Biography
Morris Mills approaches the artificial divides separating musical genres along with those distinguishing the secular from the sacred by regarding them as speed bumps that exist without ever blocking his path. Born in Greenville, Texas and raised in Chicago, he drew from the overlapping currents of country, blues, funk, soul, jazz and Latin music that defined those two centers, forging a style at once defiant and devout while remaining fixed on his own artistic convictions. Across the six studio albums he has issued since 2005, the drive toward personal musical, spiritual and political understanding has prompted steady artistic development. His opening release, “Love and Coffee,” took shape as an R&B album that wove in funk textures and early traces of the guitar-centered rock he would explore more fully on 2019’s “The Dawn” and on “The Revival,” the project that surfaced in the pandemic year of 2020. Every one of these stylistically varied efforts was guided by the same creator for whom transformation itself has remained the single unchanging factor. Mills sustains an element of surprise by pairing a forceful, rock-inflected gospel piece such as “Revival” with a version of the hedonistic Prince classic “Uptown.” Observers of narrower outlook may label the contrast contradictory, yet Mills concentrates on the underlying link of spiritual liberation from societal norms that unites secular and sacred outlooks. Such awareness mirrors the depth that animated the work of the late great Prince Rogers Nelson, the figure Mills names as his foremost musical influence.
Albums
Singles
