‘Close to home’: VCU alum performs Toni Morrison-inspired album at Gallery5

Hollyann Purvis, Managing Editor

“I want to ask if they feel loved at the end of listening to it,” said musician McKinley Dixon in reference to how audiences perceive his latest album, “Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?”

Dixon, a Richmond native and VCU alum, returned to the city last Friday to perform his newest album at Gallery5, a nonprofit community arts organization. 

“All these shows are sort of hometown shows in different ways,” Dixon said. “But that show is different because it has everybody, like a lot of people I knew growing up. Even the openers are people I knew for a long time.”

Special guests at the show included Alfred., Angélica Garcia, Nathaneal Clark and Francoise Hamilton, who Dixon personally announced when each one entered the stage. Mid-show, Dixon presented his bassist with a bouquet of flowers. 

Author Toni Morrison is “the greatest rapper ever,” Dixon said. Dixon named his album after her trilogy of three novels: “Beloved,” “Paradise” and “Jazz.”

“Rap is so close to home, and it’s so close to where you came from, and it’s all about you getting somewhere else through some means,” Dixon said. “Bringing everybody you know with you, describing love in that sort of way without actually describing it.” 

Dixon said Morrison’s writing does all of this beautifully that it’s music-like, Dixon said. 

His performance at Gallery5 was the “big show” of the tour due to his connections in Richmond, according to Dixon. 

“VCU was sort of a catalyst for me meeting a bunch of other musicians and like-minded individuals,” Dixon said. “That’s where I sort of learned to study how humans talk and find ways to communicate with everybody.”

Tristan Brennis, Gallery5 bar manager and operations manager, saw some of McKinley’s first performances at the venue. Brennis said it was “pretty clear early on” that Mckinley was going to do great things.

“He’s been gone for a few years, and I know Richmond certainly missed his music,” Brennis said. “I think that he could probably sell out a much larger venue, so it means a whole lot that he chose Gallery5.”

Brennis is drawn to Dixon’s music due to its “unique flavor,” along with the usage of a full live band.

“To me that just adds this whole other level to hip-hop,” Brennis said. “It just immediately gets me a lot more involved in the music.”

There are a lot of venues and bands playing it safe after COVID-19, which has caused genre lines to become much more concrete; however, Dixon blurs these lines by fusing different genres, such as rap and jazz, in his music, Brennis said.

“There’s something beautiful in those kind of allowing those genre lines to blur,” Brennis said. “What you get is this really pluralistic audience and a lot of instances of people, maybe diving into music that they don’t think they like, but maybe they’ve never really given it a shot.” 

The pace of the concert fluctuated throughout the evening. Dixon began the show with “Hanif Reads Toni,” the slow first track on “Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?” where poet and critic Hanif reads an excerpt from Toni Morrison’s “Jazz.” The crowd later picked up momentum loudly singing along during the chorus of Dixon’s “Mezzanine Tippin’.” 

Andrew Pitts, Richmond resident and concert attendee, attended the concert because of his love for Dixon’s music and Gallery5. 

Pitts said that Dixon’s music “feels powerful.”

“I’m a big fan of his music,” Pitts said. “The most recent album, I just listened to for the first time yesterday, and I’ve been listening to it ever since, all day yesterday and today.” 

The final track of the concert, “Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?”, garnered vocal participation from the audience, after Dixon taught the crowd the chorus of the song. The crowd later chanted “One more song” after he exited the stage. 

“Richmond has always been a place for artists and musicians that are, like, big personalities,” Pitts said. “I felt like this was the perfect place to see McKinley Dixon for the first time live because it is the quintessential Richmond venue for local acts.”