Jamila Woods Lets Go & Finds Solace On 'Water Made Us'

Jamila Woods cut her teeth on the Chicago poetry circuit – she published her first collection in 2012 and later helped organize Louder Than a Bomb, an annual youth poetry festival. A few years later, Woods decided to set her poetry to music. Her debut album, HEAVN, released in 2016 to widespread critical acclaim, established the now 34-year-old as an immediate and vital new voice in the overlapping worlds of neo-soul and R&B. Woods’ 2019 follow-up Legacy! Legacy! further cemented her as a force, effortlessly merging heady ideas with inventive melody. 

Woods’ first two albums explored big topics – womanhood, family lineage, slavery, and the realities of being Black in America. Water Made Us, Woods’ third, and best, album,tackles an even more grand and universal experience: relationships. But she does so with a fine-tooth comb, crafting songs bursting with intimate details on a diorama-sized scale that loosely trace the relationship lifecycle: the boundless beginning, the comfortable middle, the abrupt end, and, crucially, the reflective aftermath. 

Woods begins this journey with “Bugs,” where she wrestles with an inner voice imploring her to put up a “moat” rather than let a new suitor into her world. Swiss producer Alissia Beneviste conjures chords that sound like butterflies in the stomach. Woods is precise in detailing the self-protective “bugs” that might snuff a new spark before it’s lit – “You got a lotta hair”; “Chew too loud, talk too much.”

These granular details are Woods’ strongest trait as a writer and elevate material that otherwise might feel cliche. Woods is deft at producing images and metaphors that ground lofty concepts and ideas – budding love is a tiny garden, emotional misconnection is a thermostat, jealousy is a low flame. Even more than in her past work, Woods looks straight into the water’s reflective surface, training the lens directly upon herself, shedding any pretense.   

Water Made Us excels when Woods channels her poetic flare into warm neo-soul tracks that wouldn’t feel out of place in a 1998 Soulquarians session. The first single “Tiny Garden” is a sprightly ode to the patience required to tend to a young love that has yet to find its feet: “It’s not gonna be a big production/It’s not butterflies or fireworks/Said it’s gonna be a tiny garden/But I’ll feed it every day.”

Co-producer Chris McClenney – who executive produced the entire album – wraps Woods’ hopeful lyrics in instrumentation warm enough to thaw her “iceberg heart.” McClenney and others, including longtime collaborator Peter CottonTale, keep the vibe light and bouncy, even on tracks that touch upon the heavier aspects of a relationship. 

“Backburner,” a song about past loves, jealousy, and regret, starts with a muted acoustic guitar before upping the tempo with Afrobeat flourishes, despite the raw lyrics: “My jealousy is teachin’ me the empty cups that need filling.” Similarly, McClenny and company (NAO co-produces here) turn “Boomerang” – where Woods doubts the viability of a relationship – into an effervescent dance ditty. 

Water Made Us sees Woods letting go and recognizing the limits of control and the benefits of surrender. This is evident in the making of the album itself – Woods collaborated with more producers and co-writers than on past projects. Across these 17 tracks (four of which are spoken interludes), Woods finds peace amid the ebbs and flows of a relationship by taking off the pressure and dodging expectations. 

“Practice,” a clear album highlight, repurposes the famed Allen Iverson quoteinto an earworm about enjoying each relationship for what it is, rather than solely seeking “the one.” Woods refuses to draw clear, definitive conclusions on “Wolfsheep,” a folksy dirge with the deceptively profound refrain, “Everybody’s good/No one is.”

By the end of the album, Woods emerges with clarity: relationships do not have a clear beginning and end; they aren’t morality tales with a protagonist and antagonist. Relationships are messy, unpredictable, and irrevocably make us who we are, for better or worse. Better buckle up and let the water take you.