Phase

Years before she toured the world alongside Alicia Keys, wrote songs with John Legend, belted the Southern rhythm and blues with Muddy Magnolias and kicked off a solo career with 2019’s Phase, Jessy Wilson grew up in Brooklyn, listening to the diverse sounds that filled her family’s apartment. Written and recorded with producer Patrick Carney — drummer for the Black Keys, as well as the driving force behind that band’s percussive stomp — Phase brews up its own storm of soulful sound. It’s a modern album rooted in everything that made the old stuff good: the R&B melodies of the late 1960s and ’70s; the pulsating grooves of hip-hop; the urban commentary and subtlety of Curtis Mayfield; fuzz guitar inspired by the crème de la crème of psychedelic rock; the irresistible, genre-bending of artists like The Beatles. Gritty and progressive, Phase reintroduces Jessy Wilson as we’ve never heard her before: undiluted, unaccompanied and unleashed.