Binghamton Underground Music Presents (BUMP) will be bringing Chicago-based singer-songwriter Jamila Woods to campus on May 2 for its spring semester show.
For its past two shows, BUMP has hosted tropical futurist group Combo Chimbita and rapper JPEGMAFIA as headliners. Woods is a neo-soul singer best known for her collaborations with Chance the Rapper. She contributed to the song “Sunday Candy” by Chance’s group, Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment and sang on the song “Blessing” from Chance’s 2016 mixtape, “Coloring Book.”
In 2016, Woods released her debut album, “HEAVN,” featuring notable collaborations with Chance the Rapper on the song “LSD” and Noname on “VRY BLK.” The album received critical acclaim for its lyrics and composition. A review of the album from Pitchfork called the compositions “resilient and steadfast without being angry and militant.”
On May 10, Woods will be releasing her second studio album, “LEGACY! LEGACY!” which will feature collaborations with oddCouple, Peter Cottontale and Slot-A. She released the album’s singles “ZORA” in February and “EARTHA” in March. In an interview with Pitchfork, Woods describes “ZORA” as “a song to get free from stereotypes [and] assumptions, inspired by the writing of Zora [Neale Hurston].”
Songs in the album will be named after influential African American artists such as Eartha Kitt, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sun Ra, James Baldwin and Octavia Butler.
“It’s kind of delving deeper into: who are the people who helped me think about what it means to be black, what it means to be a black woman, what it means to be a black artist,” Woods said in an interview with Jezebel.
Mika Itkin-Weinstein, BUMP chair and a senior majoring in English, said Jamila Woods is an exciting artist to have for the last show of the semester.
“I’ve been BUMP chair for five shows and this is my final show, so I thought I would go hard for the last show, go for a bigger artist,” she said. “Getting an artist like Jamila is very exciting. She’s a singer, poet, musician and just so incredible overall. I’ve been a fan for a long time and to be able to book her has been very exciting.”
Itkin-Weinstein also said Jillian Pizzuto, comedy chair of the Student Association Programming Board and a junior majoring in Spanish, helped put this semester’s show together.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do this show without the comedy chair because they really helped out with the budget for the event and allowed us to put on a bigger show that would attract a lot of people,” she said.