McKinley Dixon - Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (2023)

In an essay from The Source of Self-Regard, writer Toni Morrison reflected on how the dynamics of race, culture, and memory informed her harrowing 1987 novel Beloved. Morrison notes that it is society that strips her characters of identity and keeps them from writing their own history. As a result, the novel’s characters are locked in an unending struggle with memory, constantly reassessing all the trauma and joy that marked the events of the past. “They are spoken of and written about—objects of history, not subjects within it,” Morrison writes. Morrison’s layered approach to memory and narrative informed the writing of Chicago-based rapper McKinley Dixon and his latest album, Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? Named after the watershed trilogy of books that Morrison produced throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the album finds Dixon wrestling with his memories of the past and writing out a vision for his future place in the world.



1.01 - McKinley Dixon feat. Hanif - Hanif Reads Toni (2:23)
1.02 - McKinley Dixon feat. Angelica Garcia - Sun, I Rise [Explicit] (3:21)
1.03 - McKinley Dixon feat. Teller Bank$ & Alfred. - Mezzanine Tippin' (2:48)
1.04 - McKinley Dixon - Run, Run, Run [Explicit] (3:02)
1.05 - McKinley Dixon feat. Ghais Guevara - Live! from the Kitchen Table (3:23)
1.06 - McKinley Dixon - Tyler, Forever [Explicit] (3:03)
1.07 - McKinley Dixon feat. Anjimile - Dedicated to Tar Feather (2:37)
1.08 - McKinley Dixon - The Story so Far (Interlude) (1:07)
1.09 - McKinley Dixon feat. Seline Haze - The Story so Far (2:50)
1.10 - McKinley Dixon feat. Ms. Jaylin Brown - Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (4:08)