To encounter Jimetta Rose’s new album is to step through a spiritual portal. One moment, you’re rooted in the familiar terrain of jazz lineage and soul tradition; the next, you’re somewhere else entirely — somewhere luminous and governed by possibility. That place, as Rose imagines it, is MettaSun, a sonic and philosophical plane inspired by the cosmic teachings of Sun Ra, but fully reimagined through her own lens.

The project began years ago with a seed planted by the late DJ and producer Ras G, who once told Rose that her artistic future resembled that of June Tyson, the singular voice of Sun Ra’s Arkestra.

For the past seven years, Rose has devoted herself to collective work through Jimetta Rose & The Voices of Creation, a choir-centered project rooted in healing, joy, and communal transformation. MettaSun, however, marks a return to herself as a solo artist and a reclamation of her own authorship. It’s the sound of someone stepping forward with renewed purpose — not only as a singer-songwriter, but as a producer, arranger, architect, and world-builder.

That distinction is central to understanding the album. Rose doesn’t merely revisit Sun Ra compositions; she dismantles and rebuilds them according to the frequencies she hears in her own spirit. She approaches the material the way a hip-hop producer approaches samples: uncovering hidden melodies, layering unexpected references, and drawing new emotional contours from familiar foundations.

On “Nuclear War,” she transforms Sun Ra’s urgent classic into a meditation on vulnerability and endurance, a reflection of a world inching toward collapse while still searching for grace. Elsewhere, “Spring Time Again” drifts through the album with the warmth of a late-April afternoon, balancing the complexity of Sun Ra’s arrangements with a melodic accessibility that welcomes listeners unfamiliar with his work. In totality, MettaSun becomes a treatise on rebirth and self-permission — conversations across time meant to heal Rose as much as the listener.

Recorded live in the studio over several days, the project came together under moments of personal and logistical strain. Yet those pressures only sharpened the music’s honesty. Rather than chase perfection, Rose embraced the truth of her circumstances, allowing the imperfections to remain. What emerged is a body of work that feels immediate, intimate, and emotionally transparent.

Backed by a handpicked ensemble and layered background vocals from members of her extended musical family, the album carries the warmth of community even as it centers her singular vision. It breathes collectively, but its heartbeat belongs to Rose.

Sun Ra often framed music as transportation, a notion Rose understands deeply. MettaSun expands into a broader mythology complete with interplanetary narratives, animated visuals, and immersive live performances designed to pull audiences into her invented landscape. In Rose’s conception, music is an ecosystem.

Like Sun Ra before her, Rose sees creativity as a radical act, a way to envision structures rooted in love, peace, and collective care. Too often, Sun Ra’s legacy is reduced to spectacle or avant-garde eccentricity. But beneath the costumes and cosmic language was an artist insisting that Black people had the right to imagine themselves beyond imposed limitations. Rose carries that lesson forward, understanding that the true power of his legacy lies in activation.

For Rose, MettaSun is about giving herself permission to be fully expansive — to sing without confinement and create without compromise. In the process, she fully claims the title of producer. She may not play every instrument, but she hears the architecture of sound and knows how to guide others toward it.

The result is an album that honors Sun Ra’s lineage while asserting her own individuality. It bridges avant-garde tradition with melodic intimacy, abstraction with groove, cosmic theory with grounded feeling. It welcomes longtime devotees of Sun Ra while remaining accessible to listeners encountering his work for the first time.

That accessibility is part of Rose’s mission. She wants positivity to feel compelling and community-building to feel embodied, joyful, and alive. She hopes listeners leave her performances with a little more openness, a little more imagination, and a renewed willingness to engage the world differently.

In today’s fragmented culture of cynicism and spectacle, Rose offers something quietly radical: sincerity paired with vision. MettaSun isn’t nostalgic for Sun Ra’s era; it carries his frequencies into the present and asks what they demand of us now.

Rose’s answer is both simple and expansive: dream bigger, love harder, and build from the heart. And if you need a soundtrack for that journey, she’s already composed it.