Singers with Unique Voices: Jamila Woods (The Unique Voices Club #37)

Every Friday, I write a post about singers with unique voices not commonly heard in mainstream music. My goal? To educate emerging artists and music lovers while inspiring them to embrace their own quirks. This week, I'm writing about Jamila Woods.

Picture from First Avenue

I first became aware of Jamila Woods when I heard her song "Holy" in the movie Nappily Ever After (uber-relatable to me as a Black woman with hair past my shoulders). And as her staccato rap-singing voice weaved in and out of the song, I couldn't help grabbing my Spotify playlist to add her in right then and there.

Jamila is not just limited to music. She started writing poems and performing at open mics and poetry slams at a high school program where she got paid to apprentice with working artists. As a small gift to my poet siblings, she published her first chapbook The Truth About Dolls in 2012 along with appearances in numerous anthologies, and includes Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison and Frida Kahlo among her influences. Generally, her work covers themes such as Black ancestry, feminism, identity, beauty, and her hometown, Chicago.

Naturally, being from the South Side of Chicago means she shares the same stomping grounds with Chance the Rapper. After graduating from Brown with a B.A. in Africana Studies and Theatre & Performance Studies, she and a classmate formed a soul-pop band called Milo and Otis that disbanded after two years. Despite that, the band released two albums, the first of which features Chance the Rapper. This would not be the only collaboration she does with Chance. Besides some of his songs, her debut album Heavn features him as well as Lorine Chia (the first unique voice I covered on this blog) and others. Heavily involved in Chicago's indie hip-hop scene, she signed to independent label Closed Sessions and later Jagjaguwar, releasing her next album Legacy! Legacy!. Each song on there is named after prolific black creatives including Eartha Kitt, James Baldwin and Basquiat. Pitchfork listed it among one of the 50 Best Albums of 2019 and the 200 Best Albums of the 2010s. 2023's Water Made Us is her most recent offering.

Since one of her genres is RnB as well as hip-hop, Jamila has a smooth texture to her voice that sounds almost jazzy. Having a spoken word background from being a poet creates a kind of sing-talking effect on the delivery of some of her lines. For me, it's reminiscent of Chance the Rapper's song "No Problem" and the song "Escapism." by RAYE, where the rapped verses still have some melodic element to it. As she tells KEXP, being in the church choir was actually the only place she felt confident in her singing. She didn't feel comfortable singing solo until she owned her authenticity. She never had the stereotypical poet voice while performing so then she realized no one oculd sing her songs better than her. And now she instills the same ideals into the students she works with in the Chicago Public Schools system.

The mission of the Unique Voices Club echoes Jamila's mission with her concept album Legacy! Legacy!. Naming songs after African-American art heroes while interwoving poetry and layered vocals among modern neo-soul is what Ann-Derrick Gaillot from The Nation describes as "captur[ing] the power of black pride." She wanted to create a tribute to her ancestors and to teach the kids she's mentoring about Black creatives that have made their own legacies through their art. Much like I aim to do with this blog. Dare to be different. If Chance the Rapper and Jamila Woods can create art in their own way and be lauded for it, you can too.

And that is all for this week on The Unique Voices Club. We have a homepage now for all our video content and more, and if you want to help educate the masses on indie artists people can learn from, join my Patreon! I will shout you out if I pick your artist.

Stay educated,

Alexia