From the launch issue of HERO USA, out April 13th.

On her new album, petal rock black, WILLOW set a challenge to not only surpass her previous efforts, but to create a new sonic language altogether, incorporating everything from Buddhist theology and Bulgarian choirs to an unlikely cover of ‘I Would Die 4 U’ that holds its own against Prince’s original. Aided by collaborations with some of her biggest influences (George Clinton, Kamasi Washington, and Tune-Yards), petal rock black asserts a new era in the adventurous artist’s career. In deepening her relationship with instrumentation, WILLOW sought guidance from master bassist, vocalist, and all-around maestra Esperanza Spalding. Together, the two artists explore what it means to find the truth in music amidst a world full of illusion.

Esperanza Spalding: I prepared some questions.
Willow: You did?

ES: Of course! I got the assignment. I always appreciate when someone comes into an interview and has spent time with the subject, whether that’s my life, or a project, or an album. So, let me go in here and not pretend like I’m some neutral, objective journalist. I spent some time with your album and—
W: I just have to put it on the table that I’m really nervous. I just love you and respect your work so much. For you to say yes to this and the fact that you spent time lis- tening to my album, like, I’m just trying to be chill about it. I’m really grateful.

ES: I’m grateful for you. It’s my joy. I’m grateful that you thought of me. Ok, I’m going to cosplay as a journalist. Here we go. This line was brought to my attention from an NPR segment I was reading to prep for this. The line is: “It’s not a fantasy to be who you are. It’s not a fantasy to live like the water does.” I just want to say first, thank you for reminding listeners of this. I feel such a through line in your music of you being a diligent steward of what the line really is. I hear that in the way that you let the music be. But I want to ask two questions now, with all that preamble. One, when did you craft that? What was the context? What or who do you feel yourself speaking to?
W: I was in the studio for like two years with this pretty foundational intention to push myself to try to compose pieces of music where I’m playing all of the instruments, which is something that I’ve never done before, and I was very afraid to do that. This specific song came to me at a moment where I was going— I know you know how this is, because you’ve spent so many hours crafting your beautiful talent, but for some of us, we’d be sitting at an instrument for hours and be just like, dang. I was really trying to find the truth of what this line or this chord progression is trying to say. I’d spent so much time, I wouldn’t say banging my head against the wall because I have more of a Zen position on it. But when you’re trying to find and expand your potential, it can be an arduous experience. That song came to me when I went, “Ok, I’ve been writing all these chord progressions. Let me just do what I love and what I feel like I do best, which is vocals.” And that’s why it’s all vocal. There’s some drum and bass, but the whole chord progression and melody and everything are stacked vocals, which made me feel like, ok, I can breathe.

ES: Did that lyric come first? Or did that approach to it come first?
W: That approach came first because I was so dead set on the instrumental part of things, but that lyric had been migrating around my head for a minute. I’m starting to zero in more on the specific messages I want to get across, but still very be poetic and always pointing inward. That’s something I love about your lyricism, and the content of your music. It’s so harmonically and rhythmically complex, but when you sit down and listen to what you’re saying, it’s very heartfelt and thoughtful and poetic.

ES: It sounds like a line that already existed came to be the spell needed to move you through some sort of impasse. Once you found the way through, then it called the lyric that had already been present with you.
W: The sentiment that I’m always trying to get across is a shift of perspective inward, out of the autopilot mindset of life. For this specific album, I feel like I know what I’m always trying to say at the core, and I could say it in so many different ways and use so many different words, but I feel inspired by musicians like you, and I wanted to sit down and focus on playing the instruments. That was what most of my energy went towards. We can express our gratitude for this divinely mysterious experience in so many ways, in so many different words, trying to wrap our heads around this human experience. Or, better yet, unwrap our heads from this human experience.

ES: Not everything is for everybody, and opacity is also our right. It’s like that famous Miles Davis quote about having agency over opacity. If I could tell it to you in a different way, I wouldn’t need to play it. It’s not everybody’s business how you craft the medicine in your witch cabinet over there.
W: Wait, I’m sorry, this is a quote! “It’s not everybody’s business how you craft the medicine.” Period. I just had to give a moment for that.

“The sentiment that I’m always trying to get across is a shift of perspective inward, out of the autopilot mindset of life.”

ES: I’m saying all that to say, I feel there’s a currency that we deal in, which is the currency of intimacy and being able to peer into the real life of the person making the thing. Sometimes I feel like, no, it’s your own business, but then I also sometimes feel like these processes don’t belong to any of us. We’re only able to do what we do because of the free access to all the ones before us. “May I be so generous in sharing how I figured something out?” Do you have a poetry writing process? Could you speak specifically to that in relation to the opening track with George Clinton?
W: It’s very rare that I’m writing poetry and that I’m not thinking about a song in the back of my head, or a rhythm, or a harmony. But in this case, with the George Clinton poem, it came about in a completely unique way. I was chilling at my friend’s house, who is also a musician, and they had those sort of Mad Libs refrigerator magnets with a bunch of different words on them. My homie ended up falling asleep and I was alone with these random word tiles. I was on the floor just putting them in different positions and after maybe an hour and a half, I was like, “Oh, petal rock. Wait. Hold on. Storm-smeared…” This one was special and came in a different way than what normally happens. I’ve been so locked in on harmony and trying to sharpen my ear, so every time I start with a drum part or bass part, or maybe it’s just a melody, and that always inspires what the lyric is going to be. There were times in the past when I would have something already written, and then I would come into the studio like, “Here we go.” But that happens very rarely without me writing a guitar part or having some sort of idea about how the arrangement of the song is going to be. I listen to my older music not very often, but every once in a while I tap in and am like, “Wow, ok. I’ve come a long way.” I just want to keep doing that. Lyrically, the most important thing for me is that there needs to be a sense of vulnerability, and a sense of reading in between the lines and going underneath. As artists, we have to go underneath the conscious experience.

ES: That’s the living place. It’s like, how much can you bring up to the surface? It makes me think of some deep sea creatures that if you bring them up to the surface, they disintegrate because they’re only held together by the pressure of being at the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes it feels like we live down there, and you can’t bring it directly up. You have to find a way to transmute it or make it viable if you bring it out of the depths, in a way that another person who wasn’t down there can see or understand exactly what it is. I feel like that’s the trade-off of getting to experience all the incredible wonder of art and music and lyrics moving through us. It’s like a willingness to live.
W: It’s exactly a willingness to live. Do you ever feel like drawing a parallel between the pressure of the ocean as the pressure of your own desire for knowledge, the pressure of thinking things that other people are not thinking about, or doing things that other people are not doing?

ES: The pressure to make it happen, or the pressure born from being slightly other or anomalous?
W: Well, which one of those pressures has felt most potent in your experience? If you’re a beautiful deep sea creature with bioluminescent appendages, and the pressure of the ocean is allowing you to exist, what is that metaphorical pressure for you?

ES: I love this. I can live in a metaphor for a long time. I’m going to come to the answer by way of another deep sea creature metaphor. Have you heard of the immor- tal jellyfish? I don’t know what its Latin name is, but the layman’s term is immortal jellyfish because if you chop it up into a million pieces, it still can not be mortally wounded. If it gets mortally wounded, it disassembles itself and reconstitutes itself into a pupae, and it just grows again from the beginning. Check it out. When you said bioluminescent appendages, I was seeing an image of this creature. The reason we know about it is because of this one Japanese marine biologist [Shin Kubota] who became obsessed with it and studied them, and was cutting it up in the lab and teaching us all about it. Sometimes I feel like the biggest pressure is that: you can’t just live in your environment. There’s this interface with ones who are excited to engage with you, but the motive is to make something else out of you, whether that’s money or an audience or whatever. And it’s not to say that we don’t love sharing our gifts with people. But it’s the biggest pressure because actually, damn, I’ve never been able to experience a method of existing in the same environment I come from, because it always feels like then I’m in the lab, because it’s the only place people can come hear what I do. So I’m letting myself be cut up and studied because that’s the only way people know about what I am. I don’t know how to just live in the hill with my bass and piano and my homies in a long table, because then it can’t reach you. You know what I mean?
W: I relate to that metaphor of being cut up so people can see you, but I feel like for different reasons. In my experience, it’s from the media perspective of growing up in a specific perception of what kind of person I am and what kind of family I come from, when I’m just a person. That over-analysis has been a pressure for me. Two different reasons, but the same metaphor.

ES: And then the irony is that that’s the reason I can tell you about the immortal jellyfish right now, and it can bless us with all of its poetic implications, is because of those sacrifices, which is wild. In all of our cases, I think if we’ve ever made it to a level of notoriety where people know about us, there’s been some sort of giving up of something to make a channel through which you can reach the folks. It requires a weird contortion. But I feel so excited about this album. Tune-Yards is on here! My heart leapt to the moon when I saw that. There are ones who are honing the skill of not losing the essence through the translation, the contortion that you reconstitute on the other side.
W: It’s like, you could read different translations of the same book, and each one is a different interpretation.

ES: You’re a great translator, that’s what I’m saying. Ok, I’m going to jump now. Tell me about the cocoon.
W: God, you saying that is giving me goosebumps right now. Sorry, I’m calming down. Ok. I would say, during this experience, I was envisioning my young self a lot. I started doing music when I was eight years old. There were some formative experiences connected with music in my early childhood that were really emotionally tumultuous for me, and that made my relationship with music a sometimes triggering experience. When I go deep down and see what ideas are really in there, when you’re alone in a room, wondering how does the piano speak to you? How does the bass speak to you? How did the drums speak to you? How does the guitar speak to you? With all these different things, it’s constantly fighting that deep childhood wound of thinking “Even if you try, it’s never going to be enough.” Going back to that metaphor of being cut up, people were always going to be like “She’s not really talented, because of where she comes from.” That just doesn’t make any sense for me. People are always going to say that, obviously, but that being the repetitive message for a young child when you try to step out and take on something is not an easy task, and it takes a lot of thoughtfulness and going in if you’re going to do anything halfway worth listening to. I was fighting some recurring emotional demons and cycles. And so the cocoon is almost like me going back into a fetal state. I’m always like, “Why do I feel so crazy?” and my mom says “You know, sometimes your 20s are like going through puberty again.” It’s like you have your childhood puberty and then you have your adult puberty where you morph again into something else. You have that many times in your life, I can imagine. But the cocoon is a metaphor of that stasis place where you can go back and realign that emotional DNA and do some healing on a cellular level.

ES: Yes, yes. And reconstitute your relationship to those instruments, and what you know of the power of relating to this ancient technology. Like, the piano is the marimba, and is a very deep technology in and of itself. Bass is deep technology. Drums are deep technology. I think often when we orient ourselves to having agency to move our ideas through the instrument, sometimes we forget that they themselves are these powerful technologies that can heal us and have medicine for us through that relation of listening and responding, being in the dance and the love-making with it can be self-healing on its own terms. It never has to become a thing that is ever shared, the music will let you know if it wants to be shared. But it’s really beautiful, and I feel grateful for you bringing that testimony forward to the world, of a place that all of us can go to tend to ourselves and our wounds, to tend to our ideas and our dreams.
W: You’re kind of blowing my mind right now, the way that you’re articulating it.

ES: You already knew it! That’s thanks to the time that you had already invested into building relationships with these instruments. I feel really excited for the kind of quantum force field of what it did for you is alive in the music. Healing is alive in the music, and it is radiating. You can hear that. This isn’t a question, but I almost want to screen share so you can see my notes. I just wrote “Tune- Yards.” That’s all.
W: Yes! I’ve been listening to Tune-Yards for many, many years now. I first heard her [Merrill Garbus] when I was fourteen and just went on a crazy rabbit hole. She might be one of the most experimental and boundary pushing artists today. When I think of future music and what the human mind is going to have to do to expand its field of pleasantness, like what the ear finds pleasurable, I think about how what is pleasing to the ear shifts with the zeitgeist. I feel like Tune-Yards is one of those artists that’s like at the back of the Truman Show, at the back of the simulation, pushing the wall.

ES: And their music videos! It’s so in that same vein of the music pushing us, helping us feel places of resonance that we didn’t know we had. With the music videos, they manage not to interrupt that, but enhance it. I totally adore them. Can you tell me more about the melody at the end of ‘holy mystery’?
W: I knew that I wanted to go for a more ‘in the room’ sound. I approached that song thinking, “What would a ceremonial space where we are just praising the moment and the holy mystery sound like in my vibe— how would I create that?” ‘holy mystery’ was based on that intention. But for that specific melody, I wanted to combine my jazz inspiration with a little bit of a church energy where it’s just in the room and a cappella. I was just in the room throwing spaghetti at the wall, seeing a whole bunch of random things. That’s how a lot of this album went, me trying to hit a flow state, like a repetition of a mantra, and that melody came out of me vibing on that rhythm, trying to hit a flow. Just like, “Again, again, again, again. Run it back, run it back, run it back, run it back.”

ES: That’s really powerful. I love that puzzle work, like knowing it has this and that and then it just appears.
W: You were talking about being in the lab, and I feel like that’s something that I can hear in your music. And it’s something that I really appreciate and honor in my own practice. We’re in the lab, and we’re doing spiritual work as well. It feels like two different things but they really become one and the same.

ES: Yeah, it’s the same thing. Talking about spiritual labs, I want to tell you something. So, ‘i would die 4 u’. I was listening to this and getting so emotional. I’m sure you knew Prince when you were a kiddo.
W: When I was really young, I may have met him one time.

“It’s very rare that I’m writing poetry and that I’m not thinking about a song in the back of my head, or a rhythm, or a harmony.”

ES: All of us who were homies with Prince, if you went over and he wasn’t in the middle of rehearsal or something, he would take you over to one of the computers around and show you YouTube videos of shit that he was excited about, or something that his other homie had just showed him. I feel so honored that I introduced him to the band The Internet, and you know that he was then going on and showing up like, “Yo, check this band out.” So I was listening to your song, and I was like, “Oh my god, I could see Prince showing one of his homies this song. And as I was listening to it, it had this feeling of you in the sandbox playing, not trying to be an homage, not trying to prove you can do something extra with the song. It’s not trying to prove you studied Prince. It felt like you as you, and the spirit you are. Just playing with him in the sandbox, across space and time. I could see him smirking, he has this smirk when he really digs something. I could see the smirk and it made me so happy in so many ways. I don’t want to digress too far, but I felt you holding hands with the people before you. You let it be legible what you love, and you hold hands with it, and you also let your voice shine with the support and the input of the ones before, and I live, just totally.
W: After this I’m going to go inside and shed a tear.

ES: I think anybody who really knew him would say similar things. He would dig that shit. He would dig it. I think you should tell us about crafting this beautiful take of this song.
W: I must say, I was nervous to do this one. I knew that I wanted to do it, but I was procrastinating. Then one day I was like, “I think today’s the day we’re going in.” Because for long stints of time all I would do is just wake up, get myself together, go to the studio, go home, sleep. That was what I would do. So I decided today was the day and I got a bit insecure on my way over to the studio because I got in my head. I called my homie up, and I was like, “Hey, can you just come through?” I didn’t tell them that I wanted to do a Prince cover, because I felt like they weren’t going to want to touch that. Like, that’s a little bit much. I told them I was thinking we could maybe do ‘I Would Die 4 U” and as I thought, they were like, “I don’t know, bro. Let’s do something original. Let’s do something else.” Then some other friends came by and everyone was talking and I was in the living room by myself, and I was like, “Hey, I still want to do this song.” So my homies went outside, and I was like, “Ok, I really just have to sit here and do this,” and so I did. But it didn’t even work out. I took it as a sign, and I felt distrustful of myself because this is a Prince song, and I wasn’t sure if we should try to do it. In order for me to do it in a way that would feel more natural, I had to hit a certain spot in myself and not be reaching. That was an interesting moment. For me, I was a little bit salty at first, and then I was like, ok, let’s lock in.

ES: That’s it. I mean, sometimes those divine rejections are divine redirections.
W: It was a redirection in the right direction.

ES: Yes. Ok, you talked about ‘petal rock black’, but I’m going to ask you one more question about that. You told us how you came to encounter the words, but of course you made the meaning. What is that sensory, poetic space to you?
W: Petal rock black. That whole poem, to me, felt like an ode to the Divine Mother. It has that dual nature of soft and feminine, but also it is intense and very harsh in a way. It’s giving that juxtaposition of nature, and that energy of deep, soft compassion that can also be the most ferocious protector and destroyer. That was a balance I wanted to invoke.

ES: Thank you.
W: Thank you. I’m so grateful for you paving so many roads and laying out such beautiful flowers and a beautiful mandala to help so many people see the path and the way in this harsh world of destruction and pain and confusion.

ES: Thank goodness for all the ones aspiring towards that. And I see you doing that. I hear you and feel you doing that. I really feel the integrity of your devotion. It’s very palpable, and I really admire you for showing up for the challenging work and for your astuteness at the bullshit forces that will always come for folks doing beautiful work. If you’re trying to tell your truth, someone’s going to come try and get you. I wrote some things that aren’t actually questions, but just telling you about yourself in the most loving way, which is related to how I feel you allowing these multitudes in you, the multitudes of what you know to be true, musically and perceptually. I really see and receive and admire the way you share it so directly, getting things through the translation and not getting contorted on the other side. I think that takes a lot of courage. This note was originally about your vocal delivery, but it’s also about everything. At the end of ‘hear me out’, what is that? Tell me about that.
W: There’s a body of Buddhist texts called the Pra- jñāpāramitā, which is basically calling towards the form- less, saying to go beyond sensory perception, good or bad, or even your concept of enlightenment. It’s like, the truth is beyond all sense perception or mental machination, whatever you want to call it. So that inspired the melody at the end.

ES: It was giving Bulgarian Women’s Choir!
W: Yeah! It’s 100% inspired by Hungarian chants. I went through a whole phase where the only thing I listened to was Hungarian and Bulgarian chants. The Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir. Do you know that one?

ES: Yes, yes. I was smelling that a little bit. I said, “Is this choir?” Feeling the DNA mingle and mix. Talking about going beyond, I have a friend, an amazing artist named Intisar Abioto, and no matter how long we’ve been hanging out, no matter if we’ve talked about everything in the universe that we’re doing, before we depart, she always stops to go, “What are you dreaming toward?” Because she has this thing about it’s so important that we share our dreams with each other so we can help usher them in.
W: I’m dreaming about getting in the studio with you, honestly.

ES: That’s an easy one.
W: I’m dreaming about making music with you and learning more from you.

ES: Your music and song titles and transitions are already giving us all the input we need. You already put in the work. But is there anything you’d like to share or frame or invite us into? Anything that we might not pick up on our own or overlook that you want to bring our attention to.
W: There’s a song called ‘sitting silently’ and it’s an interesting one, but it’s not for everyone. I don’t know if it’s the weirdest one on the album. I would just say, if you hav- en’t listened to it, listen to it sitting silently. It’s a weird one, but it’s cool. My nerdy brain likes it.

ES: Don’t miss that one when you’re listening!
W: Literally, thank you so much. I’m going to go and cry and have a moment of gratitude and locking in with the craft after this. It’s so important to me and I’m so grateful you took time out of your life and your night and your day and for being such an amazing inspiration to me and someone I look up to so much.

ES: It’s not time out of my life. This is my life. It was a total joy and nourishment to hear your music. Your music is a gift, and it gifted me. I’m inspired and nourished. It’s a joy to talk to you and hear more about how you’re thinking. I see you, and I appreciate you, and I’m championing you.

From the launch issue of HERO USA, out April 13th. 

hair NILAJA GARDNER;
make-up KIMORA MULAN at OPUS BEAUTY using DIOR BEAUTY;
manicurist RACHEL SUN at OPUS BEAUTY using ePHD;
fashion assistant RENEE OLD