Letters from a Black Widow

Album review

Judith Hill made her bones offering tremendous support as a back-up singer for legends—including Michael Jackson and Prince, her mentor—as seen in the 2013 documentary Twenty Feet From Stardom. But after Jackson passed away in 2009 (Hill performed at his memorial service) and Prince died in 2016, online trolls apparently cast her as a "black widow." On the title track of her fifth solo album, Hill reveals she took the hate to heart. "I walk on stringy legs with a scarlet letter on my back … I broke the mirrors because I can't trust them no more/ Or maybe the image is only in my head," she speaks, as angular piano and strings stab and judder. The song becomes an exorcism; when a Greek chorus calls her "black widow," Hill wails, "That's not my name!" then shakes off any remaining bad juju via her bleeding raw guitar. It's hard to imagine someone this talented being cowed by anonymous comments. But she wasn't always so vulnerable to name-calling, it seems. On "Flame," Hill sounds, well, hot as hell as she unleashes a Tina Turner-style torrent: "As a baby I taught myself how not to feel/ My stomach's made of metal and steel/ I built up a toleration against the punches and blows." It's fierce blues-based rock 'n' roll, with Hill wielding her guitar like a weapon—but all the while, she's surrounded by love. That mean Hammond B-3? It's played by her mother, Michiko Hill, and that's her dad, Robert "Pee Wee" Hill, on bass. Those two absolutely shine on "Runaway Train," a high-spirited Motown gallop. Hill even pays tribute to her Japan-born mom ("Overcame addiction, got an education, everyday stayed clean") and Alabama paternal grandmother  ("a young black mother working hard to put food on the table for seven small kids") on jazzy "Dame De La Lumière." There are shades of Chaka on "You Got It Kid" and the loose-jointed funk of "My Whole Life is in the Wrong Key." You can feel the Prince influence all over the place, but especially on the wah-wah-touched "We Are the Power," its melody slip-sliding before the whole affair shoots out to the stars—Hill's guitar floating around the cosmos. "Downtown Boogie" oozes with super-fly bluster as she performs vocal and attitudinal acrobatics, spitting lines like, "Flicker, flicker/ I'm a little pretty ballerina." Wrapped in a warm embrace of organ, "Touch" is like a gospel show-stopper in the church of Prince; Hill shows off—as she should—and it's chill-inducing. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz