47th Street

Hathaway has spent a career making the difficult sound casual, moving from a low register to a melismatic peak without turning the run into a stunt. Here she spends that command on a street name rather than a hook. J. Ivy narrates Black families moving north, which roots the song in the Great Migration instead of the skyline shots that usually stand in for Chicago.

It lands with the listeners who followed VANTABLACK, and with anyone who has a road at home carrying first loves, bus transfers and church clothes. The parent album, Made in Chicago, arrives October 1, the day Donny Hathaway would have turned 81.