and we got in touch to ask him to add a verse for us based on the themes I was writing about. What he came up with was perfect.” **“Guilty”** AD: “This was a satisfying one to write, as I was just testing my bass guitar in the studio one day and I played the main four chords that we ended up using in this track.” AT: “It sounded really good, and we responded to Al’s bassline with the other elements of the song. It felt like mid-’80s Prince musically, and I was trying to write about the things that go on in people’s heads while they’re asleep—how they can compartmentalize their thoughts to be so different from who they are when they’re awake.” **“Out of My Depth”** AT: “I wrote most of this track at home on the guitar and then came straight into the studio so we could all build on it from there. That was a good way of starting a song because it didn’t already foreground a potential style. We ended up coming up with something quite psychedelic then, with a krautrock feel to it. It’s a good song to end on, as it summarizes a lot of the themes of the record: telling yourself that if you’re approaching a place that’s emotionally bleak, there are ways to get help and get yourself out of that headspace of feeling trapped. It’s a necessary message to end on.”

Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Blake Mills, Marcus Mumford’s full-length solo debut began coming to life when the Mumford & Sons leader was in pandemic lockdown. On the album, Mumford sings vivid, and at times harrowing, songs about being sexually abused as a child, and the therapeutic journey his life has taken since. “It’s a record about freedom and it’s a record about healing,’ he tells Apple Music. *(self-titled)* opens with the simmering “Cannibal,” the first song Mumford wrote for the project and a rebuke of his abuser. “The story of the record started with that song,” Mumford says. Next up is the jagged “Grace,” which, he notes, is an “answer” to “Cannibal,” where the singer-songwriter grapples with what happens when, as he sings, “Healing is around the corner”—or at least it’s supposed to be. From there, it depicts the personal voyage Mumford has taken, and is still taking, within himself, with singers like Brandi Carlile and Phoebe Bridgers serving as counterweights to his searing voice. “What I’m learning now is that it’s super common to suppress things really hard, to the extent where you don’t think they’re a problem at all until someone says, ‘Let’s look at that a bit deeper,’” Mumford says. “That’s the point I came to in my life—people around me were like, ‘You’ve got some stuff to look at here. Things aren’t quite right.’ And then the opportunity presented itself, and I took it.” Mumford began writing what would become *(self-titled)* in January 2021. “I didn’t know at that point whether it was going to be for the band or for someone else or for me,” he says. “I just said, ‘I need to reconnect with my songwriting muscles. They’ve gone into atrophy during COVID.’ I did a bit of scoring work, and I did a bit of songwriting, but not enough that the songwriting muscles were being exercised. So, I just went away and said to the lads in the band, ‘Look, I’m going to go away and write. I don’t know what it’s for, but I’m just going to follow the \[muse\]. And I’m going to set myself the task of writing as honestly as I can.’” That goal was met by *(self-titled)*, which is a decidedly introspective album that takes the listener along for its trip through Mumford’s psyche. “I admire artists who can take on other people’s stories and write them. I’m not great at that,” Mumford confesses. “Bob Dylan is great at that. Bono’s good at that. Johnny Flynn is the best at that, in my view. But I’m not very good at that. So, I’ve got to write about my stuff.” Mumford notes that the album’s brevity—its 10 songs clock in at 38 minutes—was the result of advice from one of pop’s greatest songwriters. “Elton John, who was a real inspiration from the beginning of this process, sat me down early on and was like, ‘You are not allowed to make more than 10 songs.’ It brings this intentionality. Every song has to fight for its place. So, that meant that we edited hard—really hard.” While the next record from Mumford & Sons is still far off, Mumford notes that making *(self-titled)*, which also involved collaborators like Tobias Jesso Jr. and Julia Michaels, will definitely inform his band’s next steps. “I’m pretty stoked to take some of the stuff I’ve learned back to the band now,” he says. “For me, this kind of blew the doors off this weird structure we have around the band. I think going through the motions is the death of creativity. I’m pretty excited to go back with this possibility of sound.”

“I literally don’t take breaks,” ROSALÍA tells Apple Music. “I feel like, to work at a certain level, to get a certain result, you really need to sacrifice.” Judging by *MOTOMAMI*, her long-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s award-winning and critically acclaimed *EL MAL QUERER*, the mononymous Spanish singer clearly put in the work. “I almost feel like I disappear because I needed to,” she says of maintaining her process in the face of increased popularity and attention. “I needed to focus and put all my energy and get to the center to create.” At the same time, she found herself drawing energy from bustling locales like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, all of which she credits with influencing the new album. Beyond any particular source of inspiration that may have driven the creation of *MOTOMAMI*, ROSALÍA’s come-up has been nothing short of inspiring. Her transition from critically acclaimed flamenco upstart to internationally renowned star—marked by creative collaborations with global tastemakers like Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, and Oneohtrix Point Never, to name a few—has prompted an artistic metamorphosis. Her ability to navigate and dominate such a wide array of musical styles only raised expectations for her third full-length, but she resisted the idea of rushing things. “I didn’t want to make an album just because now it’s time to make an album,” she says, citing that several months were spent on mixing and visuals alone. “I don’t work like that.” Some three years after *EL MAL QUERER*, ROSALÍA’s return feels even more revolutionary than that radical breakout release. From the noisy-yet-referential leftfield reggaetón of “SAOKO” to the austere and *Yeezus*-reminiscent thump of “CHICKEN TERIYAKI,” *MOTOMAMI* makes the artist’s femme-forward modus operandi all the more clear. The point of view presented is sharp and political, but also permissive of playfulness and wit, a humanizing mix that makes the album her most personal yet. “I was like, I really want to find a way to allow my sense of humor to be present,” she says. “It’s almost like you try to do, like, a self-portrait of a moment of who you are, how you feel, the way you think.\" Things get deeper and more unexpected with the devilish-yet-austere electronic punk funk of the title track and the feverish “BIZCOCHITO.” But there are even more twists and turns within, like “HENTAI,” a bilingual torch song that charms and enraptures before giving way to machine-gun percussion. Add to that “LA FAMA,” her mystifying team-up with The Weeknd that fuses tropical Latin rhythms with avant-garde minimalism, and you end up with one of the most unique artistic statements of the decade so far.

Spoon’s tenth album, Lucifer on the Sofa, is the band’s purest rock ’n roll record to date. Texas-made, it is the first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown of Austin in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years –both in and out of lockdown –these songs mark a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more full-color.

“If I ever win a Grammy, I’m gonna thank him,” Queens-born vocalist, producer, and multi-disciplinary artist Yaya Bey tells Apple Music about one of the many songs on *Remember Your North Star* inspired by an unnamed ex-lover. He was a music industry player and that relationship, which lasted some three years, revealed many things to Bey—not just about the industry itself, but about who she is and what she values. “It was like, ‘Well, where am I going? Where am I headed and what should I remember?’ And I guess in trying to move towards love—love for self, love romantically, platonically—I’m remembering that that’s where I’m going. That’s my North Star.” While that relationship opened her eyes to some of the industry’s—and men at large’s—more sordid practices, Bey managed to keep her joy intact, delivering a robust collection of music that spans Billie Holiday-inspired jazz crooning, lovers rock reggae, and the bubbling form of South African house, amapiano. Within these spoonfuls of sugar, Bey supplies medicine aplenty, lambasting the intrinsically toxic systems that would, at one time, have her questioning her own self-worth. “To be a woman in this male-dominated industry means you get judged and valued by things that really don’t matter,” she says. “But I can’t have apprehension about what I do with my music because it’s the only place I have a voice. Being a Black woman, an up-and-coming artist, and especially in my thirties, the only place I have a voice is in my music. I can’t be silent there. I’ll just disappear.” Below, Bey takes us through some of the key tracks on *Remember Your North Star*, a project that casts her more visible than ever. **“Intro”** “So, \[talk show host\] Wendy Williams had said some shit about \[vegan lifestyle influencer\] Tabitha Brown on her show. And then Tabitha Brown retaliated in this way that insinuated Wendy Williams doesn’t know love or doesn’t have anyone to love her. And then someone on Black Twitter tweeted that even though Tabitha Brown didn’t say very much, we all knew it was an insult because we all kind of know Black women have a wound around not being loved and not knowing love. And that got me to thinking about how Black women respond to that. There’s the ‘city girl’ approach, which is like, ‘Fuck love, just provide for me financially’—and all of it is defense mechanisms—because a lot of times we’re afraid to ask for the things that we want, or we assume that we can’t get the things that we want, emotionally. I’m saying, ‘N\*\*\*\*s going to n\*\*\*a, so you might as well get paid.’ That’s just my take on not feeling secure that men will show up in a way that is supportive of my emotional needs.” **“big daddy ya”** “I was having this realization that most all of my problems can somehow be tied to either racism, patriarchy, or capitalism—literally everything in my life that’s going wrong. And as it pertains to patriarchy, misogyny, and all that shit, it’s always just fucking men at the root of my problems. Even when it’s a woman, it’s still some woman enacting patriarchy, enacting misogyny. What I learned about the male ego is just to laugh at it because it’s utterly ridiculous. It isn’t built on supporting the collective, uplifting the collective. It’s built on scarcity and that’s why it’s so fragile. And so, ‘big daddy ya’ is just me mocking men.” **“nobody knows”** “I had just signed to Ninja Tune, and they sent me to D.C. to start the album. It was one of the first songs that I wrote. I had been going back and forth with this guy for three years, and we weren’t in contact at the time. And he was bouncing back and forth between me and this other woman. I was really fucked up because I had lost my job. Like, the song starts off, ‘I ain’t paid my rent in three months’—that was very true for me. And this guy, the last time I saw him, he was rubbing it in my face that \[his other woman\] is a doctor and I’m unemployed. I have to work so hard under the system of capitalism to be worthy. I can’t just wake up in the morning and be worthy. I have to have all of these things to be worthy of love, to be worthy of a roof over my head. Me just being me is not enough for this world—I think it’s a song that means the most to me on the album because I was at my lowest point, but I was still fighting for myself.” **“alright”** “I was listening to a lot of Frankie Beverly & Maze, and what I like about Frankie Beverly & Maze is that they make music to uplift the spirit. I knew I needed live musicians because a lot of the album was made on a 404 or from sliced samples. It’s all digital. \[My friend\] Temi introduced me to \[co-producer\] Aja Grant, and it was easy. It was a jam session sort of thing. I just hummed out the melody lines and they picked it up, and then added to it and extended it.” **“meet me in brooklyn”** “My family is from Barbados. I always say that I’m an African American of Western Indian descent. I grew up deeply in both cultures. So, I felt like I needed to put some of that on the album because it’s part of who I am. And the album, overall, is about me dealing with and navigating misogyny externally and internally, and even internalized misogyny through my romantic dealings. And some of romance is about fun, like when you first meet someone at a party—like, the first time I ever danced with a boy was at a reggae party. So, it’s in my DNA, and culturally and socially growing up in New York, and I wanted to include that sound.” **“pour up” (feat. DJ Nativesun)** “My friend Chris is an amazing DJ, and he plays a lot of house and dance, and I was working on a song with another artist at a session in D.C. at this big house that had all these little studio rooms. Chris comes into the session, and he has a track. At first, I was afraid because it’s amapiano. But when I think about the music that’s coming out of Africa, that’s dancehall, that’s soca, it’s house music—and I think, once we get past the whole diaspora wars thing, all of us fighting for the scraps, we’re all Africans at the very bottom of this capitalist, imperialist food chain. Because you can’t talk about Fela without talking about James Brown without talking about \[Wizkid’s\] *Made in Lagos*—that was an Afrobeats album because it was made by an African from Nigeria, but if we take that away, that was a dancehall record. At first, I was afraid that I would experience some backlash, but when I thought about it, I’m like amapiano is house music, and I’m allowed to be a part of the conversation.” **“reprise”** “Sometimes relationships that you go through are a catalyst for you to get to know yourself more, or for you to really see where you’re playing yourself, where you’re doubting yourself, where you are not showing up for yourself. It’s really about how I had a lack of self-worth, and I was afraid to see myself as capable. And I had this other song where I was, like, tearing his ass a new one. But it was coming from a place that was more about bashing him than it was about uplifting me. And it isn’t really my desire to bash anyone. So, I didn’t put the song out and, instead, I wrote ‘reprise,’ which is more reflecting on how I got to where I am, and the things that I’ve seen. It gave me a space to even have compassion for him because he’s somebody with his own trauma and insecurities that are informing the way he’s moving through the world.” **“rolling stoner”** “I probably smoke the heaviest when I’m going through shit. Two months before the pandemic started, I was working 13-hour shifts in a homeless shelter, seeing crazy shit. I’m riddled with guilt because I’m working there, and I feel like I’m a part of the problem. Even though I’m just an art teacher there, it’s still like I shouldn’t be here because this is hella problematic. I come home, I smoke my life away, I make music, I go to sleep for two hours. I do it again. I mean, I had smoked before then, but that was my introduction to, ‘Now I’m a pothead.’” **“i’m certain she’s there”** “So, my parents were teenage parents. My mom, she didn’t raise me. She came from different circumstances. Her family was not as supportive. Her mom died. Her dad was just really disappointed that she had a baby so young. And my dad, on the other hand, he just had more support, more help raising me. Either people don’t ever talk about my mom at all, like she’s this thing that never happened, or they have terrible things to say about her. Which, as a child, it fucked with my own self-image, to have this mom that is a pariah, I guess. So, as I got older, I realized that some of that is misogyny. And I just wanted to address that.” **“street fighter blues“** “‘Street fighter blues’ was the starting point of the album. I had someone else that I was supposed to work with, and the session was a nightmare. I ended up snatching my equipment out the wall and leaving. But then, I called my friend Nate Jarvis, who is a longtime collaborator, and once I got in the right environment, it was easy. I was listening to a lot of Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan, which is what informed the vocals. And then, I went on the 404 and sampled my voice, busted out a drum pattern, and it was over with.” **“mama loves her son”** “A long, long time ago, I had this conversation with my friend, and she was like her mother—always kind of taught her not to trust women. And we’re taught not to trust women and not to trust ourselves because we see other women as competition for male validation. It’s not even just romantic male validation, it’s just love from men, acknowledgement from men—in the workplace, in friendships, in social settings, on social media, in relationships, in every power dynamic in marginalized groups. I needed a way to address the way that women act out misogyny.” **“blessings”** “I wrote ‘blessings’ when I was in D.C. It’s one of the first songs I wrote. At the time, I was not talking to the same person I’ve been talking about. We were not on speaking terms. I guess I was going through breakup blues. I felt like I wasn’t enough for that person, and I was figuring out how to be enough for myself. But at the same time, I was in D.C. A label had paid for me to go out there and make an album. I was too sad to get out of bed, but if I could just get out of this funk and realize there’s blessings around me, I could find a way to be present for them. And wherever you are, a person needs that. And life goes on, with time, you know?”