[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Rapper McKinley Dixon's new album is, in part, owed to Toni Morrison. The album is called Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?, which you may recognize as three different titles of Morrison's novels. Let's listen to a track from the new album. This is Run, Run, Run.

MUSIC - McKinley Dixon: Run, Run, Run

Running from the guns

Point and shoot

We used to played up on the playground

Running from the guns

Who thought

Hardest part would be for me to stay down

Running from the gun

Breaks my heart

If you decide to fly away now

Running from the guns

I am

Running from the guns

I make the devil mad

Dancing with you

All the angels lookin jealous

Cause ya halo is hoops

Hoverin over your shoulders

Wings usually is folded

I'm not used to extending them

To tell you the truth

Pull me off the wall, growing my roots

Sheesh

What I'm running from

Following suit

We needed more distance, so they wouldn't pursue

Cuz up here, I'm making Icarus envious too

Of my soles

And wings

And freedoms

And the songs

They'll sing

When I see em

Moving on my own

Put the dreaming aside

Everybody on the porch

Looked up to the sky

Friends getting mad

But before they knew

Suddenly

My niggas start lifting up too

Through the clouds

Brown shoulders, broke right on through

With eyes watching god

My heart stays on

Running from the guns

Point and shoot

We used to played up on the playground

Alison Stewart: I love a shout-out to Icarus. Dixon is based in Chicago after spending many years in Richmond, Virginia. He also has some ties to our area, in Queens. The album is getting rave reviews. The Guardian gave it four stars and calls it "Bursting with images and invention." In case you liked the music, mark your calendars as McKinley Dixon will be in town at Baby's All Right in Brooklyn on September 13th. He joins me now for a listening party for the new alb Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?. Hi, McKinley.

McKinley Dixon: Hi, how are you doing?

Alison Stewart: I am doing great. When the album released, you wrote on Twitter, "The coming-of-age movie of the summer made this one for me and with you in mind." How is this album a coming-of-age piece of work?

McKinley Dixon: I think a lot of people, when I say coming-of-age, they're like, "Ah, a 15-year-old." I'm like, "No, you are--" I think that's one of Toni Morrison's big lessons is that you're constantly learning that human life is so complex that you can come of age in your 20s, come of age in your early 30s. I think we hold moments that are traumatic and beautiful within us, so why not be like, "This is a revitalizing time for me, even as I'm transitioning from late 20s to early 30s." I think it's coming-of-age any age.

[laughter]

It's any age you can come into.

Alison Stewart: When did the narrative arc of this album become clear to you?

McKinley Dixon: It's really hard to pinpoint it because I don't really write lyrics consecutively. I will see something and be inspired by the beauty of it and write down one line, one or two lines. Then from there, it becomes this, it manifests itself as I get verses and songs fully put together, but I've always wanted to pay homage to Toni Morrison. My last record for my mom and anyone who looked like her was part of a trilogy, which was based off of her trilogy in a way.

Then this one was, I finally had the resources, the ideas, the age to talk about what I wanted to talk about. I think it's been a lifetime. It's easy to say that's been a lifetime thing because it really has been. I've been reading her books since I was a kid.

Alison Stewart: That song we just heard in the intro, Run, Run, Run as it's got this groove, but there's also references to running from a gun. I'm curious, when you think about the sound, the sonics, the music, and then the lyrics, what were you trying to convey with that particular combination?

McKinley Dixon: I really like the juxtaposition of the lyrics and the actual sound. I think the instrumental, you first hear those keys, they sound like a time you knew from back in the day. I think that invokes something in you immediately. Then you hear the lyrics and you get into this headspace of comfortability with your nostalgia. Then from there, you really listen to the lyrics and really listen to the gun aspect of it, or a lot of my homies lifting off into the sky.

These allegories that are not just meant for beautiful imagery, they're also meant for a way to describe harrowing moments, but they're still beautiful. I think I really wanted to just juxtapose those two ideas, the harrowing and the beauty in another way more so than I did with the other songs, a more concrete way.

Alison Stewart: The album actually begins with writer, Hanif Abdurraqib, 2021 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, reading an excerpt from a Toni Morrison novel, the novel Jazz. How did you first connect with Hanif?

McKinley Dixon: It's actually so funny. I have several of his books, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and the next one, the Black American one. I was always a fan, but then I released For My Mama in 2021. Him and I are kindred spirits in the sense that we came up on punk music, pop punk music, rap music, these sort of genres that were not really allowed allotted for us back in the day. Now, we thrive within them. He put For My Mama on his favorite albums of 2021 and I keep telling people, it was number eight. It could have been number 31. I don't really know.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: It was number one in your head. [laughs]

McKinley Dixon: Oh, yes, exactly. I was like, yes, number eight. Everyone's like, "Okay, let me go check this out." I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no."

[laughter]

McKinley Dixon: For me, I just messaged him. I was like, "I'm a big fan." Actually, between you and me, and the rest of the people listening, I tried to get several other people on the record. Nikki Giovanni is also a local legend in Virginia where I was at, and she's just busy in the later parts of her life. I couldn't get her. I tried to do Kimberlé Crenshaw, but I don't know what happened with that. He was just specifically the intro because I wanted him to read an expert from a Toni Morrison book.

He was like, "I can do this. I'm a little busy. I'll talk to you soon." I was like, "That's great." Then he takes his time. He calls back about a month later, and he was like, "Obviously, I read the first page of Jazz. I don't know what I was thinking, why would I do in the other one?" I was like, "This is brilliant. It's brilliant."

Alison Stewart: Well, let's listen to a bit of it. This is from Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?.

MUSIC - McKinley Dixon: Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?

I'm crazy about this city

Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half

In the top half, I see looking faces, and it's not easy to tell which are people,

which the work of stonemasons

Below is a shadow where any blasé thing takes place

Clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women

A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things.

Hep, it's the bright steel rocking above the shade below that does it

When I look over strips of green grass lining the river

At church steeples and into the cream-and-copper halls of apartment buildings, I'm strong

Alone, yes, but top-notch and indestructible

Like the City in 1926 when all the wars are over and there will never be another one

The people down there in the shadow are happy about that

At last, at last, everything's ahead

The smart ones say so and people listening to them and reading what they write down agree

Here comes the new

Look out, there goes the sad stuff; the bad stuff

The things-nobody-could-help stuff

The way everybody was then and there

Forget that; history is over, you all, and everything's ahead at last

In halls and offices people are sitting around thinking future thoughts about

projects and bridges and fast-clicking trains underneath

Alison Stewart: McKinley, how did you decide what the music would be behind a passage of Toni Morrison?

McKinley Dixon: The album is also broken up into sections. Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?, I wanted to stick to the trilogy sense and actually split the album up into three parts of a book. It felt like the prologue was this story of Hanif walking through a city, explaining what's about to happen, and ending at the front doorstep of my place, my residence, or the character's residence, which is why sun arises starts, it's literally the morning of.

I thought it would be great to make this sound like an Afro-futuristic setting to put you off guard and also, not disorientate but keep you on your toes because then it hops right into strictly hip hop. I think that juxtaposition there is another way, I just wanted it to be like intro, "Okay, now, the book begins," and he's the perfect person to do the intro.

Alison Stewart: My guess is McKinley Dixon. The new album is called Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?. It is out now. How do you think Toni Morrison's writing can be connected to hip-hop? What is the connection?

McKinley Dixon: Where do we begin? Toni Morrison, there's so many things that we look into, especially with Black people, Black artists, Black writers, Black people in media that are inspired by her. I'm constantly saying that Jordan Peele is inspired by Toni Morrison because if you don't know Toni Morrison's work, you would never know that she actually writes horror stories. You know what I mean? Beautifully, brilliant, complex horror movie stories. I think that is just one situation where if you're thinking it's a genre that is just Black folk, then you're not going to realize that this is not-- Because it is Black folk, it is so all-encompassing of so many genres.

I think with hip hop, she is so great at connecting love, beauty, and terrible times all within the human experience, which is so hip hop because it also happens so close to the concrete. Always in these communities, always in these neighboring places, the characters look out the window into the clouds and long of being in a different community. I think hip hop is a lot of that too. It's a lot of being like, "This is my home, this is where I'm from, but eventually everybody from my home will be in a different spot."

The memorializing of people who have passed, that never forgetting and never letting go is so hip hop. The fact that children running through the streets in the 1920s, not really knowing what this music is, but realizing that it is the sound of the city, is so hip hop. I think I could go on and on about how she is one of the best hip hop writers of all time, but we don't got that time.

Alison Stewart: We don't because we have to talk about Carrie May Weems. It's a good reason we don't have that time.

McKinley Dixon: Oh, yes, another one.

[laughter]

Another legend.

Alison Stewart: There's a line in the song Live! From The Kitchen Table, which reads, reporting to you live, sitting at Carrie Mae's kitchen table, of course, referring to her famous series of photographs. When did you first see those photographs?

McKinley Dixon: Probably half a decade, maybe a little bit more. I actually have the book, a couple of her books too, but I just saw those photos when I was in school and was-- I don't even know. Being able to encapsulate so much in such a simple image consistently, I've never seen before. Those came out, I think, in the '90s. They came out early '90s, like '90, I think. It was just incredible that nothing to me has really captured that ever again.

There are artists who have come close, but for me, that was just her at a table with a light and a single drink in her hand just said so much specifically about me and the history that I came up in and the Black women that I surrounded myself with. I think that honestly, all of this is just an homage to Black women because it's such a complicated history. Yes, Carrie May Weems, those photos are incredible. If you have not seen those, I definitely recommend having your mind blown by the simplicity of it.

Alison Stewart: Yes, there's another lyric, Live from my mama’s kitchen table where she pulls heartbreak to her chest and folds up cards to keep legs stable. Where the currency for meals is often the laughter that’s exchanged in. Let's listen to Live! From The Kitchen Table.

MUSIC - McKinley-Dixon: Live! From The Kitchen Table

From the timeline where niggas don't die, the skyline just takes back our fables

Reporting to you, Live! Sitting at Carrie Mae's kitchen table

With my right hand placed on rifle, left hand just learned 'bout some fables

To a child who don't yet understand I pray one day she able, from the table, well

Doin' heroin still a crusade and what's the point

When they pop lil' boy where his fingers stick his pomade? I seen it

Shoulda took a route less scenic, but when you don't see sun often

Won't this something got you fiending, imma

(Live! Live! Live! Live! Live!)

Live, from my momma's kitchen table

Where she pulls heartbreak to her chest and folds up cards to keep legs stable

Where the currency for meals is often the laugh that that's exchanged in

I ain't seen you in a minute, so sorry, tears blurring your frame

Our line different, nothing missin'

You ain't call, but we ain't trippin', come in

Still remember the seatin', treat the home just like the heart

Keep it warm and always beatin', it's a-

Live! Live! Live! Live! Live!

I'm not the one

I'm not the one

I'm not the one

I'm not the one

That's Live! From The Kitchen Table off the album Beloved? Paradise? Jazz!? from McKinley Dixon. Let's talk about some of those women in your life. You grew up in Annapolis, but as a kid you spent a fair amount of time in our listening-era area in Queens with Grandma. What did you call your grandma?

McKinley Dixon: Honestly, I called her Roberta sometimes. She was very-- Growing up, it was a very different time period especially in--

Alison Stewart: Roberta?

McKinley Dixon: Yes. A mother's gaze is only matched by a grandmother's gaze. It really was just like there was a lot of things where-- My mother came from a time where the only way for Black people to get out of their community was by joining in the government in some sort of way so she was very strict growing up. My grandmother was also the same sort of way. Really I called her-- I'd be like, "Ma'am, ma'am." Now I call her Gamgam. As we get older, time goes on and you become less strict, hopefully. It was definitely a respectability thing. That's what I called her growing up. Shoutout to my grandma.

Alison Stewart: Shout out to Roberta. Gamgam.

McKinley Dixon: Yes, shoutout to Roberta. Gamgam.

Alison Stewart: What do you remember about New York or feeling about New York as a kid?

McKinley Dixon: Oh, my God, the best moments of my life, honestly. Annapolis in Maryland is a very-- It's not even a complex place. I love saying that things are complex because they really are, but Annapolis is not complex. There's places and communities that don't allow one like me, marginalized people, to thrive, but then there's places that stomp it out in a way. I would say Annapolis is definitely a place, sorry to all my listeners from Annapolis, Maryland, but it really is a place that does not allow marginalized people to excel in a way.

The juxtaposition of that was then I would go to my grandma's house and I knew everybody on that street. We only stayed on one street, but so much life happened on 225. Then everything from fireflies to football games in the streets to being mischievous and getting into trouble. It's like those people were the people that raised me, in a way. My grandma was the matriarch of the neighborhood, being one of the oldest people in it and having her door always open to people.

I think that that's where I learned that a community-- I didn't have the words for it, the language to describe it, but that's where I learned that a community also includes accessibility to people from the past. There's people that believe the roots grow upwards in our elders and grow downwards in our children. I think that's where I first learned it, to be anything you want. There's freedom in being able to be imaginative and that's something that doesn't come for a lot of people because of the situations they're in. I was lucky. That's why I remember beautiful moments of my life.

Alison Stewart: My guest is McKinley Dixon. The new album is called Beloved? Paradise? Jazz!? . He'll be playing in our area at Baby's All Right in Brooklyn on September 13th. Can we talk a bit about Tyler, Forever inspired by your late friend Tyler? Can you tell us a little bit about Tyler?

McKinley Dixon: Yes. That's another reason why New York was just so-- Tyler actually lived across the street from my grandma's house. My grandma raised his dad in a way and then also raised him in a way. It became this thing where-- I was born on the 20th of October '95. Tyler was born on the 28th of October '98. It became this thing where it was kismet, the relationship, these sort of things, where I was the older cat that was running around with this young blood and we just got into mischief together.

The thing was because I could go back across the street, which is also sort of a synonym for me going back home to Maryland, I could leave these situations. It's like we would get into trouble and it's like, "Well, I'm just going to be gone next week anyway," but my friend cannot. I think the concrete really separated our lives in a way that took me and him in very drastically different changes. Tyler, Forever is the song people come to me and they say, "Tyler, Forever, is it a song of processing trauma? Is it a song of sadness?"

It's like, "No, in actuality, make a poet Black from my last album was about this situation and that was processing trauma in a way that was sporadic and in your face. Whereas at this one, it's me not processing trauma, but me being like, "This is the end of a legacy," because after a certain point, you're not talking about your home, you're appropriating a carcass. You're talking about the shooter. This is not for me anymore. It really was just me being like, "All these memories I have, I'm going to keep them now close to my chest, even if there's no one else that was there for them."

Tyler, Forever is a very great song split up into three parts as well. Tyler, Forever. The beginning is Tyler's life, the very big in-your-face moments we had. The comma is the transition where I'm settled down, and the forever is these moments and memories and melodies that are talking about how I'll never lose this. We'll never lose these moments even though it is just me now.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear Tyler, Forever from McKinley Dixon.

MUSIC - McKinley-Dixon: Tyler, Forever

Nigga, problem with this preaching is it might just make my wrist hot

Nine niggas, masked up in that van, them boys Slipknot

They kids up in the hood is Babymetal

Head banging on yo' boy, he push that overdrive pedal

Watch yo' step, nigga

(It's Tyler, forever)

(Tyler for, Tyler, forever)

(Tyler for, Tyler, forever)

(Tyler, forever)

(Tyler for, Tyler forever) Tyler for,

Tyler forever,

Nah the chorus ain't clever,

I'm making sure niggas remember,

It's Tyler forever,

Tyler for, Tyler forever,

Tyler for,

Tyler forever,

It's Tyler for-ahh

Settle down,

Alison Stewart: McKinley, as I mentioned, you're going to be in our area on September 13th at Baby's All Right in Brooklyn. You just finished a European tour. Simple question, how did it go? What was the highlight?

McKinley Dixon: It's actually so funny because I was listening for the second before about traveling in planes and man, oh man. It's like, it was great. Europe is incredible, it's beautiful. Since London, it's like so much cheaper to exist in a day-to-day life. the communities out there were great. I had a great time. It's just, man, those airports. Oh my gosh, any airport in Germany was just a hassle.

Then I also ended my trip with Istanbul and you see the world that you exist in now and you go to a place that you never-- I've been there before, but you've like, from a different eye, and the main thing I took out of it is-- I don't know how deep we can get into it, but it's really disappointing how the country that we live in has been so anti-Muslim for so long because you go out to London, you're in Paris, you're in all these places. You see the vast beauty of people who have different head wraps, different scarves, different hijabs, different cultures, different dialects, all from one place that speak different languages. Y

ou really are like these markets, these places, and you start to think like, "Wow, because we limited the people that had access to our world, we are now suffering in a way." I think that's-

Alison Stewart: That's why travel's important.

McKinley Dixon: Exactly. Exactly.

Alison Stewart: It really opens the minds and hearts, hopefully. McKinley Dixon's new album is Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? McKinley, thank you for joining us.

McKinley Dixon: Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on the title track.

MUSIC-McKinley Dixon: Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?

Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!

Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!

Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!

Keep my braids,

Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!

Braids for the summer,

I'm less likely to falter,

Gold finger tips rusted,

Now the color has altered,

Deny food from the hand,

Matriarch is insulted,

The house is crumbling,

Hurry,

Out the back door bolting,

 

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