You really needed to be older to listen to some of the music I heard growing up. I shouldn’t have been walking around at elementary age, singing along to Johnny Guitar Watson’s Ain’t That A Bitch. I had no job, knew very little about the government or taxes, and no one had run a train on my heart. Yet, I felt a level of independence in saying it.

When Phyllis Hyman came along, I felt every piece of her pain. Even to this day, she puts me in a particular place, but it’s more haunting than anything because it’s said that she took her own life. And these days, everything is alleged because social media has insiders talking, letting us know that Hollywood is just as messed up as your neighbor getting all of his belongings set on the side of the road.

Happier songs like You Know How to Love Me didn’t find me at a mature stage in my life for that kind of love, but I belted out the lyrics as if I were Phyllis Hyman herself. I was her, in that moment and by golly, she should have never left us so soon.