Jamila Woods

United States 🎤 Singers

Jamila Woods makes the kind of music that sounds simple until you sit with it and realize it's doing about fifteen things simultaneously, which is the specific genius of great R&B songwriting done by someone who's also a poet. The Chicago-born singer and spoken word artist has built a body of work — HEAVN, LEGACY! LEGACY! — that treats Black American art history as both subject matter and formal influence, naming albums after and building songs around figures from Eartha Kitt to Frida Kahlo to James Baldwin. She approaches music with an intellectual seriousness that would feel academic if the songs weren't also just beautiful to listen to — warm, melodic, produced with a restraint that lets the writing breathe. Woods has also been deeply embedded in Chicago's creative and activist communities, making her art genuinely connected to the city that made it. With 16 images in her library, she's building a profile that will eventually catch up to a talent that's been fully formed for a while.