Half Upon a Time

As he went into making his fourth Blue Note release, José James envisioned the follow-up to the Billie Holiday tribute Yesterday I Had the Blues as a double album. It was going to be split between love songs and outward-looking material inspired by persistent injustices and increasingly visible and frequent attacks upon persons of color in the U.S. At some point, James scrapped the second half of the concept, too distressed to see it through. In the liner notes for Love in a Time of Madness, he briefly addresses – in pained but optimistic language – the condition of his native country and the planet at large. James ends by asking, "What is the value of human life? And of what value is love?" Throughout, he and his collaborators approach answers to the second question by writing from various states of a one-on-one relationship…