To me, southside native Jamila Woods’ voice is for windows down on Lake Shore Drive, summertime streaming through your hair, a jump in the lake from the 57th St. Beach or Montrose Ledge, comfort on a winter day when your backpack feels a little too heavy waiting for the bus to school. It’s introspection, it’s self-love, it’s power and independence.

Last Sunday, it sounded like a crowd full of glittery, rain-damp Chicago PrideFest attendees singing along on Halsted and Addison. Woods and her backing band of keyboardist AMI and two singers, delivered an energetic and ethereal 45-minute long set on the T-Mobile Stage Sunday, Oct. 3 for Northalsted’s rainy yet sparkly Chicago PrideFest.

“Make some noise if you’re from Chicago, Chicago, no Naperville shit,” Woods said.

The crowd went up in cheers and screams.

“No shade,” she added with a smile.

Woods, a Beverly native, embodies Chicago music in her own right and as a chronic collaborator with Noname, Chance the Rapper, Saba and Nico Segal. Sunday Candy, her collaboration with Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment, topped out at number 21 on the Billboard charts in 2016.

She grew up attending After School Matters, an organization granting school-age kids stipends to explore the arts, and works with Chicago area students with Young Chicago Authors. In a 2015 Chicago Reader interview, she credits those programs including the Chicago Public Library’s YOUmedia program with her evolution into both a poet and musician.

Drawing from her two most recent albums, 2017’s HEAVN and 2019’s LEGACY! LEGACY!, Woods sang of Chicago, her idols and navigating the world as a queer, Black woman. Drifting across the stage in waist-length black and white braids and a fishnet shirt, she connected with the crowd throughout her set, from the fans against the barrier to those in the back, mouthing along.

She sang childhood nostalgia of chicken wings, mild sauce and playing ball in the alley on Emerald Street featuring west side rapper Saba off of her 2017 album HEAVN. Her backup singers weaved an intricate backing to her riff off of the Mr. Rogers theme song, “won’t you be my neighbor?” in the hook. In LSD, an ode to Lake Michigan and Lakeshore Drive she credits Chicago as making her into who she is.

Woods grappled with this theme of oppression, identity and police brutality throughout her set. A recording of Lucille Clifton’s won’t you celebrate with me drifted between the vines and disco balls onstage.

“I had no model. Born in babylon, both nonwhite and woman, what did I see to be except myself,” the recording echoed.

Countering white narratives surrounding Chicago and Black communities stood BALDWIN, about reclaiming narratives about Chicago.

“If I say ‘I can’t breathe,’ will I become a chalk line,” she sang in VRY BLK off of her 2017 album HEAVN. Her lyrics seemed to ricochet off of the rainbow-painted police cars at each entrance.

Though coming off of a tour with prior stops at the Hollywood Bowl and Riot Fest, the energy welcoming her home was electric.

“This isn’t the first show, but it feels like the first show,” Woods said.