To help him achieve that level of intimacy, McCraven enlisted trusted collaborators like guitarist Jeff Parker, trumpeter Ben LaMar Gay, harpist Brandee Younger, and bassist Junius Paul, all of whom have played on McCraven’s last few records. “Those are my people,” he says. “I like to work within my close, comfortable place—I like the vulnerability of it, the familyhood of the people I work with. I wanted all of that to be part of the record.”

Family, whether found or inherited, became the focus of We’re New Again. It’s a theme Scott-Heron explored and McCraven expanded upon, in part, by sampling recordings of his father drumming and his mother playing the recorder. “Gil, on this record, is really introspecting on his life,” McCraven says. “I connected it to my family.” Scott-Heron’s original LP is bookended by a two-part composition about his childhood called “On Coming From a Broken Home.” McCraven splits those into four pieces strung across We’re New Again, carrying the theme through like an artery shuttling blood cells.

Elsewhere, McCraven rearranged tracks to fit the thematic elements of Scott-Heron’s lyrics, letting content inform composition. On “New York Is Killing Me,” McCraven focused on the line, “I need to go home and take it slow in Jackson, Tennessee.” To translate the sentiment, he asked Gay to bring his diddley bow—a guitar-like, single-string American folk instrument—to the studio for a “down-home kind of vibe.” McCraven wanted to reinforce Scott-Heron’s word, but he also wanted to differentiate from the ultra-contemporary, electronic finish of the original. “I like to sample organic music,” he says, adding that I’m New Here sounds, in a way, like it’s already been remixed.

McCraven abstained from listening to the original, as well as Jamie xx’s We’re New Here, while developing We’re New Again. Instead, he focused on Scott-Heron’s isolated vocal tracks. “I wanted to come to this through the word, and not through what happened before,” he says. “I wanted to listen to Gil’s voice, have some context of those other records, but really focus on him.” While We’re New Here can feel like a Jamie xx record featuring Gil Scott-Heron, McCraven’s spacious arrangements are in close conversation with the original work.

When I mention to McCraven that he’s achieved this without making the project about himself, he seems slightly taken aback. “It definitely wasn’t my intention to make it about me,” he says. “It is about Gil.” He then pauses for a moment. “It’s interesting having to do interviews around this record, because a lot of it is his ideas and concepts. I just tried to support it with music and do something that connected with me. So I guess I did want to make it about me, you know? But not in an ostentatious type of way. I wanted to make it about me in the sense that this is my interpretation… whether it’s digging back to old childhood recordings I listened to with my dad, or just putting a lot of time into it.”

At Winter Jazzfest the next day, McCraven settles into his drum kit and the stage fills with musicians, including We’re New Again collaborators like Paul and Younger. Early on, a handful of players form a tight circle at center stage. They smile and nod to each other with a sense of warmth and familiarity, and it almost feels like we’re spying on some intimate living room jam. Slivers of Scott-Heron’s lyrics are broadcast over the ensemble. At times, a word or phrase hangs in the air before dissolving away, leaving McCraven and co. to communicate beyond the literal word.