Chicago’s own spoken word legend James Ivy Richardson Jr., better known as J.Ivy, initially caught wide-reaching attention as a standout fixture on Kanye West and Jay-Z’s iconic collab “Never Let Me Down,” from 2003’s The College Dropout.
Since then, he’s quietly become one of the most important spoken word champions in the music industry. He’s spent the past six years pushing the Recording Academy to create a new category strictly for poets.
“My goal was meant to help shift the perspective of how people look at poetry because it’s a huge art form, it’s a part of everything, but it tends to get overlooked and it’s not looked at as you’d have a real career doing it. What I wanted was to create a blueprint of possibilities. We all have our own styles and perspective,” J.Ivy told The TRiiBE.
The previous Best Spoken Word Album category lumped poetry, audiobooks, storytelling and narrations into one. In 2022, J.Ivy’s Catching Dreams: Live At Fort Knox Chicago was forced to compete with works by Dave Chapelle, Barack Obama, LeVar Burton and Don Cheadle; the latter winning for his narration on the audiobook for Carry On: Reflections For A New Generation From John Lewis.
For 2023, the Best Spoken Word Poetry Album category was finally created after J.Ivy launched a petition that garnered more than 100 signatures from a litany of his peers and will be the first of its kind to exclusively nominate poets. On Feb. 5, J.Ivy will make his return to the Grammy stage as a nominee in the category for his latest and highly compelling studio album, The Poet Who Sat By The Door.
He also earned a nod in the Best Roots Gospel Album category for his contribution to Tennessee State University (TSU) marching band’s debut album, The Urban Hymnal, collaborating with Sir the Baptist and Professor Larry Jenkins. But what made him the happiest is seeing TSU students earn such a rare and hard-earned accomplishment at a young age.
“With Sir the Baptist and Professor Larry Jenkins’ leadership and production, those young men and women worked extremely hard and, as a result, they created a masterpiece. The joy these college students feel is immense, but to see them not only complete a beautiful work of art but to be nominated is incredible,” he said.
Prior to performing in Ghana for Chance The Rapper’s inaugural Black Star Festival in January, The TRiiBE caught up with J.Ivy to talk about The Poet Who Sat By The Door, the impact of his Grammy nominations, the legacy of Chicago drill and his take on Kanye West calling out corporations for heavily promoting violent rap music.
This interview is edited for length and clarity.