Since releasing Livin' on a High Note just last year, soul legend Mavis Staples has featured on tracks by Arcade Fire and Gorillaz — and she's not slowing down any time soon.
She's revealed plans for her next album, If All I Was Was Black, which is due out November 17 via Anti-.
Whereas her last full-length boasted credits by Justin Vernon, M. Ward, Neko Case, Ben Harper, tUnE-yArDs and more, she's scaled down the guest work this time around to a sole collaboration with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy.
If All I Was Was Black comprises all original songs that Tweedy wrote with Staples' voice specifically in mind. According to a press release, the new album addresses the race-baiting and rhetoric of exclusion coming from the White House, painting a picture of "contemporary America today, a present day filled with ghosts of the past."
"We're not loving one another the way we should," Staples said in a statement. "Some people are saying they want to make the world great again, but we never lost our greatness. We just strayed into division."
In addition to producing/writing the new set of songs, Tweedy also performs with Staples on the fourth track, "Ain't No Doubt About It." It follows previous team-ups from the pair on 2010's You Are Not Alone and 2013's One True Vine.
The first sampling of the creative partners' latest work arrives with the LP's title cut. Scroll past the complete album tracklisting to listen to "If All I Was Was Black" below.
If All I Was Was Black:
1. Little Bit
2. If All I Was Was Black
3. Who Told You That
4. Ain't No Doubt About It (ft. Jeff Tweedy)
5. Peaceful Dream
6. No Time For Crying
7. Build a Bridge
8. We Go High
9. Try Harder
10. All Over Again
She's revealed plans for her next album, If All I Was Was Black, which is due out November 17 via Anti-.
Whereas her last full-length boasted credits by Justin Vernon, M. Ward, Neko Case, Ben Harper, tUnE-yArDs and more, she's scaled down the guest work this time around to a sole collaboration with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy.
If All I Was Was Black comprises all original songs that Tweedy wrote with Staples' voice specifically in mind. According to a press release, the new album addresses the race-baiting and rhetoric of exclusion coming from the White House, painting a picture of "contemporary America today, a present day filled with ghosts of the past."
"We're not loving one another the way we should," Staples said in a statement. "Some people are saying they want to make the world great again, but we never lost our greatness. We just strayed into division."
In addition to producing/writing the new set of songs, Tweedy also performs with Staples on the fourth track, "Ain't No Doubt About It." It follows previous team-ups from the pair on 2010's You Are Not Alone and 2013's One True Vine.
The first sampling of the creative partners' latest work arrives with the LP's title cut. Scroll past the complete album tracklisting to listen to "If All I Was Was Black" below.
If All I Was Was Black:
1. Little Bit
2. If All I Was Was Black
3. Who Told You That
4. Ain't No Doubt About It (ft. Jeff Tweedy)
5. Peaceful Dream
6. No Time For Crying
7. Build a Bridge
8. We Go High
9. Try Harder
10. All Over Again
