On Wait Til I Get Over, Durand Jones writes his way through Hillaryville, Louisiana’s contradictions: the pristine beauty and the ragged roads; his teenage desire to leave and his adult desire to honor his tangled roots; the plantation history and the ups and downs of the Black community that made homes of this reparation town.

Jones lays us several courses and flavors of sound that are all distinctly Southern and Black - rhythms heavy with raw, Delta grit; bright exhalations of church spirituals; even tender, cadent spoken word. But most importantly, each track is an arc quite literally grounded in the story, the feeling, and the sound of what it means to go home. Taken as a whole, Wait Til I Get Over joins albums like Alabama Shakes’ Sound & Color, Solange’s A Seat At The Table, and Jon Batiste’s We Are as a mesmerizing new addition to Southern Black music, affirming Jones as a uniquely gifted artist and vanguard of the form.

"Hometowns have a way of keeping a part of you," says Jones, "and if I'm making something young-me would be proud of, Hillaryville is a big part of that."

Jones finds something transformative in his memories there and the life he has led since, ultimately claiming and embracing his whole self. The result is vulnerable, personal, touching on Jones' relationship to church life, to his mother, to his queerness, to his worth. "I wish I could tell my younger self 'you don't have to stick to the dreams people have for you,'" says Jones, "'you can dream bigger. You are more than capable; you are more than able. I think about some nerdy punk kid in the rural south who needs to hear that now.'"

Wait Til I Get Over does exactly that. It’s a veneration project - an abstracted and contemporary oral tradition that passes story down from, and heaps homage upon, his hometown of Hillaryville.