UPDATED to add video of interview and listening party from May 9.

Singer, poet, and teaching artist Jamila Woods did a stint as city spokesperson during the press run for her 2016 debut, Heavn. She’s an activist herself, and mentoring is her method of choice. At Young Chicago Authors, a youth literary nonprofit where she serves as associate artistic director, she helps developing minds tap into their poetic selves and use their voices for change.

Poet and activist Nikki Giovanni lit the fuse: while Woods was teaching Giovanni’s 1973 poem “Ego Tripping” to her YCA students, she was inspired by its braggadocious homage to Black women. Then YCA artistic director Kevin Coval asked Woods to write a “cover” of his poem about Chicago blues legend Muddy Waters, and she saw light in his guitar work—an electricity so raw and mighty that white bands as big as the Rolling Stones tried to bottle it for the masses. Woods also remembered that she’d been experimenting for a while with a song called “Baldwin,” inspired by writer James Baldwin.

Legacy! Legacy! demonstrates Woods’s connections to some of the Black and brown artists whose legacies have helped guide her, and it points the way toward the legacy she herself will leave behind. I asked her to comment on what each track means to her.

Legacy! Legacy! private listening party Hosted by the Reader. Jamila Woods will be interviewed by Tiffany Walden before the album plays. Enter to win tickets at chicagoreader.com/jamila. Thu 5/9, 7 PM, location shared with ticket holders, free, 18+

Jamila Woods, Nitty Scott Sun 5/26, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $26-$41, 17+

“I’ve always had this obsession with women artists who were in relationships with men artists who are more prominent than them,” says Woods. “It’s also this idea of the way she presented herself. No one was dressing like that. She was producing a lot of her own music, writing songs for other people. She was just very innovative and different for the time, and I like the way she owned that difference and didn’t try to fit in. So many men closed doors in her face, including Miles Davis at times. They became a barrier, instead of letting another representation of a woman come to the forefront.”

Whew, chile! Black women are bad. Woods extended the poem’s praise in the video for “Giovanni,” paying homage to the Black women in her own life.