Aja Monet - The Color of Rain (2026 Drink Sum Wtr Vinyl 2LP)

Aja Monet - The Color of Rain | Vinyl 2LP - 2026 Drink Sum Wtr (dsw029)

Aja Monet's debut album, when the poems do what they do, was recorded at Westlake with a band led by Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah and earned a Grammy nomination. For this follow-up she rebuilt everything. Meshell Ndegeocello conducts and co-produces alongside monet and drummer Justin Brown, and the core band, Ambrose Akinmusire and Nico Segal on trumpet, Josh Johnson on saxophone, Burniss Travis on bass, Daniel Mintseris on keyboards and Jermaine Paul, plays the kind of restless, harmonically open jazz that shifts under the poems rather than simply backing them. Monet doesn't deliver poetry over fixed arrangements. She adjusts phrasing, cadence and tone as the music moves, and the music moves constantly: "Elsewhere" works a funky groove with Ndegeocello and Georgia Anne Muldrow aboard, "For The Congo" builds to a polyrhythmic rally, and "Melting Clocks" darts between tempos with Mick Jenkins and Vic Mensa adding verses of their own.

Akinmusire records for Blue Note, Johnson has become one of the most in-demand saxophonists in Los Angeles, Brown's drumming anchors records by Thundercat and Flying Lotus, and Ndegeocello hardly needs an introduction. Add Brandee Younger's harp on "To Sister," Ganavya's voice on the same track, and Mereba on "Love Is A Choosing," and you have a cast that connects to half a dozen corners of the contemporary jazz world without anyone involved treating "jazz" as the point. Monet calls herself a surrealist blues poet, and the record holds that label more honestly than most genre tags. This is the 2026 Drink Sum Wtr release (dsw029), a double LP on standard black vinyl.