ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The soul singer Kirby was born Kirby Lauryen Dockery, and that last name connects her to the Dockery Plantation in Mississippi, where her enslaved ancestors picked cotton. Now, as a songwriter, Kirby has collaborated with other artists, from Beyonce to Paul McCartney, but her new solo album, "Miss Black America," is grounded deep in her family's Mississippi soil. It opens with what sounds like an invocation.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN YOU COMING HOME")
KIRBY: Once upon a time, all the kings and queens picked cotton.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Vocalizing).
KIRBY: Where are your ancestors? Where's your mama? Where is your grandma? Where is your daddy from?
There's just quiet tension in the air. Mississippi is a very beautiful place, but I think there's a frequency in the beauty that you can also kind of hear. Like, something happened here. You can feel the past and the present in Mississippi, and so I wanted to really bring that to the track.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN YOU COMING HOME")
KIRBY AND UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Vocalizing). Mississippi. (Vocalizing). Mississippi. (Vocalizing).
SHAPIRO: It's such an interesting, imaginative, creative project to take a place and a feeling and translate it into sound. But when that place is Mississippi, there's this long, long history of sound and music that comes out of that place. So how much are you trying to tap into that as opposed to just saying, what's the feeling I get when I see this place, and what does that sound like as I express it through music?
KIRBY: Right. I've known for quite some time that my last name is associated with the Dockery Plantation, which they call the birthplace of the blues. I felt a need to honor that. I mean, I get the joke all the time that says, oh, Kirby, you make, quote-unquote, "Negro spiritual music, slave music." And I think that's such a sad way to describe the sounds that came out of our pain and struggle in that time.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "REPARATIONS")
KIRBY: (Singing) Granddaddy was a farmer with skin as dark as night. He picked the cotton.
When I sing the way that I do, I'm really not even going necessarily that far back. I'm going back to my childhood. And we was a foot-stomping, old-wood, red-pew, stained-glass type of church. And a lot of times, before the service would start, it would just be stomping and just kind of moaning and groaning - (vocalizing). And so for me, when I think of, like, what Mississippi - I don't want to say Black pain, but truly, Mississippi, Southern experience, it sounds like that to me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BETTADAZE")
KIRBY AND UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Vocalizing).
SHAPIRO: Let's talk about the song "Bettadaze" because, to me, this almost feels like a mission statement for the album, where you sing I just want to make the ancestors proud.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BETTADAZE")
KIRBY: (Singing) I want my ancestors looking like, hey, girl, you're living out our dreams. You've seen the whole world. But all the pain we lived, you made it worth it. You seen that happy end. You made us proud, proud, yeah.
I think for me, the Dockery Farms experience really changed how I viewed music and ownership. And that was years ago, maybe even eight years ago, when I first went on that ground. And I saw how all these talented blues musicians, people that they would say - you know, Howlin' Wolf, Charley Patton - like, these are the people who formed the blues and started the blues movement. To know that those people were never fairly compensated, that's when I really became very gung ho about owning my masters because I said to myself, it's not fair that the power and the importance of this land comes from people who's family will never financially benefit from what they essentially gave value. And so, for me, my why is very clear as to who and what I'm doing music for.
SHAPIRO: The song "Mama Don't Worry" feels like it could be written to your own mother or to any mother or even to yourself. Will you tell us about it?
KIRBY: Oh, the last bar. Don't you get me crying, Ari, to myself.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
KIRBY: You know, I do have - I got a Pomeranian, honey. Maybe she could sing that to me. I don't know.
(LAUGHTER)
KIRBY: I love it. You know, I promise that there's joy at the end of this call...
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
KIRBY: ...But I just have to go through the grief at which we got this album, right? Because we were going through it, brother, I tell you, for a couple of years. And I think it just all came out in this music. But I never seen my mother cry like we did when my grandmother passed.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MAMA DON'T WORRY")
KIRBY: (Singing) Leave all that trauma, it ain't no good. If I could change it, know I sure would. Don't want to see you cry.
And I think just seeing my mom lose her mother and knowing that, you know, one day - oh, honey - many, many decades from now, I hope, you know, that, you know, we all have to say goodbye at some point. And so, just to be able to let her know in this present day and time that, Mama, I just don't want you to worry about anything. What you've instilled, what you've given to us, the way that you loved us was enough. I've spent a lot of time writing love letters to somebody romantically - right? - to a guy. But the sweetest one I think I've ever written was to my mom.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MAMA DON'T WORRY")
KIRBY: (Singing) Mama, mama, don't worry. Mama, mama, don't.
SHAPIRO: You've built your career in such an interesting way that I think it says something about the music industry today, where you've had songs on TV shows like "Insecure" and "The Bear." You were a voice actress on the show "Swarm." You've got more than a million followers on TikTok. You've toured with artists like John Legend and Leon Bridges. So tell us a little bit about how you take your art and put it to work in the context of the business.
KIRBY: I think the one thing that I've had to learn is to respect the fact that this is art, and to say, OK, Kirby, if you value this, you don't have to say yes to everything. And I think that's something when I was a songwriter, if you can see early, early in my career, I was just - honey. You know, you're hungry. You're like, listen, you want a song about, you know, chickens dancing? OK, look, I'm going to give you the best chicken dancing track ever in the world, you know? Like, you just write anything because you feel like I'm so hungry. But everything that you just listed in that moment, I can say that those were intentional yeses.
And so I think my career, though sometimes it feels like, to me, I'm a slow burn - you know, I think I'm a slow cooker on the stove, honey - but the season and everything is going to be just right. So that's how I like to perceive me being a slow burn.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
KIRBY: And I think that's why this record, you know, "When You Coming Home," that's why all of these songs, they mean so much to me because I could never deny my roots. I can never deny who I am from this project. And if there's ever a moment when I become unsure, I literally have the songs to remind me that, Kirby, this is what you are foundationally before you were formed, I truly believe. This is what you are made of. I just hope I never question it again.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THICK N COUNTRY")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) She thick and country.
KIRBY: (Singing) Ooh, baby say you like my body like you like my accent. Thick.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) From the back.
SHAPIRO: Kirby's new album is "Miss Black America." And it has been such a pleasure talking to you about it. Thank you.
KIRBY: Oh, you're so kind.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THICK N COUNTRY")
KIRBY: (Singing) Thick.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) Thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, yeah.
KIRBY: (Singing) Oh, baby.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) Thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, yeah.
KIRBY: (Singing) You know, I like to make a chair nervous when I come around.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) Thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, yeah.
KIRBY: (Singing) The chair don't know if it can handle it or not, baby, yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) Thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, thicky, yeah.
KIRBY: (Singing) Where you from, sweetheart? Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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