Within less than a week of entering life, Toussaint Morrison was baptized in a New Orleans kitchen sink, named after the man who led the first successful slave rebellion, and raised by two activist parents who were called to the streets of the Crescent City to protest the Vietnam War. However, in a few years, he’d take a sudden move to the frozen tundra of Minneapolis by way of his parent’s divorce, and found himself playing toy instruments alongside his grandfather, a professional jazz trombonist. Years later, shuffling through his father’s tape collection during road trips to visit family in Detroit, Morrison was given a makeshift intro to Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted… and as an adolescent between entirely different worlds and conditions he never asked for, began writing.

Now, after a storied music career and touring for years, Morrison surfaces a new album, The Very Best of Ricky & Jane, name-dropping his parents in the title with a fleur de lis emblazoned on the cover in solidarity with his birthplace in the Big Easy. The Very Best touts tracks such as ALL SAINTS that tip a cap to his late grandfather who introduced him to playing an instrument, and his Detroit-born father who taught him how to speak at rallies. Following with RIOTS WORK, a metallic street ballad to his involvement in the uprising of his home city of Minneapolis, protesting police brutality and other forms of white supremacy throughout two long years of community action on the heels of police murdering yet another Black man in public with seeming impunity. This new body of work highlights the dichotomy of Morrison’s upbringing, celebrating a life of music a damn good trouble.

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