Story by: Noisey Staff
A day in the life of the Chicago-based singer in her hometown to talk about her rise to prominence and her work with Young Chicago Authors.
It was hard to find Jamila Woods’s music two years ago. An early affiliate of the Savemoney collective with a dextrous voice and background in poetry, she appeared alongside Chance the Rapper—most prominently on Surf‘s “Sunday Candy” and the SNL performance of the song around Christmas 2015. Beyond that, there were a couple of demo tracks and live cuts, backed up by Donnie Trumpet and Saba. Unlike many of her peers in Chicago—Noname, Kewku Collins, Towkio—Woods seemed to be intentionally under-the-radar.
“Since I was young, I would sing songs into a hairbrush, into the mirror,” she says.
Two years on, and Woods is a rising star with a brilliant LP behind her. Heavn, released last July, was the full realization of Woods’s vocal and lyrical clarity, a defiant record constructed on neo-soul chords. “Heavn opens the floodgates for self-exploration and discovery,” Tara Mahadevan wrote in her profile of Woods for Noisey last year. “For what it means to be black, to be a black woman, to be a poet, to be an educator, and now, to be a solo artist.”
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