People were wondering if you were ever going to release a new album. Was that a question in your own mind, though?
No one knew what the fuck! [Laughs] But for me, it wasn’t a question, not at all. I had a little anxiety of how it would be received, but I knew it was coming.
The song “Back to the Future (Part 1)” feels like a reintroduction to the world.
When I wrote it, I envisioned it being the first thing people would hear, because it kind of tells the story of where I’ve been: “So, if you’re wondering about the shape I’m in/I hope it ain’t my abdomen that you’re referring to.” It was kind of like me answering some questions, without really being asked. Not just for everybody, but also for myself.
The trippy strings on that song have a “Sgt. Pepper’s” vibe.
Wow, thank you! The Beatles are a major influence for everybody, but when I was writing that song, I was very heavy into them — I was fucking around and doing covers of my favorite Beatles songs, experimenting with shit like that. I also really was digging America Eats Its Young at the time, which was one of the only Funkadelic albums that utilized strings.
The “Charade” lyrics — “All we wanted was a chance to talk/’Stead we only got outlined in chalk” — got a lot of attention for their timeliness.
It just shows how ongoing this shit is, because I wrote that even before the Trayvon Martin thing happened. It’s crazy that we’re still in the streets protesting the same shit. That song was just about the state of society in general — when I say, “A chance to talk,” that means a chance to come to the table and exercise rights that are supposed to be ours already. Me and [co-writer] Kendra [Foster] were reading a lot of [James] Baldwin around that time.