R&B singer Lalah Hathaway to perform in Detroit before new album drops next week
The Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre will kick off its 2024 Jazzy Nights series on Wednesday with Grammy-winning soul singer Lalah Hathaway and saxophonist Mike Phillips.
Hathaway told the Free Press she’s excited to return to Detroit, a city she’s played dozens of times.
“The Aretha is one of my favorite venues to play,” she said. “It’s such a beautiful, gracious room. It’s a big space, but it feels so intimate, and I like that mixture.”
Hathaway is just days away from dropping her eighth album, “VANTABLACK,” set for release June 14. Ahead of the release, she’s debuted three singles from the record this spring: Grooving midtempo celebration “So In Love,” self-love summer anthem “I AM” and the sultry “Mood for You,” which just dropped last week.
“The record is really good and I’m very proud of it,” she said. “And I think it’s the best studio record I’ve ever made — and not by a little. By kind of a lot. And it features Willow Smith and Gerald Albright and MC Lyte and Rapsody and Common and Michael McDonald … It’s just such a richly textured record, and I’m really proud of the way it’s showing up.”
The title “VANTABLACK” came from the name of a color Hathaway heard of a few years ago, she said.
“It’s a word denoted to mean ‘the blackest black,’” she explained. “I find myself, at this point in history, feeling the Blackest that I’ve ever felt, and I don’t really know how to describe that other than. … Watching the world in the last five years, specifically, when I was really working on this record, has really been a trip.
“To observe the world and to travel to South Africa to live in the freedom of being Black without the burden of America really informed how I feel as a Black American at this point in history. And so the word is just meant to mean that I feel super Black right now. And I really love that feeling. I have always been a Black girl, and always understood where I come from. But it has been an interesting time in these here United States, and so I’ve been a little more focused on who I am and how I show up in the world as a Black woman.”
Her current state and peace of mind show through clearly in the advance singles, and she said that feeling of gratitude and positivity can be found in the remainder of the album, as well.
“A lot of the songs are affirmations,” Hathaway said. “A lot of the songs are expressing this deep love of self and the world around you. I feel like a lot of the work that I do is affirming and positive. There are some moments on the record where I’m delving into the crisis that was 2020. I feel like we all had it, we all felt it, and I definitely address it.
“But I’ve recognized that, particularly as a child of the ‘70s and ‘80s, Black music definitely helped you express the woe of the times and where we were, and how we are treated and regarded. But it also gives you hope, and it’s really important to me to uplift.”
Hathaway holds a unique place in upholding the legacy of Black music; her father was legendary virtuoso soul singer-songwriter Donny Hathaway, and one can hear shades of his voice within hers.
“Oh, it’s a tremendous honor to uphold that legacy,” she said. “It’s written into my actual DNA to do that. I’m always repping my parents everywhere I go; I’m always repping the culture everywhere I go; I’m always repping Black music everywhere I go, because nothing moves without Black culture and Black music in the world. That is my opinion, and that’s the hill I will die on.
“But it’s a tremendous honor when people say to me, ‘I loved your father, and I really love you.’ It just makes me so happy to know that people get that, and that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”
Lalah Hathaway and Mike Phillips
Wednesday, June 5, 7:30 p.m.
Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre
2600 Atwater St., Detroit
Tickets start at $15
thearetha.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: R&B singer Lalah Hathaway returning to Detroit to play The Aretha
