NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out August 2

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

NPR Music's Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Sheldon Pearce dig deep into the latest release by bassist Meshell Ndegeocello, who, more than 30 years into her career, continues to melt the boundaries between genres. Her latest album, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, is being released on the centennial of the birth of the author and activist, and overflows with musical, political and historical ideas.Daoud and Sheldon also share new albums and EPs by Khalid, Orville Peck, Moses Sumney, Maren Morris, Smashing Pumpkins, Killer Mike and more. Featured Albums:• Meshell Ndegeocello, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin• Khalid, Sincere• Orville Peck, Stampede• Moses Sumney, Sophcore• Maren Morris, Intermission• Killer Mike, Songs for Saints and SinnersOther notable albums out August 2:• Smashing Pumpkins, Aghori Mhori Mei• Chrystabelle and David Lynch, Cellophane Memories• JPEGMAFIA, I Lay Down My Life For You• Brigitte Calls Me Baby, The Future Is Our Way Out• Los Lonely Boys, Resurrection• Tones and I, Beautifully Ordinary• X, Smoke & Fiction• WHY?, The Well I Fell IntoSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

A quick heads up, this podcast contains explicit language. Ice Spice, Baby. I had to do it. I'm sorry. I've been waiting for weeks. But also, we didn't have a show last week, so we need to take a minute to acknowledge one album that came out last Friday. The studio debut, whatever you take that to mean these days, of Bronx rapper Ice Spice, who in case there was any confusion about her age, titled her album, Y2K.

With an exclamation point. Don't you forget it. Sheldon, you wrote a review of this album for NPR that people should just go read. So instead of asking you how this record is, I kind of want to just briefly understand the circumstances of its arrival because she had such a stellar 2023 as a rising star. What is the mood around Y2K now that it's finally here? Yeah, you know, it feels like it came a little bit outside of her window. Like we reached Peak Ice Spice and now here's the album after the fact. There's been a pretty rapid assent for her into like a threshold of fame that a lot of rappers don't reach in terms of like she started as a local New York product.

Uh, a sort of corner girl around the way type personality as the forefront of a little subgenre of Brooklyn drill called sample drill. She blows up with munch. Next thing you know, she's Taylor Swift's best friend. From there, the hits just kept coming. But it seems as if the music sort of tapered off at a point as her fame kept rising exponentially. And the enthusiasm for the music didn't quite match the trajectory of her celebrity. So here we are with an album that has come sort of outside of all the hype. I think if it had released in the middle of 2023 when she was the biggest commodity in rap, it would have been received a bit differently.

I think there's a lot of interesting stuff on here. How's its moments? Yeah, one of the songs we'll hear, it's called Plenny Sun. I'm like, baby, don't you worry. I'm like 20 Son. He like, okay, so you pop this thing, you get enough. On my tiny time, he put his dummy down. I was in Ocean City, Maryland, last summer, and I saw so many I-heart Ice Spice T-shirts on the boardwalk.

It's really, it's such a weird phenomenon to behold. And this record is, it's a mixed bag. There are moments that are slightly more scatological than I was counting on. I figured that that fart song was going to be the beginning end of it, but she had more to say on that count. And yet there are moments like this song, Plenty Sun, that are, like, lots of fun and feel really dialed into the strengths of her voice and her full. which is like such a superpower when she's using it, right? Yeah, I think one thing that I really got from this record is that she has one of the best voices in rap, and it really sort of sometimes can make you forget how rudimentary some of this stuff is happening across this record.

I think her producer, Riot USA, puts her in great positions to succeed and is doing really interesting things at the forefront of drill. And I think you can hear a future for her and what she does best in moments, in glimps, is on this record, but I'm really curious to see what she makes of her career now that the hype is sort of starting to die down and it's time to really prove it. Yeah, no. I sort of like to see her in fight back note, actually. Right. What does that look like? Yeah. Anyway, that's a quick taste of Ice Spice. Go read Sheldon's review at npr.org slash music for the full meal. But don't go anywhere right now because it's New Music Friday from NPR Music. Here to talk about the most notable new releases coming out, August 2nd,

2024. I'm Daoud Tyler Rameen here with NPR Music Editor and columnist Sheldon Pierce. What's up, Sheldon? Hey, Dawd. And folks, it being officially August, we're in the dog days, man. This is the time of year when the album release schedule gets pretty eclectic, but there's still plenty of great music to share. So, if you'll indulge us, we're going to tweak our usual format yet again. A little later on the show, we will dive into a really remarkable new album from Michelle Indigiocello, which is nominally a tribute to James Baldwin for his centennial today, but it's a lot more than that. But first, let's jump straight to our lightning round and speed run some of the other notable releases coming out today. Sheldon, who you got?

Yeah, you likely know the singer-songwriter Khalid for any number of breakthrough hits in the late 2010s, his debut single, location, which turned pin dropping into almost a romantic ideal. And then it's follow-up young, broken dumb, which you get it all from that title. And sort of acted as a centerpiece for his major label debut American team, which you get all the angst right there in that title. Putting it up front. Both of those songs went platinum. And the album established him as sort of like at the front of the vanguard of a cast of pop soul men that were emerging at that period. and he had other hits.

He featured on Logic's anti-suicide anthem. His name I can never remember because it's a phone number. It's a phone number, 1-800-273-8255. And he had his biggest hit in 2019 Talk, which was nominated for record of the year at the Grammys in 2020. Now he's returning for his first album in three years. It's called Fittingly Sincere. And the latest single is called Ground.

Take a listen. Put a smile on a broken mute Something out the sunset pleases me and brings out the past in you I could stare at you all evening melting into that mountain song I'm focusing on my breathing wondering all our god so hot I've always sort of been struck by Khalid's voice It's not one that you can run from and it doesn't really fit into like the traditional cast of pop characters? No, he's

He's not a crooner. He's not a rapper either, but he's sort of mumble rap aligned. I don't know what to sort of make of his sound. He says that he wrote this song in particular years ago through moments of uncertainty when he wasn't really sure what his purpose as an artist was. I think a lot of his music is sort of focused on like uncertainty, naivete. When he was younger, a lot of it was obviously wrapped up in being. young and dumb and not knowing which way to go.

Now it seems like he's turned that sincerity inward and is looking at himself as a creator as somebody who makes music. What did you make of this song? I mean, I kept thinking about a piece that you wrote earlier this year about the sort of state of the R&B showman tied to Usher's performance at the Super Bowl

and how Khalid is somebody who's maybe not really in a place to take up that mantle just because he is so interior. He is, he's not about being a showman. He's not about sort of like, you know, flexing shirtless. Like, it's, it's everything that he's saying is sort of like ricocheting off the walls of his mind. There's nothing really forward about him. He is constantly sort of thinking about not just himself,

but his most quiet moments, the more intimate moments that he shares with very small groups of people. It is sort of interesting because when he debuted, I mean, with location, I thought of his music as being sort of like uniquely of its time, like very much like mid-tier iPhone era. Yeah. But it seems like he is trying to extend beyond that into something more timeless, maybe leaning into like the soul man aspects of his voice a bit more.

Yeah. The idea of like being grounded amid the highs of celebrity is like a very like. A interesting and sort of self-reflective place to end up for The American Teen. Well, we'll see what he does with it. That is the new album from Khalid Sincere. I'm going to take us to a more colorful place with the new album from Orville Peck, titled Stampede. Orville Peck's bio kind of feels to me like a pop culture madlib. Yeah.

He is a South African country musician, raised in musical things. theater. He becomes a queer icon, you know, guest judge on drag race. And by the way, he wears a mask and never shows his face in public. Right. There is something very whimsical about his whole thing. It's interesting that he is a country musician, but it doesn't seem like he is necessarily directly reaching, like the folks in Nashville specifically with his music. No. It seems like he has a broader bass. If anything, he seems more aligned with pop and maybe more with the queer and drag sides of pop. Yeah.

Which is not to say that that's out of place within country, but it is not, it is, it is, it is not the foot that Nashville likes to put forward. It's those theater kid roots. It's that theatricality. It's bigger, larger than life in your face, which I think you hear in the song from his new record, Death Valley High with Beck. Those devil's drinking one cold 45. So we should say a walk and cruise a strip at night.

Looks like you got a question in your eyes. Win some loose some baby who's got the time. So we should say, Stampede is his third album, and it is an album of duets. You've got Beck here on Death Valley High, kind of in his play that funky music, White Boy mode from the 90s. He even gets to rap again. You've also got Willie Nelson is here. Nelson is here, Kylie Minogue, Margo Price. There's a couple of originals.

This Beck song is an original, but there's also a lot of covers. He does Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting by Elton John with Elton John singing it with him. There's a flex. A duet album, I mean, he's in his mid-30s. That's usually a move that you pull when you're like 50 plus doing the sort of like career reboot thing. Right. But I don't know. I mean, at the same thing, it's like how different is it from like a hip hop album that's

covered in features. Like, maybe it's a weirdly savvy move. There is something, like, that seems to specifically work for him to me. Like, the performer aspect of, like, trying to match energies with someone else on every single song or trying to specifically channel Elton John with Elton John seems exactly like the kind of challenge that he looks to undertake in his music. Yeah. And I think it works out.

You can hear it in this Beck song. He pulls something out of Beck that just feels really, really nostalgic. I have not heard Beck appear to have this much fun in the studio for a long time. It is such a good time. And it's got this sort of like rip roaring down the Vegas strip energy. They sound like two bachelors just like on a losing streak, but they don't care because they're having such a good time. time and it's infectious.

It really just sort of washes over you. I mean, as much as we know Orville Peck is like a real person with like a real government name and like a driver's license and a social security number and stuff, as much as he's just become sort of a pop fixture and as much as pieces of the mask have literally started to strip away over time. I think now it's just more kind of like a domino mask that covers his eyes. Yeah. I think the fact that he has kept parts of himself.

secret in that way has allowed him to be a little bit ageless and to get away with pulling sort of, you know, stunts like this, things that might feel a little weird or sort of incongruous if we knew him a little better. There's something a little bit kind of elemental about him. There's definitely a character work aspect of it that seems to come into play, almost like a method actor working through different bits at different times, which like, what better opportunity than a duets album, than covers to take on such a mantle. Seems like he knows what he's doing.

That is Stampede, the new duets album from Orville Peck. Sheldon, what's next? I'm going to take us in a dramatically different direction from whimsy to, like, sort of deep soul with the artist Moses Sumney. There aren't many more intentional about their music. The genre fluid singer-songwriter

has a spellbinding voice and both of his albums, 2017's Aromanticism and 2020's Gray, are sublime records that sort of demonstrate the range of a visionary artist. He's taken some time away to pursue

other creative pursuits, among them the short-lived HBO series The Idol, and the Thai West horror film Maxine, which was released earlier this year. But he's returning this summer with a six-song EP called Softcore, that's S-O-P-H-C-O-R-E, which he has explained, explores the meeting

points between sensuality and intuition, esoterism and populism, deep feeling and fun, making music for the hips as well as the heart. That's a big, big ask, but if there's any artist that can take it on, it feels like it's him. Well, why don't we listen to the song Vintage? So what are you hearing here? This is a lot going on. Yeah, you know, Robin and I sort of talked about the other single from this EP Gold Coast on all songs. And listening to the two songs, you can sort of really sense how wide an array of sounds he's tapping into. But I think listening to Vintage on its own, I'm sort of grabbed by the malleability of his voice and like the sheer command that he seems to have over it at any given time. I imagine, listening to this EP, I imagined him sitting in the mixing booth.

and his finger hovering over a young thug switch. Just flicking it on every once in a while. Just give him a little taste of it. Yeah, he's, I mean, he never seems to do anything without purpose. And it definitely seems like in sort of like trying to straddle these binaries that he is trying to explore, he has the history of his own music on one side and then like a sort of dance music, rap music, like, a very

gyration, like, forward sound in the other half of his mind, and he's really trying to meld those two together. I think he does manage it. This is sort of like one of the quieter songs on this record. And it sort of

pulls together. I think there's like a sort of gentle pulse, even in his simplest stuff. That it never Robin noted, it always seems to be, moving. It never stays still. Like there's no static energy at any point. It is constantly shifting, constantly adding new elements. And I think in sort of tweaking his voice in this way, in the young thug sense, I mean, nobody is better at it than thug. But he reaches for

those heights in terms of like a little bit of a change up here, a little bit of a modulation there. All of a sudden, it bends your ear in a sort of weird way. And you're like, I have to refocus in on what he's doing. No. I imagine he's one of those people who, if you had a conversation with him, like he would listen to you, but you could sort of see behind his eyes. He'd always be like working on two or three other things. It just seems like one of those guys who doesn't sleep.

Yeah, there's definitely always an idea at the back of his mind being worked through. And I think being such a calculated artist has served him well. I'm glad he's back, but it feels like he needs time away. way to really sit and meditate on the things that he's working on so that he can really see his vision through. Yeah, no, excited to see what he does next. That is SoftCore by Moses Sumney. We are going to take a quick break.

We'll be right back. Okay, up next, Marin Morris, her new EP is called Intermission. Sheldon, the other day, just out of nowhere, I got the urge to put on 80s Mercedes, one of Marin Morris's first big singles from 2016. I hadn't heard in a while. Just kind of popped into my head. I sat down and listened and I came out of it being like, that's probably one of the greatest songs of the 21st century, isn't it?

I had never given it that do before. It is impeccably constructed. And she is somebody who has just treaded the line between country and pop as impressively as anybody in the past decade or so. She still has the ability to make music that makes sense in Nashville. But stuff like the middle, her song with Zed, I don't think there was a banjo or a mandolin, within miles of that studio. It's funny you say that

because I find myself constantly having to remind myself how far her music can be from the middle, both that song and like in the conceptual sense. Yeah. She can be so,

so skilled as a songwriter, so raw, so vulnerable. And the middle is like, to your point, as hyper-processed a pop song as there's ever been. Yeah. True, like, Target commercial core.

Yes. But she is, like, a real talent who can spring from that space all the way back to her Nashville roots and do so with, like, great skill. Take another page from a hero's book I haven't slept for days and the precious cook. I know with all the fish in the deep blue sea. Gonna get bored and take you home with me. Well, speaking of raw and vulnerable, this song, I hope I never fall in love. Feels like a tone setter for this project intermission. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but she got divorced recently.

Seems like she's in an intense transitional spot. Yes. So with this song, you get the Be My Baby drums, that, you know, classic iconic beat from the Ronette's song, but feels like kind of a dark joke. Because the lyrics are all about, like, protecting yourself, keeping a clear head, maybe having a little fun and taking somebody home, but not getting attached to anything. Yeah, I'm a bit of a sucker for a song where it seems like the artist is trying to convince themselves of something and not the audience. Yeah.

And it feels like on this song, we are sort of swept up in an internal monologue. Like, she has decided for herself, romance is out. I've been there, I've done that, seen it all, done it all, and I don't want to be a part of that anymore. And the language is so definitive. You can hold me to that. I'm not taking it back. I'm a woman of my word.

God as my witness, that was the last time. Yeah. So it's like there is a, it feels like she's like giving herself a pep talk. Yeah. Like she's pushing herself through everything that she's experienced and trying to come out on the other side whole. Because, I mean, the way that the song is structured to me, it doesn't feel like a real acknowledgement

that there will never be loving her life again. No. It feels more about the past than about the future. Totally, yeah. I mean, even the title of the project, intermission really feels like a boxer who's just, who, like, maybe, like, got, they got swung on a little hard in the last round, and they're being like,

just give me a second. They took an eight count. Yeah. Took a standing eight count, and now it's time to regroup. I got this, but you got to give me a minute. I would not be surprised if I found out that this thing was recorded, like, over a weekend where she just, like, entered, like, a fugue state and was, you know, called up a friend was just like, we got to lay this down right now.

Right. Anyway, I wonder where her next album is headed, if the dam is going to break a little more. Yeah, I mean, this is always a very fraught sort of emotional space. It can be even frauder creatively. Yeah. I think about someone else. in the same vein, Casey Musgraves, who people didn't respond. It was a different kind of divorce record, but people didn't quite respond to its energy.

Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see where this takes her. Totally. That's intermission, the new EP from Marin Morris. Just a couple more records coming out today in brief. Smashing Pumpkins have a new record called Agori Mori Mae. There is an Instagram video where Billy Corgan actually explained on record how you say it, because it does not look like it.

They have not released any singles from this record. They really wanted, they said, to have people come to it, experience it as a whole. I don't even think that they're printing physical copies of it yet. We'll see. David Lynch, yes, that David Lynch, is back in the studio as he sometimes is. He has a new project with the singer-songwriter Christabel called Cellophane Memories. JPEG Mafia announced a new project over this past weekend called I Lay Down My Life for You. We heard from him last, I think, spring, his joint project with Danny Brown, scaring the hose, which was a lot of fun.

And finally, Killer Mike, with a record called Songs for Sinners and Saints, Sheldon, you've written a lot lately about how rappers confront middle age. Killer Mike has been running at that task with abandon, I would say. Any ideas on what to expect with this album? Yeah, you know, Killer Mike is coming off a Grammy sweep for his 23 hours. album Michael, which really sort of seem to change the perception around his music, which is interesting that doesn't often happen for rappers in middle age. Yeah. But he seems to be leaning into it.

Songs for Sinners and Saints is billed as an epilogue to Michael. It's attributed to Michael and the Mighty Midnight Revival, his gospel group. And it seems to be sort of reinterpreting songs for that album. into like maybe more spiritual fair, which is saying a lot because that album was very faith-focused on its own. But it seems like in all the positive success that he's seen from this record, he is not quite ready to let it go. And I think there is still ideas to mind in that record.

And I think people should look forward to it. That's killer. Did that for Atlanta, bro. Swept up like a janitor. Got sent to the slammer, bro. The devil'll be doing you. Right when you doing it. The devil are ruined.

Behind me, Satan. That's killer mic, songs for sinners and saints. That is it for the lightning round, but that is not it for this week's new music. After the break, Michelle Indigiochello's new album, No More Water, which is so dense and in some places so jaw-dropping, we really needed to take a closer look. That's coming up right after this. Welcome back to New Music Friday. I'm Daewut.

I'm here with Sheldon Pierce. It is August 2nd, and apart from being the release date for all the music we heard before the break, it is also the birthday of an American icon, the writer and activist James Baldwin, who would have been 100 today. There are all kinds of celebrations of that centennial happening across all kinds of media, and PR has plenty of coverage on air and online, but of particular interest to us today is an artist who has never been known for half measures and who threw herself into her own recognition of Baldwin's life and work. If you saw her Tiny Desk concert this summer or heard her conversation with Ari Shapiro on all things considered, you know who I mean. Michelle Indigo cello, whose new album is called No More Water, the Gospel of James Baldwin. And it begins with a track called Travel. Balance. Balance. Balance. Bodies. Bodies. Water. Water. Water. Gold. Water. Magic. Gold. Packed. Tracked. Mercy. Mercy. Mercy. Mercy. Reefing.

Breathing, place. I've been flying, naked, dying. Yeah, you know, across a three-decade career, Michelle has been defined by her ability to defy categorization. Oh, yeah. In 1993, her debut album, Plantation Lelibis, became a North Star for the Neo-Soul movement. Yeah. Socially and politically enlightened, it found overlaps between.

Afrocentricity and Black American history. The music she has released since, I mean, it runs the gamut from alt rock and R&B to jazz and go-go, spanning something she called an anthropological mixtape, a dedication to Nina Simone, a covers record that had takes on songs from Prince and Chadeh and Janet Jackson and TLC, and most recently, the brilliant Omnicord Real Book,

which won the first ever Grammy Award for Best Alternative Jazz Album. Yeah, your first Blue Note record. Yeah. And her new record continues a conversation with the acclaimed activist, essayist, novelist, Baldwin, and builds on the bassist and band leader's efforts to stay meaningfully connected to the spectrum of black thinkers and artists across time. An effort that includes Audrey Lord, the critic Hilton Owls, and the poet's. and the poet Stacey Ann Chin.

The resulting record is sprawling yet focused, filled with rippling music and forceful spoken word interludes. Daoud, where do you want to dive into this one? Because it is massive. It is dense. I mean, you mentioned Stacey Ann Chin, and we should deal with it right away, because she is all over this record.

She is the first voice that we hear. I don't quite know how to define her role. I was trying to think of analogs to it. She is not quite a narrator. She is not quite a guide. She is closer, perhaps, to like, a Greek chorus. But I think you could almost call her, like, a sense of conscience or super ego, kind of budding into the proceedings.

Some of the time, with incredible, like, intensity and almost anger, as incredible as this thing is musically, it feels like it would be such a different project without her because she is there at critical moments to sort of snap you out of the trance and remind you, like, what the... the mission of this project really is. Yeah, it really does seem like her role is to, like, step in and smack some sense into you. Yeah.

Like, there are a lot of songs on here that are sweet and even beautiful. And then she sort of interjects and is like, hey, there is a real conversation to be had here. Don't get caught up in the beauty of this thing. Yeah. There is terror to talk about. Well, look, since we're talking about her, why don't we jump straight, to Baldwin Manifesto 1. This is the first of several chacks,

voiced totally by Stacey Ann Chin in spoken word, and it uses this kind of wild, cut-up editing technique. That the artist's struggle for integrity is a kind of metaphor for the universal and daily struggle for all human beings on the face of this terrifying globe to get to become human being. It is not our fault, not my fault that I write.

I would never have come before you in the position of a complainant for something I must do. What is the text that she's drawing from here? Yeah, these words are taken from the 1962 Baldwin talk, The Artist's struggle for integrity. And I think Chin's performance of it sort of channels in almost fractal relationship between the poet and the canon,

being in conversation with self and being in conversation with everything that has come before you, all building to this idea that poets, not statesmen or priests or union leaders, as Baldwin said, are the ones who understand. us and speak for us, which feels like an embodiment of this project's entire aims. In being in conversation with Baldwin, it is sort of expressing this idea that these two artists are the one who really know what is going on and are the only ones who can speak

to and for it. I hesitate to make this comparison because it feels a little bit glib, but I was thinking about the movie Memento, Christopher Nolan's breakout movie Memento, which has, in front of it the task of how to sort of simulate the experience of its lead character, this guy who has this brain injury where he can't make new memories and the whole world is resetting for him, you know, every couple of minutes. And it's difficult to do through regular narrative means if you can't reach inside your audience's brain. So he decides to use an editing technique and tell the movie in reverse. So that even though it's, you know, a fairly straightforward and

story where all the story beats kind of makes sense, if it's happening in reverse, then yeah, something will happen and you won't know what's coming next because in your experience of it, it hasn't happened yet. And I thought about that a lot with the way that this record is structured and this track in particular, because I got the feeling really of basically what it's like when your mind is sort of moving so quickly that the sort of your consciousness can't keep up with it. You know, you've got so many things kind of pouring through you that, you know, you can do your best to kind of write them down, but the faucet is all the way on.

Yeah, it does seem like it is moving through so many ideas, so quickly, so intensely. I think Stacey and Chin is a representation of the foreset which you are supposed to be struck with a lot of these thoughts. Yeah. They are supposed to press up against you and bear down on you so you cannot avoid them. I think a lot of the literal text of these songs is like, hey, get it through your head that this is something you need to be thinking about.

Well, let's go back to the star of the show. Why don't we talk about On the Mountain? Because to me, that's sort of where the record begins in earnest after a little bit of an overture. It starts with this kind of loose, almost ambient section, and then the drums join, and this amazing groove kicks in. I instantly thought of two things. One, I thought of all of the gender confusion that I experienced as a kid hearing Tracy Chapman for the first time. Because Michelle and Diego cello's voice, like Tracy Chapman's, exists in a sort of in-between space that is really, I think, unfamiliar if you're just, you have a binary understanding of what masculine and feminine voices sound like. The other thing is the concept of the bassist as band leader, which is itself a weird in-between category.

If you are a bassist who leads a band, you have to always be wrestling with how to compose and play, and even in post-production how to mix a song or an album in a way that feels central and primary and gives your instrument the sort of command that it deserves, but not a little. overbearing because the bass is essentially a support instrument. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because I've always thought of androgyny as being key to Michelle's musical identity. Yeah. She told the believer in 2014 that growing up, it was very clear that she could engage

physically with both genders. And that carries into the way that she sort of unleashes her voice. Like, it can be this sort of supple, very slender, very life. instrument, but she can also really press into it and it can be brawny and muscular and full-bodied in tone. And she does feel like a bassist first in a lot of senses, but I really have always thought that there's maybe something a bit easier for artists working in jazz and funk because rhythm and groove are so essential and forward in that music. I think a record like this feels balanced. because her music is weighted

toward the propulsion of her bass. She is so used to, like, thrusting into it in that way as the center of her sound. And so there's no way for it not to be balanced in that sense. Why don't we jump ahead to a song that is less based-focused,

the price of the ticket? I'm just walking, trying to get home. I do not. Give me wings to fly. Before they shoot me died. I die. Don't let them shoot me down and I die.

I experienced this as sort of an all-fly-away kind of riff, just sort of like a simple hymn, grounded in this finger-picked guitar, but weighted down by the force of what is being said in the lyrics, which is that in contrast to I'll fly away, it's not about, you know, the hope to go to heaven and be reunited with the Eternal or whatever, the hope here is to stay on Earth as long as possible,

i.e. to not be shot. Yeah, it's interesting. This song comes right after Raised the Roof, which is like this very sort of striking slam poetry-esque performance from Stacey Ann Chin, that it has this surging momentum and this forceful cadence, and it like delivers, body blows about the police brutality state,

a militant policing at its effects, white supremacist frameworks in America. And then you have this song, which is such a spellbinding come down from that pummeling force. Like, good cop, bad cop is perhaps the worst possible metaphor to use here. But I know what you mean.

But there is this duality that plays out across these songs. The demand of Raise the Roof versus this like really gentle plea for life that comes on the price of the ticket. And I think it's interesting that they play in that order and reverse to your point about momentum. Yeah. It feels like a kind of case study in the union between text and performance and the ways that in certain art forms, those things kind of become inseparable.

Because Raise the Roof is the kind of thing that if I were just dealing with the text, I can imagine it existing just kind of as prose. I could see it as like an op-ed and be like, okay, this is an op-ed written by a poet, so maybe it has a little bit of that fluidity to it. But it is not, you know, it doesn't immediately scream verse. The way that she delivers it, though, it is shoved into the realm of verse because there is that intense sort of gathering rhythmic intensity to it. And it's slam poetry is the right comparison,

And even though, like, I don't know. There's a certain connotation that comes with slam poetry that I don't want people to get it twisted. Like, this is, like, very artful, very intimate, very intuitive in a way that, like, maybe people's, like, expectations of the worst slam poetry isn't? No shade to slam poetry. Yeah, there's great slam poetry. But if you're not in that community, your first thought when you hear that phrase is kind of the caricature of it, right? It's the sort of, like, herky joke. I always think about there's a bit in Parks and Rec where she does an impression of a slam poet.

And it's like, yes, this is what people think of when they think of slam poetry. Or like, Janine Garofalo and half baked. Did you see that? But this is so far away from that. There is something so raw and so vulnerable about the way that she leans into phrases here. Yeah. And so intentional. And it feels musical in a way that never feels like too out of pocket with the rhythms that are being laid down across the record.

It feels just in tune to the message of the record. It feels like she's sermonizing, I guess. That's maybe the other analog besides poetry is ministry. It feels like she is, you know, channeling something beyond herself and sort of the pace at which it kind of moves through her is variable. And when, you know, when it needs to pick up steam, that's what she does with her voice. Just to get to some of the highlights from the back half of this record, what did I do is a song that I found so, like, mesmerizing and sad musically. It is a lesson in restraint.

There is no percussion until, like, halfway through. And then there's a hand clap that scared the hell out of me. But it revolves around this phrase, what would you do if we became. you. What would you do? Very arresting phrase. I'm curious what you think that means. Yeah, you know, I mean, the slow build of this one feels like almost a perfect compliment to like the simmering anger that stews beneath the surface of this music.

I read that lyric as a call for reflections on systematic white violence, for empathy. Like fear of black violence is the impetus for a lot of advocacy of military policing. which is ironic considering the direction that the violence is occurring in those cases. Understanding that, I think the lyric harnesses the nightmare of the perpetrators. It's like, what if systematic violence were weaponized you without recourse? Yeah. You know, you've written about Vince Staples a bunch. You know that video for Senorita?

Yeah. So Senorita is a Vince Staples track from Summertime of Six, is his first big record that paints this picture of sort of like urban destitution and violence, but it is like cranked up to an almost absurd level. It's totally, it's like over the top and there's like, you know, like gun turrets over, you know, over a city and people getting shot down randomly. And then at the end, the camera backs out and you see that all of this has been happening behind glass and there is a white family, sort of like stereotypical very, you know, like 1950s white nuclear family observing it all. And it is this moment of the artist sort of

reaching through the screen and sort of challenging the game. gaze through which all of this is being seen, breaking the fourth wall. And I think what I hear you saying here, and it comes up over and over again in this record, is that there is an investment here in not allowing the viewer to vanish. It is like implicating you at every turn. It's reminding you that you're part of this too. Witnessing is an action, you know, inaction is a choice, no comment is a comment. And when you're talking about violence against an entire people, and, you know, the thesis here is that there's just, there's no such thing as neutrality. Yeah. And it's interesting.

because there's a line on the next song, Trouble. Everybody's down for the struggle until it begins, which is about as pointed a bit of phrasing as you can find across this record. The subtext of that couplet is that sort of armchair activism can eventually become numbing and the language of oppression can feel useless to those people. And so there is a responsibility

of the people being victimized by the violence to then like continuously keep those people engaged in the violence that is being committed and saying, hey, this thing matters, constantly reframing its value. The vibe is very much like, must we keep finding ways to express that these lives matter?

Right. And in order to get you to actively participate. Why do I have to teach my oppression? Right. Yeah. Absolutely. And it is so, effective throughout of pushing those buttons in a way that doesn't feel preachy.

It almost feels like it's forcing you into a conversation that you don't want to have. Yeah. Why don't we close with Thus Sayeth the Lord? That is L-O-R-D-E for Audrey Lord. Yes. Some similar sentiments here about systems of oppression. The master's tools never dismantle the master's house. All of that we've heard on this record up to this point.

But the rhythm of this thing. is the most arresting part to me. Audrey Lord said, we were never meant to survive. Lord said, if I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. The Lord tells us that there is no thing as a single issue struggle

because we do not live single issue lives. It has this very, I feel like I use the word elemental already, But that really is the word. It feels the way that wind and water feel. It is, I don't know how I would count this song, but it doesn't feel difficult to follow. And amazingly, there is a spoken word break in the middle of it where the music cuts out entirely and then comes back and it does not feel jarring. Yeah, I mean, that balance between virtuosity and, like, text seems to be, like, representative

of the marriage of those two things across. the whole record. You know, thinking about this record in conversation with Baldwin and thinking about the Baldwin Centennial, there, as you've noted, have been a lot of celebrations of his work and there will continue to be over the course of the next few weeks, likely. But this record isn't simply channeling Baldwin as an idea or an ideal. It's thinking of the written and spoken words as fundamental forms to understanding the issues herein and how to overcome them, and it's thinking about them in specific relationship to her extreme talent as a bassist, as a vocalist, as a music arranger. She almost thinks about these passages as like

parts of a tapestry that she is creating, sort of not only honoring this revered figure, who means so much to so many people, but also honoring the legacy that you. he represented. Yeah, no. It feels like there's a real continuity to all of it. Just sort of saying, like, this all exists on, you know, on part of the same spectrum. I just happen to be pulling a particular thread of it. Absolutely. Well, that'll do it for our discussion of Michelle and Degucello's No More Water, the Gospel of James Baldwin. If you heard this album and you're as stuck on it as we are, please let us know you can write to us at all songs at npr.org with your thoughts. And remember to head to npr.org for more of the network's coverage of James Baldwin.

Baldwin at 100. And that is our show. Thank you for being with us. Next week, we will have new albums to digest from Raven Lenei, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Big Sean, Jay Balvin, and more. So please come back for that. As always, you can send us your feedback at all songs at npr.org. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash music newsletter. And remember, you can get this show sponsor-free and also support our work by joining NPR Music Plus. Go to plus.npr.org slash NPR music or search for NPR music in Apple Podcasts to sign up. Today's episode was produced by Noah Caldwell. Our editor is Jacob Gans, and we had production support from Linnea Anderson. I'm Daiud Tyler Amin. I'm Sheldon Pierce.

Happy listening. See you next week.