David Remnick: Hanif Abdurraqib writes about music for The New Yorker and he's also a celebrated poet. Songwriting is his obsession, and lately one of the people that Hanif has been following most closely is someone named Joy Oladokun.

[music- Joy Oladokun, Taking Things For Granted]

Sometimes it feels like I never got out of the water

I never got out of the water even though I did

David Remnick: Here's Hanif.

Hanif Abdurraqib: Joy Oladokun is one of my favorite writers, not just songwriters, but writers of anything, of all language. I have been along for the ride with her career since what seems to me like near the beginning. I found her music around 2017, 2018. What I love about it is that I believe that she's a writer's writer, which is a phrase I use when talking about musicians, where I think they are invested in not just the lyric as a vessel for one element of a song, but they're interested in the lyric as an opportunity to build narrative worlds, to reshape what a song can do.

Joy is really committed to that. That comes to life most vibrantly on her newest record, Proof of Life, which is her fourth album and the album of hers that has gotten the most attention thus far in her career. I was thrilled to get to talk to her while she was visiting New York, getting ready to play Radio City Music Hall. This is really exciting for me because I'm such a big fan of your writing and your songs, but as a writer I'm just so drawn to your work. This is not on the new record but it's a song of yours that I talk about a lot, that I've actually literally used in writing workshops talking about anticipation and breath. You have a cover of My Girl that I adore.

Joy Oladokun: Thank you.

Hanif Abdurraqib: Because of how it is sung. My Girl is one of those songs that has been covered so much and can be sung in 100 different ways. My favorite cover before I got to yours was Otis Redding's cover because Otis sings it like he's mourning the world already that his beloved is not in, because I feel like My Girl is a song of anticipation and longing. You do this great thing when you sing it where you add a breath and a beat to the chorus before what can make me feel this way? Then there's a long beat before you get to the My Girl. I adore that move.

Joy Oladokun: I think a lot of my decisions, artistically, musically and otherwise, are just like, informed by my life in this body that I'm inhabiting my life in. It's sort of my version of My Girl is very much colored by the fact that I'm a queer person and I'm a woman singing about a woman. I think that a lot of the discussions I have-- I grew up very religious, a lot of Christian friends and stuff like that. The conversation that I would have around coming out of the closet was that around love.

It's like you have your husband that you married at 20 and you love this person and I feel the same way about this person. They just happen to be the same sex as me. What is wrong with you that you can't just connect those dots and realize that it's just the way some people are and some people aren't? Covering My Girl to me, is special because I love that song so much. I love Motown.

I love like-- my dad would sing My Girl and just cheesy songs to my mom when he got home from work. Covering it as a queer person, thinking about love and thinking about beauty, but also thinking about the fact that they would hear a female person singing My Girl and go, "What are they going to change the lyric to?" I wanted to give the listener time to be like, "I'm going to have to accept that what's coming next is My Girl. That is just as valid to this person as it was to Otis Redding, as it was to all the millions of men and women who have covered it in different ways."

Hanif Abdurraqib: Since you are holding a guitar, do you have the ability to play that, just that small chorus part or is that the--?

Joy Oladokun: I think I could do that, maybe. I'm going to have to tune it. Just a second.

[music- Temptations, My Girl]

I guess you'd say

What can make me feel this way

My girl

Hanif Abdurraqib: Thank you for that.

Joy Oladokun: Just a little breath.

Hanif Abdurraqib: I think a world exists in that little breath, which I enjoy. I've been a fan of yours for a long time. Proof of Life is not my entry point, but to a lot of people it might be, or to some people it might be. Proof of Life is hailed as the 'making it' album. I think I've read people talk about it as the breakthrough album, all these kind of things. I think what I love about it is I love a so-called breakthrough album wherein the artist is not ambivalent about breaking through, but perhaps realistic about 'this shit ain't what it feels like'.

What it feels like to you is not entirely what it feels like to me. I think so much of that impulse permeates the album in a way that, to me, is not also steeped in gratitude. I think what I like about trying is that it is also steeped in a type of gratitude. The whole album, it is imbued with this sense of understanding gratitude while still wrestling with some hard realities. Joy, would you mind playing Trying for us?

Joy Oladokun: Yes.

[music- Joy Oladokun, Trying]

I got brought up for an award today

Wearing clothes I bought out in LA

and back home my mother's crying

Cause daddy's going blind

And it looks like sister's popping pills again

I don't think it ever ends

This feeling like you'll never win

Guess I don't mind it

Cause I just keep trying

I've been down this low before

Fighting in a thousand wars

Not sure how far the line is

Hoping to find it

I just keep trying

I just keep trying

All my friends are unhappy

All my heroes are dead

the people tell me their problems

Wonder why I don't rest

I'm trying to find my breathing

Trying to find the meaning

This life will not come around again

I don't think it ever ends

This feeling that you'll never win

Guess I don't mind it

Cause I just keep trying

I've been down this low before

Fighting in a thousand wars

Not sure how far the line is

Hoping to find it

I just keep trying

I just keep trying

I keep trying

to keep my head up high through the storm

Trying to find some place of my own

Where life ain't as mean as it's been

I keep trying

to soothe the savage sounds in my mind

Saying I've fallen too far behind

From the places I wanna go

I don't think it ever ends

This feeling that you'll never win

Guess I don't mind it

Cause I just keep trying

I've been down this low before

Fighting in a thousand wars

Not sure how far the line is

Hoping to find it

I just keep trying

I just keep trying

I just keep trying

Hanif Abdurraqib: One thing that's interesting to me that I've tried to add more nuance to is this idea that as someone who loves Black music and has spent a lot of time immersed in Black music, I know so much of it is tied to the church. When we say things like, "Well, these Black folks came up in the church," I sometimes think that gets put under this umbrella that is heteronormative, or even ignores the sometimes brutalities of gendered and sexual-- heteronormative and gender relationships within the church. When I read about your upbringing and talk about your upbringing and think about, "Okay, well, this is a person who came up in the church, but in a very different way," but I also read that you wanted to be a preacher at some point. You had aspirations of being a preacher to the point where you took it seriously. I was curious about your relationship to gospel as a form.

Joy Oladokun: I really love gospel music, and I think maybe just religious art and music in general. I was in the car with someone and they were playing synagogue music for after someone sit Shiva. I was like, "This is stunning, what is this?" I think there's something may be in me that just responds to, I think, collective, purposeful singing, and that's my relationship to gospel is the part of me that wanted to be a preacher or a pastor or went to Bible college was, of course, you want to influence people to be the best versions of themselves and to be the best version of yourself.

In reality, I don't know that it's working as well as they think it's working [laughs]. When I came out of the closet and it became apparent that my 'lifestyle' was incompatible with the values of the whatever, for me, it became, "Okay, I'm not throwing the baby out, I'm just throwing out the stanky bathwater." [laughs] I don't know that I would call myself religious still, but I'm just always going to have that lens of growing up very religious. I found that most of my satisfaction has come from saying, "Here's what is beautiful about what I learned in that system and here's how I'll carry it with me as I move forward into this next part of my life."

Hanif Abdurraqib: I read that there was a video of Tracy Chapman that you watched when you were young that drove you towards learning guitar. Can I guess, I don't know, I didn't read beyond to see what the video was, because I was like, "I would like to guess," because I have my favorite Tracy Chapman videos.

Joy Oladokun: I love this game.

Hanif Abdurraqib: I did the thing where I was like, "Joy was born in '92. Was it the Nelson Mandela concert?"

Joy Oladokun: Yes.

Hanif Abdurraqib: That's my favorite Tracy thing in the world. I just assumed that everyone discovered Tracy Chapman by falling in love with that video.

Joy Oladokun: Same. I watch it once a week probably.

[music - Tracy Chapman - Fast Car]

You got a fast car

I want a ticket to anywhere

Maybe we make a deal

Maybe together we can get somewhere

Any place is better

Starting from zero got nothing to lose

Maybe we'll make something

Me, myself, I got nothing to prove

Joy Oladokun: I just, what a force. My favorite thing about Tracy Chapman is that she is still alive and that she seems to be just happy ignoring us. I love-- I put that video a Black queer person and I didn't know they were queer at that time, because I was 10 watching this video, but I could guess. Standing in front of thousands of people with a guitar and that's it and their voice and their words.

[music - Tracy Chapman - Fast Car]

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car

Speed so fast it felt like I was drunk

City lights lay out before us

And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder

And I-I had a feeling that I belonged

I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

Joy Oladokun: I don't even know if that takes confidence, I think it takes this, I don't know, maybe it's faith, I think it's conviction. I think what blows me away about Tracy Chapman still is everything she said about her career and her relationship to it, you could just sort of tell that what drove her to open her mouth in the first place was conviction, belief in her values and belief that if people would only think about this, it might change the world. I was 10 years old watching someone who looked like me play the guitar. I didn't know the extent to which she would become my hero then, but alone on the fact that she was herself doing what she did in the way that she did it, it changed the trajectory of my life.

I asked my parents for a guitar that Christmas. It was all I could talk about. I never want to understate the value that that representation had for me because I just, I truly, I don't see that video, maybe eventually I become a musician but it really was just the absolute match that lit the fuse of which-- that video is why we're talking today, 100%.

Hanif Abdurraqib: Joy, thank you for talking to me. Would you, if you don't mind, as we part ways, will you play us another song?

Joy Oladokun: Yes.

Joy Oladokun: Thank you, Joy.

[music - Joy Oladokun, Keeping The Light On]

I grew up out in the desert

Where I learned to thrive alone

Lived in LA 'til it broke me,

Oh, I rode on like a storm

Found a girl and found a job, just like they say good people do

Oh, but every now and then, I turn to salt inside her wound

Oh, and all I know

Is we can't, we won't let go

Keeping the light on, light on ain't easy

Keeping the fight on, so long, is hard to do

For all the times you feel the weight

There might just be a better way

Won't deny that it feels so hard

When the night gets so dark

Keep keeping the light on

And I'm trying to get better

Every day I chase the sun

And I pray it's worth the heartache when I'm done

Oh, and all I know

Is we can't, we won't let go

Keeping the light on, light on ain't easy, no

Keeping the fight on, so long, is hard to do

For all the times you feel the weight

There might just be a better way

Won't deny that it feels so hard

When the night gets so dark

Keep keeping the light on

Try to give a little, try to be a little

Try to see a light in the dark

Try to give a little, try to be a little

Try to see a light in the dark

Try to give a little, try to be a little

Try to see a light in the dark

Try to give a little, try to be a little

Try to see a light in the dark

Oh, we can't, we won't let go

Keeping the light on, light on ain't easy

Keeping the fight on, so long, is hard to do

For all the times you feel the weight

There might just be a better way

Won't deny that it feels so hard

When the night gets so dark

Keep keeping the light on

Joy Oladokun: We did it.

David Remnick: Joy Oladokun, and she sang Keeping the Light On in the studio at WNYC. Her latest album is called Proof of Life and she spoke with Hanif Abdurraqib of The New Yorker.

 

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