Jamila Woods Quotes
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Naming something, putting it on record, in a lyric, feels like affirming people. Ideally, that's what politicians should want to do: to put laws or policies in place that speak to people's experiences, to make them feel heard.
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In church, the music is for everyone. People are singing off tune, loud; they're not ashamed - it's for their healing. That's kind of just what I strive for, that feeling.
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I have a band called M&O. We were working on our first album in 2011 or 2012. We were looking for people to collaborate with, and I met Chance through a Young Chicago Authors poetry slam.
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I'm nearsighted, in part, because I would read past my bedtime in the dark. I didn't want my mom to see that I was still awake.
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It was through poetry I learned just to appreciate my own voice and to not think of my voice in terms of what it needs to be able to do, but what it can do.
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Part of our pedagogy is, you report on what's going on in your neighborhood and your city.
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That's important for artists to remember: some people would like to be spokespeople, but others would like their art to speak.
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My hope is that 'Blk Girl Soldier' is a freedom song for black women today who are fighting the macro- and microaggressions of daily life in our city/country/world.
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My mentor made me say a poem over and over. 'Stop! That's not your voice. Start again.' I was sobbing by the end, but it drilled into my head that my voice is important.
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I wish that more people, especially young people, were taught about self-love at a younger age.
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I've seen Chance and the Social Experiment build their own careers in the way that's most authentic to them.
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My entrance to music was singing gospel in church, and to hear that gospel language in a hip-hop song was cool.
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The good things about Chicago save me on a daily basis, like getting to work with my students, seeing a beautiful part of the city, or seeing the people that I love.
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I think a lot of people, in general, have whatever mechanisms they have in order to go through the day. For me, I do just literally have post-it notes and other little messages to strengthen me on hard days, or just on regular days, to remind me - to remind ourselves - of our dopeness.
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I really liked 'Blk Girl Art.' It's like a manifesto saying why I create, whether it's poetry or music.
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When I started writing poetry, it was always in very hip-hop influenced spaces: Someone would teach a Nas song side-by-side with a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, and we'd talk about the connections between those things.
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It's important to me that there's not just one story told about our city. 'LSD' is an ode to Chicago, a song for the complicated love I have for my city.
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I started writing poems on a Xanga page. I always loved writing. I also had a Deviant Art page, actually, because my crush had one, too.
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My mentors were very good.
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I hold strongly to my identity as a Chicago artist and want to do whatever I can to participate in creating a strong community here so that artists don't feel pressure to move somewhere else to succeed.
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I don't sound like other people. My voice isn't as loud and can't do certain things athletically.
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The lake was always my orienting point when my dad was teaching me how to not get lost. The lake is east, so you'll always know that. It's a weird thing where you can kind of feel where you're at in Chicago, and when I was downtown, I was like, 'Oh, it feels more open over here. That must be east.' It felt like a little secret thing.
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The beach is still a public place, and that's an amazing grace about Chicago. We have so many problems, but the water always stays. That inspires me and keeps me inspired about the city and keeps me hopeful.
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My art gets called political, as opposed to my intending it to be political. I think that's something that happens with black artists or marginalized voices trying to speak truth. Because there are things in the status quo to speak out against, speaking out against them will inherently be political.