Pitchfork: Your whole album seems to reference my own childhood in Chicago—you riff off damn near everything from hand games to church to “Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Jamila Woods: I like to borrow forms and quotes, and use a lot of allusions, in both poetry and music. 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. A lot of hip-hop is about that sort of sampling and referencing, which makes the music a lot richer and also shows you a lot about the person—about me—and what my influences are.

“VRY BLK” is like your twist on “Miss Mary Mack.” Why did you decide to riff off that, and how old were you when you first learned those hand games?

I was maybe 8, and it was at a summer art camp where all we would do was hand games. But the camp was a severely difficult social experience for me, because I was really shy. I remember the teacher made us stand up and sing a song on the first day, and I was trying to keep the theme song of “Full House” in my mind, because that was my favorite show. I was really nervous, just singing it in my head, and then they got to me, and I stood up and I forgot all the music. There was nothing in my brain. Nothing. I was just standing there. And then I started crying. The teacher was like, “It’s OK. Just sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star,’” and then I sang “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” through my sobbing tears. I was just like, “Wow, I’m not going to make any friends.” But it got better after that.

Jamila Woods: “VRY BLK” [ft. Noname] (via SoundCloud)

The track “HEAVN” is about loving right here and now, yet you sing of an older couple on the song: “They’re dancing in the deepest ocean, see not even death could stop them.” Is that a reference to slavery and the black folk tale collection The People Could Fly?

Yeah. I read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison in college, and it just blew my mind. Then I did the research behind the flying African myth and read about the stories of slaves that jumped off the boats during the Middle Passage, made an underwater colony, and lived there. All those stories are really fascinating to me, especially in this moment—I was looking at the #Blexit hashtag on Twitter today—when there’s all these different images of leaving and what that looks like. And especially being from Chicago, where a lot of artists always want to leave, which makes sense, because we don’t have the same resources or connections that New York or L.A. might have. But Chicago is where a lot of my inspiration comes from; it’s where my family’s from. There is a lot of history buried in Chicago that I still have yet to discover. So a lot of the album is about: How do I stay here? How do black people stay in America? Survive here?

Jamila Woods: "HEAVN" (via SoundCloud)

Is it accurate to call your music “protest music”? Is that too strong? Not strong enough?

When you hear the term “protest music,” it might feel like it’s supposed to sound one way, like maybe super militant or super strong, or with chants. I definitely do that, but I also think of “protest music” [differently] because I was in the Chicago Children’s Choir. We sang a lot of gospel music, because the founder was a preacher and believed in bringing together kids from around the city to sing. We always sang “Precious Lord” and [artistic director] Josephine [Lee] would be like, “This was Martin Luther King’s favorite song, and so whenever he got tired of marching, he would sit down and ask the choir to sing this song so that he could keep going.” So, in that sense, my music is protest music—not just the music that you march to, but also the music that you rest and refuel to.

The song “Holy” references Biblical passages but ultimately looks within to find a sense of peace. You sing: “I’m not lonely, I'm alone/And I'm holy by my own.”

In the first part of that song, I’m thinking about how hard it is for people, especially black people, to find love and to love each other, especially in the context of Chicago, where you can be afraid. Some of my students can’t go to a certain corner store or walk down a certain street. You have to be very afraid all the time. That’s not a conducive environment to loving someone. How can Chicago be a place where love can exist with everything that’s going on?

Jamila Woods: "Holy" (via SoundCloud)

How are you able to balance being an artist with teaching budding artists?

Maybe having a full-time job and being an artist won’t always work, but I would always like to work with young people. When I was making my album I wasn’t able to keep writing poetry at a certain point. But now that I’m teaching a summer program, it’s really sparking my mind and helping me to get back into writing by talking to the students about writing and hearing what they’re doing and going out to different museums and seeing how can we be inspired by different art forms. It’s really good for me to have pockets of time when I can really focus on teaching, because it revitalizes my practice in a way that’s really refreshing.