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Heavn" is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Jamila Woods. It was released on July 7, 2016 through Jagjaguwar.
The album features collaborations with Chance the Rapper, Noname, Saba, Lorine Chia, Kweku Collins and Donnie Trumpet. HEAVN was ranked as the 36th best album of 2016 by Pitchfork.
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 83, based on 5 reviews, indicating "Universal acclaim ".
User Album Review
Filled with personal memories, affirmations of self, and gazes of society’s racial strife, HEAVN is a singular mix of clear-eyed optimism and Black girl magic. On the opener, “Bubbles,” Woods sings of shyness, hesitation, and self-care, noting “how many different oils we know/to turn our skins from brown to gold”—making it metaphor about both beauty and protection. This rumination on isolation, journey, and transformation—which pops up throughout the album—comes full circle on the closer, “Way Up” where she sings, “I’m an alien from inner space” as a declaration that simultaneously reads as individual and universal. “Just ’cause I’m born here/Don't mean I’m from here,” she asserts because she knows that HEAVN is about a climate in which she doesn’t belong. It’s a climate in which none of us belong, but it’s also the only one that could produce an album filled with this particular tenor of hope in the face of despair.
Reviewed by kris ex for pitchfork.com.
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