Some positive news came when it was revealed that, before she died, Sharon completed what would have been the next Dap-Kings album, and now that album is finally seeing a release. The great soul singer had been singing all her life but only saw a breakthrough in her career when she began working with backing band The Dap-Kings in the 2000s, and she released several acclaimed albums up until losing her battle with pancreatic cancer at age 60. One of the toughest losses that the music world suffered last year was the death of Sharon Jones. As she sings on "No Time For Crying," "Got no time for crying, no time for tears, we've got work to do." She also quotes a Michelle Obama speech on the chorus to "We Go High." And while Mavis has every right to be angry or upset that she's fighting a similar fight to the one she was fighting over half a lifetime ago, she approaches these songs with a sense of hope, like she really feels that if we keep fighting and keep singing songs like this, one day we won't have to anymore.
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The lyrics take on police brutality, the problem with "all lives matter," and on the track that gives this album its powerful title, the notion that a person cannot be defined by skin color.
It may be Tweedy's compositions, but the emotions that are delivered are all Mavis. The album was written and produced by Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, making this the third album they've made together, and the pair work together so naturally at this point. Some hope and feelings of solidarity come from the fact that Mavis herself is not only still around and still making awesome music, but that she's tackling those issues head-first on this year's If All I Was Was Black. Fast forward over half a century to today, where we have a president who is unable to condemn white supremacists and neo-nazis, and it sadly appears that we still need fighters like the ones we had in the '60s. Understanding these two examples together illustrates the power and legacy of “Four Women” and its critique of representational politics and of the rigidity of unique subject positions.Mavis Staples lived through the civil rights era, and as a member of The Staple Singers, she sang legendary protest songs like "Freedom Highway" as people like Martin Luther King Jr (who was a fan of the group) were fighting for a version of America where everyone was equal, no matter the color of their skin. Mimicking the logic of self-creation that Simone embodied both in her life and in “Four Women,” Kweli and Hi-Tek craft a song where Kweli transitions, often mid-verse, between rapping about each of these four women in the third person and taking on the first-person perspective of each woman. “For Women” reproduces the structure and message of Simone’s original.
This strategic decision was underscored when the rapper Talib Kweli and DJ Hi Tek recreated “Four Women” as “For Women” on their 2000 record Reflection Eternal. By examining the similarities between the varying accounts of Waymon’s transformation into Simone, and by conducting a close reading of Simone’s performances of “Four Women,” it is possible to understand Simone’s song as challenging representational politics by pluralizing identities. This performative self-creation is mirrored in the structure and lyrical content of one of her best-known songs, “Four Women,” in which each verse features Simone singing as a different woman. In June 1954, Eunice Kathleen Waymon performed on an Atlantic City stage for the first time under the name Nina Simone.
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