Chicago poet and musician Jamila Woods is back with her first album since 2019. Water Made Us, a successor to LEGACY! LEGACY!, is set to arrive October 13 via Jagjaguwar. Lead single “Tiny Garden” features duendita and was produced by Wynne Bennett. The track is a subdued, beautiful hip-hop instrumentation with Woods ruminating about commitment atop the arrangement. “Tiny Garden” and its accompanying video (directed by Woods herself) work across themes of water, and the album’s title references a beloved quote from Toni Morrison, in which the Ohio author said: “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
Woods explains about “Tiny Garden”: “‘Tiny Garden’ is a song about the way my heart works, the slow and steady way I love. In my directorial debut I wanted to create a visual representation of how I often feel in relationships, like I’m having huge feelings that I end up expressing in small specific ways. The video takes place across two landscapes, the reality of a shared apartment at the tail end of winter and an imagined ‘heartspace’ where everything is lush and green. I worked with my friend and frequent collaborator Po Chop on the choreography, so that the movement becomes the key to merging these two worlds—everywhere I dance, something is watered, something grows.”
Watch the video for “Tiny Garden” here.