''Legacy! Legacy!'' is the second

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by American singer-songwriter and poet

Jamila Woods Jamila Woods (born October 6, 1989) is a Chicago-based American singer, songwriter and poet. Woods is a graduate of St. Ignatius College Prep and Brown University, where she received a BA in Africana Studies and Theater & Performance Studies. H ...

, released on May 10, 2019, by

Jagjaguwar Jagjaguwar is an American independent record label based in Bloomington, Indiana, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Jagjaguwar is a label included in Secretly Group, which also includes ...

. Woods supported the album with her own concert tour, along with performing as the opening act for the rapper

Common Common may refer to: Places * Common, a townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland * Boston Common, a central public park in Boston, Massachusetts * Cambridge Common, common land area in Cambridge, Massachusetts * Clapham Common, originally com ...

's tour in 2019 and the singer Raphael Saadiq's 2020 Jimmy Lee Tour.

Critical reception

The album was met with widespread critical acclaim. Reviewing for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, Andy Kellman hailed it as a "galvanizing declaration of pride, support, and discontent", as well as a "modern R&B album" with mostly " electro-soul" and "chunky hip hop" productions. Ann-Derrick Gaillot from ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'' credited Woods's

neo soul Neo soul (sometimes called progressive soul) is a genre of popular music. As a term, it was coined by music industry entrepreneur Kedar Massenburg during the late 1990s to market and describe a style of music that emerged from soul and contempo ...

style for "captur ngthe power of

black pride Black Pride in the United States is a movement which encourages black people to celebrate African-American culture and embrace their African heritage. In the United States, it was a direct response to white racism especially during the Civi ...

" and achieving a novel musical accomplishment, "in which she melds disparate influences and pushes her vocal-layering techniques to build her dynamic neo-soul sound". In his Substack-published "Consumer Guide" column,

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

highlighted musical qualities on the songs "Miles", "Muddy", "Zora", and "Basquiat" while saying of the album as a whole: "This poetry-with-sophistofunk tribute to a sharp selection of 20th-century African-American art heroes plus

Frida Kahlo Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (; 6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, ...

will always be a tad too atmospheric and impressionistic to suit me. But it does both flow and signify." In a year-end essay for ''

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

'', Ann Powers cited ''Legacy! Legacy!'' as one of her favorite albums from 2019 and proof that the format is not dead but rather undergoing a "metamorphosis". She added that

concept album A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...

s had reemerged through the culturally-relevant autobiographical narratives of artists such as Woods, who created a tribute to her ancestors "that spoke volumes about black life today".

Critical reception

Accolades

Track listing

Charts

References