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The expansive landscape of Black experience and identity conjured by McKinley Dixon on
For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her is a far-ranging and immersive musical portrait of lives across generations, a hip-hop
Visit From The Goon Squad that repeatedly creates moments of incisive beauty. Sometimes this comes from Dixon’s choice to forgo beats, as on “make a poet Black” or “Mama’s Home,” the latter’s harp and piano underscoring his evocative verses on hope. Sometimes it comes from the lush, jazzy boom-bap that conjures visions of Mos Def, notably on “Swangin’.” And the electric instrumentation can’t help but invite the occasional Roots comparisons, from “Never Will Know” to “brown shoulders.” Yet Dixon fuses these disparate elements into a distinctive and engrossing document, tracing stories of history, trauma, and uplift in ways that continually surprise; he can turn on a dime from slick to soulful to angry. And the clever arrangements keep pace