Ferguson aside, how did you know the album was done?
It was time. Everyone was in the streets, so we sat down with the team and did some soul-searching and decided to put it out. But if it were left entirely up to me, it wouldn’t have come out. I had to get out of my head. Because there were so many songs that I wanted people to hear.
Were you originally thinking of, like, a 36-song triple-LP thing?
It wasn’t that long! [Laughs] But it was longer than what Black Messiah ended up being. What I’m working on now is like a companion piece. I hope people receive it that way. It’s part of the same vision.
The political songs got the most initial attention, but there’s a lot of other things going on there.
Well, a lot of the songs that people didn’t hear really take on those themes even more directly than the songs that are on Black Messiah.
So you could have hit people with something that was kind of like . . .
Almost like a beating over the fucking head [laughs].