MettaSun | Jimetta Rose LP

Vocalist, producer and musical visionary Jimetta Rose announces the release of solo album MettaSun, via our dub label Day Dreamer. 

Inspired by the interplanetary mythologies of Sun Ra, MettaSun reimagines a selection of the cosmic jazz pioneer’s most iconic recordings through Jimetta’s unique lens – a powerful expression of the female imaginary and a positive vision of radical hope and Black joy amid the chaos of contemporary America.
 
MettaSun is Jimetta Rose’s solo opus. Embracing the Sun Ra’s sonic world-building and paying homage to Arkestra vocalist June Tyson throughout, Jimetta has added her powerful, female voice to the Afro-futurist tradition, stitching together a jazz and gospel-tinted narrative of resistance and escape, convinced in the unifying power of music, love and faith to transcend darkness.

It is a project that evolved naturally from Jimetta’s love for Sun Ra into a sci-fi epic in its own right. Writing lyrics for ‘Somebody Else’s Idea’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘I’ll Wait For You’, ‘Springtime Again’ and a fierce, prescient reworking of ‘Nuclear War’, she developed a suite of interpretations from which a whole new myth emerged.
 
“The story of MettaSun is that life on planet Earth is full of despair, chaos, war, destruction, and death, and the people are tired,” she explains of the album’s narrative, which is knitted together in a series of short skits. “They don't believe in their leaders, they don't believe in much — but music can continue to unite them. They have musicians trying to use it to heal, and then one day the music opens a portal and lifts people up to another planet where love, peace, joy, and harmony prevail.”
 
Featuring vocal contributions from Jimetta’s choir The Voices of Creation and Arkestra / Phil Cohran vibraphone player Maia The Artiste, alongside a stellar lineup of talented musicians, MettaSun hears the LA-based bandleader bring her production skills to the fore, recording the bulk of the album in three days to carry the live energy of Sun Ra’s legendary sessions in her blistering vocal runs and raw improvisations.
 
Where tracks like ‘Nuclear War’ rail against the trigger-happy narcissism of the world’s reckless ruling class, channelling all the fury of Sun Ra’s iconic jazz-funk original, Jimetta takes a softer tone on ‘Sleeping Beauty’, a soulful invocation to awaken the Black divine – in her words “a dormant beauty that is asleep is of a culture that has forgotten how beautiful, strong and resilient it is.”
 
Described by Jimetta as “a song to Black men and women to wake up to our beauty,” it encapsulates her rousing belief in collective power, just as the featherlight ‘Springtime Again’ speaks of the blooming of her own individual agency and visionary creativity in the face of criticism and doubt. In that sense, MettaSun is not just a world built for dreaming, but for the endurance of everyday reality.
 
Because Jimetta has been on her own journey to get here. MettaSun follows the releases of Things Are Getting Better (2024) and How Good It Is (2022) and marks a new chapter for the sound that Jimetta has been developing alongside her choir and a string of high profile collaborations that has seen her work with the likes of Noname, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Shafiq Husayn and Saul Williams in recent years. That MettaSun so adeptly refreshes the legacy of one of jazz music’s great innovators is a testament to the confidence with which Jimetta is able to navigate seamlessly between styles and influences.
 
“I'm so grateful to Sun Ra for inspiring me in such a way to try to inspire others — to continue these ripples of inspiration,” she says. “I really hope that diehard Sun Ra fans and people who don't know who he is at all can appreciate it.”
 
Described by Jimeta as her most complete solo project to date, MettaSun is both a tribute to Sun Ra and Arkestra vocalist June Tyson and a launch pad for her own astral sound, all set to lift off into expansive new realms. To borrow from the album’s final refrain… “They'll never catch up to our imagination.”

Includes:

• 180 gram vinyl
• Booklet 
• MettaSun Card Pack

This is a pre order.

This is a pre order. Release date 25th September 2026. Limited to 1,000 copies. 

Tracked shipping on all orders.