Album Review: Miss Black America by KIRBY
KIRBY’s debut is a powerful, culturally significant statement from a Southern daughter who isn’t afraid to sing her truth. Mississippi should be proud, and Grandma Cora surely would be too.
Miss Black America plays like KIRBY’s homecoming. Two years after losing her beloved grandmother, Cora, the singer-songwriter returned to her family’s Mississippi land and to the humble CME church choir in Eudora, where she had first learned to sing. That personal backstory suffuses every note of KIRBY’s debut album—a project she’s dedicated to Grandma Cora, whose legacy as a midwife and church soloist looms large. You can feel the intimacy of a tight-knit Southern community in these songs; it’s as if KIRBY bottled the atmosphere of Sunday afternoons at grandma’s trailer, cousins and aunties humming along, two-lane roads where strangers still wave hello. The album is deeply personal and proudly regional, blending modern soul with family history and incorporating the voices of loved ones and elders from back home. Her long-awaited debut is KIRBY’s Mississippi experience, told without filter or flattery—a blunt love letter to the Deep South that doesn’t blink at its trauma or its beauty.
This isn’t KIRBY’s first rodeo (her prior Sis. EPs were packed with love songs and self-love anthems in a classic soul style), but it is the first time she’s so completely centered in her Southern roots. If those earlier projects flirted with retro R&B tropes, Miss Black America plants its feet firmly in Mississippi mud. KIRBY is unapologetically Southern here—you “can’t listen to it and not know we’re in the back roads,” as she’s noted herself. The cultural markers of the rural South are embedded throughout the music’s spirit of intimacy and welcome. There’s a warmth that radiates, the kind that comes from a place where hospitality is second nature – think of neighbors greeting each other on a country two-lane road. That welcoming, homespun touch makes the album feel like a gathering on the front porch: informal, familiar, and deeply honest. And honest it is—sometimes to a fault. KIRBY’s tone throughout the record is unsentimental and direct, determined to show Mississippi in full color rather than in the nostalgic black-and-white outsiders expect. She has a lot to say, and she says it plainly, for better and occasionally for worse.
Across the album’s 12 tracks, KIRBY channels her grandmother’s strength and faith, effectively living out the Psalm 30:11 mantra of turning mourning into joyful dancing. She achieves this alchemy through the very musical traditions her forebears passed down—blues, gospel, and Southern soul—using them to transmute pain into perseverance. The opening track, “When You Coming Home,” sets the autobiographical, ancestral tone immediately. It’s a questioning, blues-kissed soul number that finds KIRBY calling out to the listener (or perhaps to herself) about reconnecting with roots: “Where’s your grandmama? … Do you not realize your first last name? Do you not realize before the man came?” she pointedly asks. The song plays like a summons to remember where you come from. There’s no sugary sentimentality in her voice—it’s the firm, slightly weary tone of someone who’s seen hard days and refuses to romanticize them. Yet beneath the bluntness lies warmth. She has drawn us into her personal history with startling transparency.
She follows with “Bettadaze,” which shifts into a lighter, hopeful register without losing that autobiographical grit. With a laid-back Southern soul groove, KIRBY reflects on her come-up: working retail, hustling in Memphis with nothing but “four songs on a purple CD” and big dreams. It’s a classic striver’s anthem about holding out for better days—the chorus repeats “Looking for better days, trying to believe in better days”—but KIRBY’s delivery keeps it from veering into cliché. There’s longing in her raspy croon, but also resolve. She invokes her ancestors directly (“I just wanna make the ancestors proud,” she declares in the bridge), linking her personal grind to a larger continuum. Even as she bluntly acknowledges frustration (“I’m overdue, watch the clock tick-tock”), the song’s spirit is more uplift than downbeat. By the end, with the gospel inflections in her ad-libs, you get the sense that KIRBY is turning her own hardships into a hymn of strength. The mourning of disappointment is being flipped into the dancing of hope, right before our ears.
While they draw on personal history, the album’s title track blasts that history open onto the national stage. This song is the album’s mission statement and one of its standout moments. Produced with a dramatic yet soulful palette of strings, piano, and a thick kick-drum thump, “Miss Black America” swirls gospel warmth and hip-hop grit together. KIRBY delivers a powerful message about her Black Southern identity and self-determination, all in one fell swoop. “God bless America, you wanna free us, pay them teachers like they senators,” she belts in the opening line, cutting straight to the point. She’s blunt—almost to the point of sounding didactic—but her conviction sells it. There’s pride, too: “I talked to God, He said my skin was such a beauty,” KIRBY sings, celebrating Blackness with gospel conviction. The hook flips a famous blaxploitation film quote into a mantra of empowerment, with KIRBY declaring “we’s a bad mother—shut your mouth!” in a playful yet defiant refrain. Big K.R.I.T.’s guest verse fits seamlessly, echoing her themes with slick Mississippi bravado (he name-drops the crooked letter and Waffle House, even takes shots at the KKK). The whole track feels like an update of Nina Simone’s fierce soul or an Outkast Southernplayalistic banger rolled into a modern R&B protest song. It’s unapologetically Southern and unabashedly Black. If there’s a flaw, it’s that K.R.I.T. almost steals the show with his charismatic drawl—KIRBY holds her own, but the feature slightly overshadows her on her own song.
KIRBY’s willingness to confront uncomfortable truths comes through even more starkly on “The Man.” Set to a stripped-down, bluesy stomp, this track is a scathing indictment of systemic exploitation, and it might be the album’s most bluntly honest moment. “Well, I can’t stand the man,” KIRBY growls in the chorus, her voice simmering with frustration. Across verses, she lays out the scenario: working her fingers to the bone, paying loans, feeling like nothing ever changes while the rich keep stealing the bottom line. It’s a modern protest blues in the tradition of Mississippi Delta workers’ laments, complete with a gritty arrangement that could have been recorded on a porch in the sweltering heat. True to her plainspoken style, KIRBY doesn’t couch her feelings in metaphor—she says it straight: “I make a dollar, and he takes three. I can’t stand the way he makes a living off of me.” There’s a spoken-word bridge sampled from what sounds like an old interview about Black and white folks in Mississippi, driving home the song’s grounding in real history. Notably, KIRBY has said “The Man” is dedicated to her 71-year-old father—a lifelong hard worker whose later years taught her that “the American Dream is not earned by the hours you put in,” since even Social Security leaves him “rarely financially secure.” It’s a sobering perspective, and she sings it with a mix of love and bitterness that cuts deep.
Just when the album threatens to get too heavy, KIRBY swerves and shows her lighter (and weirder) side. “Thick n Country” arrives like a burst of humid Delta air—a raunchy, P-Funk-inspired jam that proves KIRBY isn’t all sermons and sorrow. Over a slinky, bass-driven groove and a snappy beat cooked up by Homer Steinweiss, she teams with Mississippi rapper Akeem Ali to celebrate Southern-fried body positivity. This track is pure juke joint funk, complete with a chunky guitar and a hook as sticky-sweet as the BBQ sauce at a family reunion. What makes that track compelling is how vividly it paints Mississippi in color. KIRBY was intent on countering the stale black-and-white images outsiders often have of her state, and here she absolutely succeeds. You can practically feel the humidity, the mosquito bites, and the smoke off the grill when this song plays. It’s that vivid. “Na$ty” keeps the funky momentum going, but with a sharper political edge. It’s a brisk funk-rock workout enriched by bluesy piano chords that could’ve been heard in a Baptist church on Sunday, yet KIRBY uses this upbeat canvas to call out hypocrisy and racism with unsparing frankness.
After that one-two punch of funk, the album turns introspective and heavy again with “Under Pressure.” Here, KIRBY dives headlong into the emotional toll of being Black in America, especially in the South, where that legacy of trauma is ever-present. The song opens with a scene straight out of a nightmare that’s all too real: “Police pull up ’round two o’clock, shining that white light inside my crib, what they doin’?” Over a moody, slow-burning arrangement, she describes telling her brother to stay cool (“Toast, ain’t no confusion”) even as she recognizes the “crooked institution” at play. It might not be as instantly replayable as others, and it risks dragging down the momentum. But its inclusion is essential, as it anchors the album in the present reality of Mississippi’s burden. This is KIRBY refusing to turn away from trauma, even as she seeks sweetness in her home and family.
Family, in fact, comes to the forefront next on “Mama Don’t Worry.” This song is exactly what its title implies: a tender ode from KIRBY to her mother, urging her to let go of worry and pain. Over a warm, slow gospel-soul arrangement (imagine the subtle organ swells of a quiet church service), KIRBY’s voice takes on a soothing lilt. She acknowledges her mother’s sacrifices in plain language—“Your life on hold for all my pipe dreams… you work all your days, never complain, it’s a shame”. Her admiration is as blunt as anything: she flat-out says it makes no sense how her mom carried so much without breaking a sweat. The last leg of the album presents some of its most profound statements. “Reparations” is a tour de force of Southern storytelling and one of KIRBY’s boldest artistic choices. Backed by the powerful voices of the Tennessee Mass Choir, KIRBY tackles the loaded subject of reparations—not in the policy sense, but in a personal, almost spiritual sense. “My granny was a farmer… he picked the cotton,” she begins, putting her own family’s history of toil and oppression front and center. She then adds, “My granny was a teacher… they had no money for their toil,” broadening the narrative to encompass Black Americans denied the fruits of their labor. When the chorus hits, the choir elevates the song to the rafters:
“Reparations, I ain’t talking ’bout no dollars…
Now my people want their power.”
By not focusing on money (“I ain’t talking ’bout no dollars”), KIRBY frames reparations as a broader quest for dignity, respect, and restoration of what was stolen—“When you know what’s yours is ours,” she adds pointedly. The arrangement here absolutely reflects the warmth and solemn power of a church choir. In fact, this track sounds like Sunday morning service, with KIRBY as the lead soloist and the Tennessee Mass Choir as her backing congregation.
Wisely, KIRBY doesn’t end the album there. After the storm of “Reparations,” she offers a gentle, hopeful coda with “Jump the Broom.” This is easily the sweetest song on the record—a soulful love ballad that feels almost like it floated in from a different project. KIRBY sings about commitment and lifelong love, invoking the Black wedding tradition of literally jumping the broom over a mellow, classic R&B arrangement (think mid-70s Bill Withers or Al Green vibes). “Baby, we could jump the broom, wanna spend all of my nights with you,” she coos in the chorus. The song is unabashedly romantic, complete with softly strumming guitars and warm, stacked vocal harmonies. As an outro track, “Afromations” is exactly what it sounds like: affirmations for and about Black identity. KIRBY and what sounds like a chorus of voices (perhaps family members or just layered self-recordings) engage in a call-and-response of positive declarations. “Repeat after me,” she says, and then we hear them recite: “I am strong… I am worthy… I am great… I am God’s child… I am glory… I am beauty… I am loved.” This is less a song and more a spoken-word interlude with a musical backdrop.
It’s a series of “I am” statements aimed at instilling pride and self-worth – hence “Afromations.” This is less a song and more a spoken-word interlude with a musical backdrop. Midway through, a gentle hook floats in where KIRBY sings softly, “Oh, I know… I can’t change my ways because I am loved, I am yours.”
Yet, closing the album on this simple, heartfelt note is a gutsy choice. It’s completely free of irony or artifice. KIRBY isn’t trying to be cool here; she’s trying to speak life into her people. And that, in the context of everything else, is a beautiful thing.
KIRBY set out to reclaim Mississippi’s complicated legacy, and she’s done so with blunt honesty and abundant soul. Taken as a whole, Miss Black America is a remarkably cohesive and courageous debut. You hear all of it—grief, rage, humor, sweetness—often colliding within a single track. One moment you’re laughing at a clever down-home quip, the next you’re confronted with the specter of cotton fields and police lights. This emotional whiplash is intentional. The significance of this album cannot be overstated. In reclaiming her own Southern story, KIRBY also offers a new narrative of Black Southern pride. She challenges the monolithic, negative imagery often associated with Mississippi (poverty, racism, “Mississippi Burning” and all that) by counterbalancing it with the color, love, and strength she knows intimately. Miss Black America is, as KIRBY intended, a personal archive and a preservation effort—it’s her way of saying this is my Mississippi, these are my people, and you’re going to hear us now. The album embodies the Sankofa spirit of legends like Nina Simone and Taj Mahal, as it demands that we confront the past as we move forward.
KIRBY and her producers, Thomas Brenneck and Homer Steinweiss, keep the sound organic and rich—you can tell that live musicians had a field day here, which gives the record a timeless feel. It’s not chasing trends or algorithms, and that’s a double-edged sword: on one hand, the lack of “modern” gimmicks makes it stand out as authentic; on the other, a few songs might strike younger ears as almost too classic. But that’s a minor nitpick when the imaginative freedom on display is this strong. The album balances the trauma of Mississippi’s history with the sweetness of home and family, never letting one drown out the other. By drawing on her grandmother’s strength and her own artistry, KIRBY has crafted a debut that’s as unsentimental as a truth-telling elder and as welcoming as a front-porch gathering. She claims her legacy and invites us to sit a spell, listen, and maybe learn something. Her first album proper is a powerful, culturally significant statement from a Southern daughter who isn’t afraid to speak her mind and sing her truth. Mississippi should be proud, and Grandma Cora surely would be too.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “The Man,” “Thick n Country,” “Reparations”