Before there was Hip-Hop, it was funk, Neo-soul and R&B serving as a soothing sound to the human souls.
In 2021, Grammy Award winning singer and song writer Judith Hill’s lovely and beautiful spirit remains at the pinnacle of her career after releasing Baby I’m Hollywood March 5.
“Baby I’m Hollywood” illustrates a theme of Hill unpacking her emotions through music and how her songs display cloudy days despite moments of frustration.
One of the powerful messages from Hill covers her identity addressing topics that she faces as a woman of color. The album was originally recorded in 2019 prior to COVID-19.
Hill confirmed with us she’s been beyond impressed with the evolution of her growth dating way back to 2015 when she emerged as a sensational artist.
“The continuation of the journey. The first album Back in Time was really kind of like the debut. It had the cover of me as a kid and it really was about me celebrating my love for Funk and Soul music. Baby I’m Hollywood is more of a personal statement. I’m kind of taking funk and soul music in…and still allowing it to be celebratory but also bringing in some of these darker emotions.”
Hill was a kid who grew up in a musical family with roots learning different genres from her mother and father.
“It’s a really great observation. I think also just as a society, romance is dead. If you go back to Motown and you listen to The Temptations or Smokey Robinson (classic love songs), people were slow dancing. That idea is completely boring right now…nobody would get up and do that. I think that kids these days…we don’t really connect with the idea of romance in a way. We’re almost in an emo space, very internal, antsy or angry…or we want to just pop off and party having a one night stand.”
Romance was the engine of Soul music in the 1960s’ and 70s’ prior to the rise of Hip-Hop/Rap transforming regular people portraying their reality through hurt, greed, materialism and frustration.
“So Americana is really about just being an observer of this place we live in America. As a woman of color as a biracial woman,” Hill said. “The ideal of how capitalism affects people of color and it’s like this greed of people taking what they can get. It’s just a dangerous place and people getting killed…being a part of the life in the struggle living in America. The song is like you better look both ways to see whose coming.”
Hill puts into perspective the atrocities Black people and people of color face given a land which promises justice for all is seen as hypocrisy.
Hill’s song entitled “You Got the Right Thang” climbed to No. 1 on Spotify’s Nu-Funk playlist.
