by Taylor Ruckle (@TaylorRuckle)
For genre-bending Richmond rapper McKinley Dixon, making music personal doesn’t end with spinning his experiences into verses--the chamber ensemble is part of it too. “I try to show that jazz itself is a very vulnerable medium,” he says. “With that, there's the chaoticisms of it, there's the sadness of it, there's the intensities of it, and it all can exist--and then there's the hip-hop of it.”
His new album For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her plays up that symbiosis, processing the loss of his best friend Tyler by unpacking memories in agitated string swells, searching sax solos, and, critically, even improvisation flubs and false-starting bars. He says the dynamic stops and starts of the opener “Chain Sooo Heavy'' were inspired by a drumming mistake, and if you listen close on the raucous outro of “Brown Shoulders,” you can hear him laugh as the trumpeter hits a sour note; Dixon purposely didn’t tell him when to stop playing.
“If you allow people to be comfortable in their space, you get the most authentic version of themselves,” he says. It’s a deep level of trust built over years of development in tandem with his musical community; For My Mama is the capstone of a highly collaborative jazz-inflected trilogy that started in 2016 with Who Taught You To Hate Yourself? and leveled up with 2018’s The Importance Of Self Belief. Each installment has followed Dixon’s evolving ideology of Black identity and his grappling with cycles of generational trauma.
Out May 7, For My Mama is his first album with Richmond’s Spacebomb Records. Before the release, Dixon spoke to Post-Trash about the arc of the trilogy, his most-missed touring spots, and the layers of his most labored-over lyrics.
photo credit: David Muessig
This trilogy started in 2016--how early on did you know this was a three-part project?
McKinley Dixon: Here we go. You know Dantesque trilogies, right? Like, heaven, earth, hell--
Divine Comedy?
MD: Yeah, so I don't know too much about that in actuality, but Toni Morrison did a trilogy, and I love Toni Morrison. Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise are a Dantesque trilogy, and I always loved the thought of telling a story in three parts. It's nothing new, but it's this sort of thing, like--there's so much to tell, you know? I feel like you can't really start and stop a story with one album, and also, I knew I wanted to make For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her a long time ago. I was like, "I have these big ideas, but I don't have the confidence, I don't have the band, and I don't have the accessibility to make something that big," so I was like, "Let me start with a trilogy so that it's all contained, and not only the audience, but specifically myself can go back and watch me grow very physically.” I didn't know where it would take me, and that's the best part about it.
The way you talk about it makes me think of this not even as a three-part story, but an iterative thing where each one circles back and builds on it bigger than the last one.
Definitely, and I think that's the cool thing also with not just a trilogy, but the Dantesque trilogy, where the individual books themselves are complete stories. You could read Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise separately and not know that they're a trilogy, but you could also read them together and open your third eye.
When you look back at your initial concept, how have things changed in terms of what this ended up becoming?
Honestly, it kind of went exactly how I thought it would, which sounds weird to say, but if you have a plan and you stick to your intentions and your values, you kind of just fit what you need when you need it. There's definitely been times where it's been like, "Fuck, I'm spending too much money on this stupid album," but it's also like, now here I am doing an interview, you know? I got things coming in. I knew that the third one was going to be the end, but also the beginning, so it sounds weird, but it was either being at this level right now, or somehow someone in the music industry found The Importance Of Self Belief, and I blew up off that one. Which would have been different--way different--but this is kind of what I've been thinking. I have a solid community, which is what I need.
The title of this record makes an appearance on The Importance Of Self Belief. There's a sample on "Everything I Love" where you have that voice saying "For my mama, and anyone like her." How did that become the title of this album?
Don't quote me, I think that's my niece Elizabeth on there. She's, like, nine now, 10 maybe even? She's learning the violin. But I had this title--I love titles. I feel like Toni Morrison books--I mean, titles are the first thing you see before your book, and back in the day, you couldn't really sell a book as a Black author without it being captivating from the first page. People were not gonna buy your books off jump. With these albums, I wanted to pay homage to that. For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her is the exact people that made this album. It's the exact beautiful Black men, Black women, Black trans folk, Black queer folk--the experiences that I've had with them--that have made this album, so it's for them, and my mama, and anyone in between.
You’ve talked about how the last record was about building this trilogy to be more inclusive of the diversity of Black experience across axes of gender and sexuality and things like that. How did that thinking carry through or evolve in the making of this third installment?
So, Who Taught You To Hate Yourself? was about Black men. That's when I really was coming into my ideology of what Blackness even means, but I was very limited to the Black masc experience, which caused a whole lot of unknowing transphobia, unknowing ableism--a lot of things that aren't really put to the front because of the cycle where it's hard for those like that to have access to words and ideologies and concepts, whatever whatever whatever, so I didn't really know a lot about that.
With the second album, it became this thing where it's like, "Oh, obviously Black women and Black femmes are the backbone of the Black experience.” There is nothing without that, and that's why that album has "God's Land PT II," which was my most popular song at the time, written by Maiya Pittman, who's an incredible poet. And then there's a lot of space at the end of songs that are just filled with vocals by either Jaylin Brown or Ali Thibodeau, my two in-house vocalists, pretty much. There's a lot of moments of silence, and the silence is reflective of who the actual effect is on, and it's on these women, etc., etc.
For My Mama starts out with all that culminating. After those two records, I just got way more into the people around me. I fell in love with them--we've done so many things together that I wouldn't have been able to even think of the concepts that I did on this album without having them to help me. It became the sort of thing where I always knew I wanted that to be the title, but I didn't know the intention behind it fully. It's always been trying to actualize itself, but within the last three or four years, it became something like, "How do I live into this?”
Who are some of those people who influenced your thinking on this record?
Oh, shouts out to my love Angel, my love Raan, shouts out to Benét. These are just the homies, you know what I mean? Kezia, sugarygarbage on Instagram, Kara Jackson, FalsePrpht of Prison Religion--just so many people that I have been in conversation with throughout time. My mama, my grandma, my sister sometimes. My grandfather too, shouts out to him, of course, but it definitely is just--I think of my music in moments, and moments that I'm trying to describe as best as I can.
In press for this album, you talk about rap as time travel, which gets at this idea of moments and how you go about revisiting them. How did that concept occur to you, of rap as time travel?
The thing is, I'm not a horologist. I'm not a n*gga who studies time, and I am not a linguist, so if you look up these concepts, you might not find anything, but I feel like Black people kind of know that inherently. Because rap itself is so deeply rooted in, "Where are you at now? Okay, how do we get to somewhere else? How do we bring this whole group of people with us? Once we're there, what do we do? What are our very literal ideologies that we maneuver with?"
Rap is so lyric-heavy but also so based in the Black experience that it sort of automatically becomes this beacon for traveling between times. I'll listen to a rapper from the 90s specifically because I want to hear how he was talking about things, or how the sounds were from the 90s, or I'll listen to a rapper from 2015, and it's like, "Okay, what is the difference between these two points?” Usually it's the vulnerability in the communication.
I think Black people specifically already know about that because time travel is also in spoken stories of land, you know what I mean? And that is something you don't need a degree to know, that those stories and thoughts have been stomped out, because in the west, we view time travel as something to be conquered, colonized, and captured, when in actuality, it is all of these things. It's me rapping. I think I always knew that, but it took this last year of reading to give me the language to understand all of this. I'm looking over at this pile of books I have right here, and there's this one writer, Alexis Pauline Gumbs. The way that she describes time is she says time is water, and that was something where I was like, "Holy shit, time is water,” and I was like, "Well, what else is time?"
Time is also dirty braids, you know what I mean? I haven't taken my braids out in three weeks. Time is also my beater shirt that I've been wearing for a long time, when I've been in the sun, and it's really stretched out. It's like, "What is the story behind it? How do I talk about that?" Time is when I'm with my friends in the sun, all my Black friends, and we're having a conversation that seems nonchalant, but it's actually way deeper than that. I feel like now, I'm looking at time as moments to be described and not a linear thing that can really be explained.
A really interesting example of that is "Bless the Child,” which goes through these three different sections based on three different moments. Can you tell me how that came together?
"Bless the Child'' is really cool, 'cause three parts, three beat switches--past, present, and future. The beginning is, "They're watching down on you, they know just when you're dreaming," yadda yadda yadda, and that is kind of the prologue, that chorus where it's like, “This is all about somebody who is not here anymore.” This is about a moment in time--a person in time, not a moment, which is already kind of twist, and then it goes into the verse: "I had prophetic dreams / saw my n*gga last night / wish I could say poetic themes / conversations more like / Is you active up in heaven, haven't seen the hood in ages / 'member when n*ggas busted in, stole your PlayStation," and that is when it transitions into this very literal description of moments in time that we've had, me and Tyler. It's like, "We reimagined our schemes / played with wrestling figurines / off the top rope all our dreams / life is such a balance beam / baby boy don't frown / lil n*gga now a man 'cause his problems passed down." The verse is this whole moment where we used to be playing with these toys, and we split up. There's this man now who I'm unfamiliar with, but he's still a kid in that sort of way.
Then the second part is "I love you black" over and over again, the very complex, very clunky, very loud and in-your-face moment where, at the time, I had lost this person. "I love you black black black black black / how do you react act act act act / you lost them to that that that that that / can never bring them back." It's this really-a-lot moment where in the time that I wrote it, there was a lot going on, you know?
Then it goes to the last part, "Stupid n*gga / you just do this for respect / really where was you / when they put two inside of Tyler's chest / this shit got you spiraling / and you hoping to regret / 'cause you--more of a threat," whatever, "could just protect the ones you love," and it becomes this thing where it's like, "Well, now what is next?" Now I'm angry, and I'm not only angry, but I don't know what I'm doing. "Where do we go from here? Now we ride off into the sunset.” It's so dramatic, now I'm explaining it, but--in the moment, I didn't explain it, but that's pretty much the literal parts of that song.
When was it that you wrote that?
So, "Chain Sooo Heavy'' and "Twist My Hair" was the first two I wrote, and then "Never Will Know'' was an old song I'd redone. I wrote “Bless The Child'' in early 2018, maybe mid-2018. Tyler passed in March.
Something that came up on The Importance Of Self Belief is this very cyclical nature of things--of loss, of Black death. It ends with "Trouble Everyday" and "But Still, Tomorrow.” Something you said then and something you said just now is, “Where do we go from here?” I'm curious if you have any insight into that, as someone who’s revisited this process of processing so many times.
Honestly, I've done a lot of interviews in these last couple of weeks, and I've probably had one interview bring up Importance Of Self Belief and not only bring it up, but actually reference things from it, and it's somebody who's in Richmond. I appreciate you bringing up things about that, because it's honestly so weird--people are like, "Explain everything about For My Mama," and it's like, "Well, we have to go back to Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?"
[laughs] You haven't seen Empire Strikes Back! You're not ready for Return of the Jedi.
Exactly, and it's so funny, 'cause everyone's like, "Where's all this stuff come from?" And it's like, "Well, in actuality, you could very clearly see." Even though I didn't have the language, you see it in things like "Trouble Everyday," which is this very, like, "Where do we go here?" And then "But Still, Tomorrow," which is this samba song I tried to make, and it's just long, and it just goes on.
"Where do we go from here" is just something that I'm constantly asking myself in any situation. It's like, "I have so many things that I've learned. How do I make this decision?" It sounds like I think a lot, but in actuality, I don't really think that much. These are just experiences. "Trouble Everyday" is an experience I have, but there's still tomorrow, which is another experience I have. And then the first song on For My Mama is "Chain Sooo Heavy," and the last song is "Twist My Hair," and that ends with the beginning of another story.
You mentioned that you wrote "Chain Sooo Heavy'' and "Twist My Hair" first. So you had the bookends of the record before you started filling in the middle?
Yeah, I am a big fan of anime, and I am a big fan of reading about anime. I read that Shinichirō Watanabe, who made Cowboy Bebop, wrote--because this came out in 1998, right? So around that time, Star Trek was huge, and Star Trek went on forever, right? So the way that animation companies work is, it's fucked up, but you make a TV show to sell toys. The toy company at the time wanted him to just make a long space opera like Star Trek and make a bunch of toys about it, so he was like, "You know, what I'm not gonna do is, I'm not gonna write nothing long. I want a definitive ending." So he wrote the first and last episode of Cowboy Bebop first and then filled everything in.
It was this thing where I was like, "Holy shit, that's great.” ‘Cause actually watching the story, he just ends it. You move on to a different story in his world. Same thing with Samurai Champloo, where at the end of it, they just separate in the field of sunflowers, and you don't ever see them together again. They don't even say “bye.” They just say, "Alright, well, that's the end of the adventure," and separate.
I really like that sentiment, of having these characters and having them breathe in the sense where they do things that are real. There are moments where you should not keep things going forever, so I wrote "Chain Sooo Heavy'' and "Twist My Hair" first, and funny enough, "Twist My Hair" took the longest to finish. They both have last verses that took me--"Chain Sooo Heavy"’s third verse is not in my Audiotree session because I didn't write it until after, so it's kinda interesting that I got the idea from this motherfucker because he didn't want to be Star Trek. Isn't that weird? It's little things like that. I just be reading Wikipedia pages for no reason.
I'm the same way. I get going down a rabbit hole, and then I'll just produce some trivia later in an unrelated conversation.
Exactly. Like, I was reading about Eva Braun--I was like, "Who cares about Hitler's fiancé? Why am I reading this shit?" And then, 16 pages in, I'm like, "Oh my god, this is so interesting. Like, she didn't do anything." [laughs] "She didn't do anything! Why am I still here?" It's fuckin' stupid, but that's where I get a lot of my inspiration from. I find things I love and then I just read the shit about it. I don't even finish it--I don't be finishing books. I read about authors, though.
Where did you record this album?
A lot of people think because it's so grandiose, I recorded it in a studio--in Spacebomb studio. But in actuality, the only thing that was recorded in Spacebomb studio was in October. On my birthday, we recorded the strings for "make a poet Black," and that was it. Like, I recorded all the vocals in my bedroom. I got a vocal mic near the end of recording from Natalie Prass that I could just plug into my computer, so some of the songs, verses sound like trash, but I was too lazy to set up my big mic, you know? Move forward, not hustle backwards. It became this thing where I was notorious for sending people drums that aren't on beat, but a verse, or like, this, that, and a third, so a lot of it was recorded all over.
I mean, you can take "Never Will Know." The guest verses were recorded in, like, 2016, and I just held onto them. The drums were recorded by this guy Manabua Yamaguchi in Japan--I had been friends with him on Facebook 'cause I really like his music. I hit him up, and he sent me drums to an a cappella. Then the guitar was recorded in Portland--my friend Josh Letjo recorded it there. The bass was recorded in Richmond right before I went on tour with one of my bassists, and the horns were recorded in, I think a school turned into an artist space. I recorded with a trumpet and a trombone player in an empty schoolhouse.
"make a poet Black," the koto, I saw some guy playing it on the street. I hit him up and came to his house with a beer and a blunt, and we just smoked and recorded a 30-minute long take, and I got 10 seconds out of it, you know? It really just is like, if I want to actualize an idea, I now have the confidence to do it, and the community to do it, so it's recorded everywhere. Wherever I can. If I find you on tour and you fuckin' slap, I'mma do a song. Teller Bank$ is on one of the songs, and I saw him in fuckin' Iowa, he opened for me. Des Moines. We recorded a song on the road, then I sent it to him, and he sent a verse back before we got off tour.
[laughs] What a place to meet someone, Iowa.
Honestly, the big cities are cool, but I would kill to be in, like, Cincinnati right now, you know? Or like, Minnesota on a Monday, where I know nobody's gonna be at the gig, but that means I can just be drunk at the gig. [laughs] What I would give for that. I love those kinds of towns. We was in Arkansas, it was so fuckin' sick. There was a festival at the Hot Springs--shit like that, you know? Fuck L.A., I'm going to Arkansas.
I feel like it must be easier to get a crowd's attention in Arkansas than in L.A.
100%, and it's funny, 'cause then we did a show in--I want to say Missouri. They're actually closer than you would think, and somebody was like, "I saw you in Arkansas last year," and I was like, "You see? Arkansas." It was a great festival. Nobody remembers me from New York, but every motherfucker I saw in Appleton, Wisconsin--where I have a fanbase, because I played there three times one year--knows my name.
I wanted to ask you about the second to last track, "Mama's Home," which encapsulates so many of the themes of this record, talking about family, talking about religion, talking about community, talking about death. What can you tell me about when you wrote that, and how it came together?
That is such a ridiculous song. I honestly couldn't even--the way I work is, since we're so on the road, I would work on a bunch of drafts and just send 'em in different directions, you know? Then I would give people the time while I finished being on the road to come back home, and then I'd be like, "Alright, are you ready? It's been three weeks, a month, it's been two weeks, a week and a half," and people will be like, "Yeah, this is what I got based off this," so then we would record.
I don't remember too much about the recording of that song because I was just recording so much. I would bike with a mic stand going all over the city. I think mid-2018 is when I wrote that, but I don't even know. That song is purposefully put before "Twist My Hair" at the end because it is kind of the wrap-up of the album, and then "Twist My Hair" is the cool down, and it ends like, "What is happening next?" "Mama's Home," that is probably my favorite song on the album. Alfred. just gave their all with that verse--
[laughs] No kidding!
Yeah, that verse is ridiculous. I just didn't want the song to be trash, so I made it as beautiful as I could. My verse, I was just rappin' on that shit. I don't even know. I think I was on tour a lot and not able to settle in my feelings and my thoughts, and that's why I was just like, "I just wanna live forever," like, on the road--"I just wanna live forever and share all the wealth," my homies on the road, "How can a n*gga do that / if he sees god before himself--" I was really sad on the road. Something about my intentions being clear, what I fear is I don't get there before I figure it out, you know? So it's kind of a destination I was going to, very literally, and now that I say it, I think that is what I was actualizing. I think that's what that song means, and then it ends with an abrupt stop where it's like--oh, shit, the ending of that song is crazy. It has that whole part about Icarus.
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, because I talk about wings a lot, but I never talk about where they come from, and I just kind of ended it with Icarus. "One's father couldn't maneuver labyrinths / show his son--" okay, so there's also a whole aspect of therapy to my album, you know? Its limitations for how accessible it is, but also how Black men don't really want to because of the cycle. It's a whole thing, they don't think they should, so it then goes into this thing where I'm like, "How did this happen to Tyler? How did this happen to me?" And it's like, "One's father couldn't maneuver labyrinths / show his son that there really might be magic in / dreaming / dreaming of leaving / dreaming of flight," so it's like, my homie didn't really get out, in a certain way, and it's very generational, how it happens to Black people.
"Dreaming of growing wings / jumping out ya window at night / dreaming of looking out / seeing such a beautiful sight / we do this all for paradise, my n*gga," and then the drastic shift from paradise to, "Shit happened so suddenly / it caught me off guard sadly / I know I'm crying baby / please don't look at me badly / tryna process this the best that I can / still tryna be a man," whatever, "but let me break down for a second." It goes back on the limited access to me being able to cry in a lot of situations and not knowing why.
"Papa taught me always to deflect it, lil n*gga / I'm just tryna breathe, breathe, breathe / cling to thoughts / with every dry heave / think what I'll tell God if we meet," going back to asking about meeting God in the beginning of the verse, and also going back to Alfred. Being nonbinary, it's like a projection, I feel like, of what angels look like. It goes back to that, and it's like, "Think what I'll tell God if we meet / prolly that I shouldn't hit the blunt too hard," hit you with a little bit of a joke, and then "Wish I could tell his family / he's prolly not gone come home for dinner that night.” It ends, and it's like I just kind of blacked out. Not physically, but thought-process-wise.
You reminded me of the bit in the Alfred. Verse. It’s one of my favorite lyrics on this whole record, which I hope is not--I mean, it's your record--
Yeah, no, yeah--[laughs]
"I walked along the water / revealed the holes in my skin / just so these motherfuckers know who I am." The Jesus imagery is so on point, and it plays into everything you're doing too.
Exactly, and the thing is, all my guest verses are, like, the best ever. I mean, Micah James in "Never Will Know," holy shit. That comparison with godliness, where we do the beat switch: "Never know it / never wanted anything to do with it / thrown in it / had to live through it / I was high / zooted off the notion that dude in the sky was judging me / that's why I'm through with it / bible verses bout as loud as bullets / spilling out the clip / it's like 'blaow' / I feel it / got some n*ggas still up in that gang / that claiming that the way I'm feeling's like a mental illness / fuck 'em all / fuck it up / suck it up / suck it all / wonder what all this emotion's about / 'cause I wasn't there when the Ocean was out--" Frank Ocean coming out of the closet.
The verses on there, and the way everyone was just talking about God, you know? It's so brilliant that that Alfred. verse even sticks out among some of the best verses I've ever heard. "Grown Man Voice" is full of motherfuckin' great shit, but Teller Bank$ is another great one, who I mentioned previously, on "B.B.N.E.," "Biggest Baddest N*gga Ever." I mean, he says that's his best verse ever written, and that verse is ridiculous. I just love how he goes in and out, and all the guest verses are really something brilliant.
You mentioned the way everybody's talking about God. Was that something that you all were talking about, or just something that grew out of the energy?
That's the thing when you give people space to communicate and write something that they believe in, and give them patience--because I never said to mention God. I think "Never Will Know" is the only one where I was actually like, "This revolves around religion," because the full song's like, "Never will know heaven," or some shit. People just kind of heard the instrumentation and they were like, "You know what? Let me try to write my best," and their best came out, and I think that's what happens when you allow people to exist in their own time. I didn't say nothin' about God until people were like--you know, "I feel like there's some sort of godliness in talking about my feelings."
Now that this trilogy is complete and it's about to be out in the world…where do you go from here?
I'm working on a new record, we'll see how it goes. We'll see where it comes from. It's really an experimental moment right now, 'cause I want to stay within the confines of this last record, For My Mama--I think I'm not fully done with it, sonically--but I am trying to do more like, "What do I really love? What kind of rap music do I really wanna hear?" With For My Mama, I feel like it was things I wasn't hearing. I wasn't hearing nobody rapping over chamber pop. If there are, I missed it, which is very probable, but it wasn't something I was hearing. So with this next one, I think I'm going back to things I really love, and I'm like, "How can I make this in the modern era?” I'm doing a lot of choir vocal rough demos and stuff.
I'll make a new record at some point. They want me to make another one, and I'm like, "I dunno..." I just don't, like, rap. People are like, "Freestyle! Do a feature for me!" And I'm like, "Bro, I would love to if I could." If I just had the lyrics to be like, "Alright, let me drop this feature for you, let me drop this freestyle at the party where everyone's lookin' at me now," but I just don't.
Not your style?
Yeah, I feel like it takes me a lot to write stuff. I like making things really beautiful and kinda complex. I will find one moment I love and then try to find ways to describe it for like, ever, right? "make a poet Black," there's one line--I'mma break it down. "Ain't been too long since my homie got tookin / so for now, the only thing I'm fearin' is mama's whoopins,'' so it hasn't been a while since I lost my homie, and now I'm reckless, 'cause the only thing I fear is my mom being disappointed and beatin' my ass. "Get your ass just for lookin' / worried we not fast enough / and our prints become pages central to our stories’ book end."
Okay, so, "worried we not fast enough," running fast is bookin' it. Prints, footprints when you're running, or fingerprints, so our prints become pages--put in a book, you know? "Pages central to our stories’ book," you get fingerprinted and booked in central booking. You get caught, you go to jail, you go to central booking. And then, "Central to our stories’ book end," so if we get caught, we get put in prison, then it's the end of our book, and it's the main point at the end of our book. It all ties together with just the sound of bookend, booking.
That's so dense.
Yeah, so I can't just be doin' that, you know what I mean? I'm like, "You want me to--okay, let me throw on The Wire right now and feel it or some shit.” I really just don't know how. So it's funny that people are like, "You want to do a radio interview? They're gonna ask you to freestyle." I'm like, "Fuck no I don't. I'm not getting embarrassed on Sway In the Morning. The fuck I look like?" [laughs] Or like, Big Boy's radio, and I'm just like, "Uh, [stammering]." Nah, fuck that shit, so I just don't do it at all.