The organizing principle behind Lisa B’s ’60s Magic Now!: The Y-Verse began with wordplay. Every cover on the album has a title containing the letter Y: “Ruby Tuesday,” “Spooky,” “Windy,” “Everybody Get Together,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and “Dear Mr. Fantasy.”
From that simple observation, Lisa developed an entire framework. Y became “why,” a question aimed at history and the present. Its shape recalled the peace symbol. The “Y-Verse” became a neighboring universe where listeners might temporarily step outside the noise of current life and reconsider what freedom, community, and imagination could mean.
The concept fits Lisa B’s work, which has long combined literary play with musical improvisation. The Oakland artist began her creative career as a poet before moving into jazz, soul, funk, spoken word, and hip-hop. She tends to treat language as something physical, capable of changing its meaning once rhythm, breath, and a responding voice enter the picture.
That method is central to the latest single, “Dear Mr. Fantasy.” Traffic’s original presents the title character as an entertainer summoned to improve a gloomy atmosphere. Lisa interprets him as an artist with wounds of his own, turning the song into a study of what audiences ask performers to carry.
Bay Area hip-hop veteran Lyrics Born appears as Mr. Fantasy, delivering a new verse that broadens the character beyond the original song’s outline. His performance is playful and assured, though its emphasis on nourishment and repair gives it emotional weight. Lisa’s own rap draws a line between political charlatanism and the radical act of imagining freedom.
The track was recorded at Oakland’s Pajama Studios, giving the collaboration a local historical resonance. Lyrics Born had recorded much of the Latyrx debut there, and the session reunited him with engineer Jim Gardiner. That continuity suits an album interested in returning to old spaces and discovering what they can hold now.
Most of the songs on The Y-Verse first appeared in 1967, with Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” serving as the earlier exception. Lisa is attracted to the period’s mixture of innocence, experimentation, protest, and social idealism. She is equally aware that many promises associated with the era remain unfinished.
Her arrangements avoid treating the period as a fixed musical style. Soul-jazz, funk, hip-hop, Latin grooves, folk, spoken word, and rock move throughout the record. Lisa also adds new poetic passages to five tracks, creating alternate doors into songs whose choruses have become deeply familiar.
The result suggests that the album’s most important Y may be the question itself. Why return to these songs? Why did their visions of freedom remain incomplete? Why do their requests for love, change, and imagination continue to resonate? Lisa B does not resolve every question. She builds a rhythmic universe where asking them feels useful again.