Judith Hill had writer’s block for a long time after her last tour. After releasing “Baby, I’m Hollywood!” in 2021, she came home to Los Angeles after taking it on the road and was struggling to come up with what to write about next.
“As artists, we need to be able to fill up our soul and our spirit with replenishment in order to create, and there’s always a societal pressure to constantly [produce], especially in this universe of streaming,” Hill says, over a late lunch at the Crosby Street Hotel in New York. “It was good to just take a moment and just gather my thoughts. And also, this record was a lot more in depth emotionally for me, so I had to really go through the emotional process of getting some place.”
The result is her new album “Letters From a Black Widow,” released in late April, which largely reflects on her relationship with the public after the deaths of her collaborators Michael Jackson and Prince. Hill had been duet partners with Jackson and performed at his memorial, and was Prince’s protégé in the last years of his life. Her work with the two landed her the label of “black widow” after their deaths.
Hill had largely tried to avoid letting the public’s attention get to her. Yet while on a mushroom trip in the mountains with friends, she suddenly had a vision of a mountain of pain, one “I had thought I had gotten rid of,” she says.
“And that vision really inspired me to write about that and what it was that was glaring in front of me. I finally found the courage to start writing about it, and once I did, it was a powerful experience and healing process to go there and write about it.”
Judith Hill’s album cover for “Letters From a Black Widow.”
The songs on “Letters From a Black Widow” explore the “perception and the mob mentality” she experienced, as well as the “consequences of celebrity culture and how it affects people that are caught in the crossfires of it.”
“It was really difficult. People were calling me the black widow. ‘She has something to do with [their deaths].’ It sort of triggered a deep wound for me,” she says. The album is about both confronting that wound inside her and addressing the public.
“The record dives into both and allows me to confront myself at the same time as I’m confronting society,” she says. “It’s a messy process, and the record allows mess.”
Hill, who was born and raised in L.A., wrote her first song at age four with the help of her mother, who is now part of her touring band — along with her father. Performing live has always been a central part of her identity as a musician; in fact, it’s one of the main lessons she took away from Prince.
“It’s always about making sure that the live version really works and the song is written in a way where you can perform it really well,” she says. “Probably one of the biggest priorities for me when I’m writing songs is to really make sure that as a band, we really can play this stuff pretty well. All of the musicians on stage, their parts are really good parts for performing, and the song really carries itself.”
She’s on the road all summer touring the new record, and, much like with this one, she’s confident she’ll be able to tell when it’s time to write again.
“Whenever I write a record, I can feel it coming,” she says. “You start to hear it when you’re sleeping. When you’re in the club or you’re talking to someone, you can actually start hearing the formations of the songs you want and the energy of it. You can sort of feel a surge of energy, like, ‘Oh, this is the energy.’”
Judith Hill
