1 AUGUST
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Anyone who’s followed Judith Hill’s story will recognize Letters from a Black Widow as one jaw-dropper of an album title. The tabloid-coined phrase “Black Widow” arose after the overdose deaths of her two star-making collaborators, Michael Jackson and Prince. It became a term of abuse that internet trolls hurled at the celebrated artist, driving conspiracy theories and shame campaigns – trauma that nearly ended a career that includes a Grammy for her role in the Oscar-winning documentary film “20 Feet from Stardom.”
“For years the Black Widow was such a dark presence in my life that was too looming and intimidating to even talk about,” Hill says. But a year into the pandemic, she had time and space for a momentous reckoning. “Being forced to stop allowed me to reach a deeper place, to really marinate and figure out what’s at my core, what I really needed to talk about. I found I had the courage and strength to face all this – to be authentic to my core, to dive into the whole experience, and turn an ocean of darkness into expressive fire.”
If Hill’s previous album, Baby, I’m Hollywood, was the rowdy coming-of-age tale of a mixed-race child of bohemian California, Letters from a Black Widow is a formidable battle cry – an album-length soul/funk/gospel passion play that’s spectacularly written, arranged, and performed. One signal moment in Hill’s writing process came during a visit with friends to a hot spring outside of Los Angeles, where a communal psychedelic experience wound up shunting her off into a more private and terrifying realm. “An entire mountain appeared before my eyes,” she recalls. “And I knew it represented all the trauma in my life that I hadn’t realized was still there.”
While the album often takes buoyant and playful turns, all the songs are deeply anchored in Hill’s current reality, as a 39-year-old career artist grateful for the people who made her, and deftly aware of the bumpy path she’s chosen, and the force she’s becoming.
“For years the Black Widow was such a dark presence in my life that was too looming and intimidating to even talk about,” Hill says. But a year into the pandemic, she had time and space for a momentous reckoning. “Being forced to stop allowed me to reach a deeper place, to really marinate and figure out what’s at my core, what I really needed to talk about. I found I had the courage and strength to face all this – to be authentic to my core, to dive into the whole experience, and turn an ocean of darkness into expressive fire.”
If Hill’s previous album, Baby, I’m Hollywood, was the rowdy coming-of-age tale of a mixed-race child of bohemian California, Letters from a Black Widow is a formidable battle cry – an album-length soul/funk/gospel passion play that’s spectacularly written, arranged, and performed. One signal moment in Hill’s writing process came during a visit with friends to a hot spring outside of Los Angeles, where a communal psychedelic experience wound up shunting her off into a more private and terrifying realm. “An entire mountain appeared before my eyes,” she recalls. “And I knew it represented all the trauma in my life that I hadn’t realized was still there.”
While the album often takes buoyant and playful turns, all the songs are deeply anchored in Hill’s current reality, as a 39-year-old career artist grateful for the people who made her, and deftly aware of the bumpy path she’s chosen, and the force she’s becoming.
