This is his baby, and he knew what he wanted-what he needed-from a loosely-afflilated team.īack in the day, Williams passion for music didn’t start by learning the guitar. He called in a cadre of some of his most trusted cats in order to properly execute his concept for these cuts on Mistah Weems. Mistah Weems communicates through songs that emote like a human being-not necessarily using DJ’s own words for the lyrics but undoubtedly beholden to his muse. Williams and co-conspirators coalesced to create a record that expresses DJ’s voice as a songwriter, artist, and bandleader. He sailed his new songs to shore by bringing together various musicians from across his long strange trip on this rock, from Richmond homies to collaborators from California and Denver. The latest album finds DJ inspired, vulnerable, and perched confidently in the director’s chair. “This record is a reflection of my separation with drugs and alcohol, my separation with someone I once loved, a sense of finding out who I really am, a combination of confidence and being insecure, and quite possibly the most honest collection of music I’ve ever created,” Williams noted. It is a career-defining sound document, a proud, empowered collection of songs that reveal a brilliance long hinted at but not yet fully realized. The fruits of that recording experience gave birth to the magic we now hear on Mistah Weems. The album arrives on the heels of last year’s Short Stories, a project that appears to have unlocked Williams’ own Pandora’s box of sorts. “It’s not dark, but it’s different,” DJ Williams said of Mistah Weems. After much inner work and introspection, DJ released his latest solo LP Mistah Weems on March 4th, 2022. He channeled the winds of change into himself and his art form. Then, he made wholesale modifications across the board. Over the course of several months, isolated from nearly everything but family, DJ re-examined relationships: with himself, with a partner, with drugs and alcohol. Grounded and confounded, with funds drying up fast, Williams decamped from Denver back to RVA, pared down, and took stock of his life as he knew it. Now, his day-to-day life had come to a veritable standstill. Like so many peers and fellow creatives, performing live had long been DJ’s bread and butter. Touring hard with longtime crew Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, and ensconced in his Shots Fired solo side-project doing mini-runs in cities around the country. Just a year ago, he was absolutely flying high. In early 2021, as the pandemic continued its vice grip on the music industry, DJ Williams found himself alone and back in his childhood home in Richmond, Virginia.