Meshell Ndegeocello

Totally.

Plus, he's collaborating with some amazing artists like Meshell Ndegeocello.

That could bring a whole new flavor to his music.

Speaking of collaborations, did you see that he's also working with Macy Stewart and Marquis Hill? It seems like a really diverse lineup.

No one really knows.

But all the poems from the record before When the Poems Do What They Do, my first record, were all written and performed and lived in my body and in the world before I came to work with the, the musicians, and I think that's important to me, and it was important to Meshell as well, and, and that was a big thing for her, Meshell Ndegeocello, who's helped produce the r- this ra- record, along with Justin Brown, was, was that the poems were supposed to be the focal point, that the music, um, the instrumentation and the, and the musicians were to, to respond to and engage with the words in an intentional way.

So when you are in the studio, or w- you go into the studio, you've, you've written these poems, you've recited them, you've performed them for audiences, and there is Meshell Ndegeocello with her bass and drummer Justin Brown, and do the perfor- do they have to kind of [laughs] match your performance? Or does your performance bend to them to some, to, to, to some degree in some cases?

I think it's a little bit of both, right? 'Cause for example, Hollyweird, I mean, the beauty of what I love about this album is that so much of it is, is so, uh, wide-ranging in terms of the experimentation and the sounds, you know? And what's happening in the music is...

it's, it's not all one specific genre, one specific rhythm, or one specific tone.