JAMILA WOODS RELEASES NEW ALBUM ‘WATER MADE US’

WATER MADE US TOUR KICKS OFF FEBRUARY 1ST

Chicago musician and poet Jamila Woods shines on her new album Water Made Us, out today via Jagjaguwar. Across the 17-track album, executive produced by McClenny and Jamila Woods with additional production from Wynne Bennet, Alissia Benveniste, Peter CottonTale, and more, Jamila embraces new genres, playful melodies, and hypnotizing wordplay, asking the question: What does it mean to fully surrender into love? A forceful and captivating reemergence for the prolific artist, Water Made Us spans everything from autotuned R&B on “Send A Dove” to gentle acoustic folk rock on the heart wrenching “Wolfsheep”, and bubbly dreampop on dance anthem and second single “Boomerang”. Leading up to the album, Jamila released a slew of additional singles— “Tiny Garden” ft. duendita, “Good News” and “Practice” ft. Saba—that set the tone for an album that wades through the exhilarating tumult of love’s wreckage and refuge, revealing a side of Jamila never fully shared with her previous work and making this her most personal album yet.

On Water Made Us, Jamila notes:

“Water Made Us is a study on relationships. My heart is wired this way for a reason and I’m always seeking to understand it. These songs attempt to create new language to express my hesitancy, my ambivalence, my attachments, my obsessions. Shoutout to all of my collaborators who inspired me and pushed me to grow through the process of making the album. I’m so grateful for the many lessons water teaches, especially surrender, lessons I stay learning again and again.”

Water Made Us is Jamila’s first full-length since 2019’s critically acclaimed LEGACY! LEGACY!, a record that showcased an extraordinary introspection that persists in her new work. The album’s previously released singles “Boomerang” “Tiny Garden” featuring duendita—a song that Pitchfork named Best New Track—, “Good News”, and “Practice” featuring Saba received further coverage from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, FADER and more.

The album’s title is a subtle reference to a well-known 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 arc of the album. While 2017’s critically acclaimed HEAVN found Woods 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. Coming out of her Legacy! Legacy! touring schedule and into 2020’s Covid-19 quarantine, Jamila wanted to challenge herself to write as many songs as possible, and spent several months in a state of deep creativity and self-reflection. But despite giving herself this freedom to write without worry, she still yearned for a story to tie her disparate songs together. Early songs revealed a simmering common thread: love, relationships, and the hard lessons learned in their wake. Journaling, therapy, and frequent consultations with a trusted astrologer all began to reflect Jamila’s own patterns in love and intimacy back to her. After being connected with LA-based producer McClenney, the album’s story began to take shape, and the two worked together building each song from scratch. What came is an album that at every new turn opens the door to Jamila’s heart, revealing her both at her strongest and most vulnerable.

Earlier this week Woods announced a US, UK and European tour. Kicking off in Seattle on February 1st, 2024, the thirteen-date US tour will feature support from Kara Jackson on all dates, hitting San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, DC, New York, and more before ending with a hometown Chicago show on February 23rd. She’ll then head overseas for a handful of dates in April. Tickets for the tour go on sale today at 10:00amlocal time HERE.