Womack Sisters Release Debut Album on Daptone Records
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- The Womack Sisters (BG, Zeimani, Kucha) — daughters of Cecil Womack and Sam Cooke's daughter Linda, with Bobby Womack as their uncle — are releasing their debut album on Daptone Records after being rejected by labels who told them 'soul's not what's happening right now, particularly for brown artists.'
- Daptone Records co-founder Bosco Mann now plays bass in their backing band, and their single 'If I Let You' went viral last month after public endorsements from SZA, Timbaland, Ghostface Killah, Pharrell Williams, Erykah Badu and Questlove.
- Zeimani Womack lost her husband in a 2020 Atlanta robbery and shooting, one of multiple family tragedies she says directly fuels the album's rawness, alongside the deaths of Cecil Womack, Bobby Womack and an aunt in a car accident.
- The sisters first performed as opening acts for parents Womack & Womack and made their recording debut on the 1993 album 'Transformation to the House of Zekkariyas' before stints driving Uber, running a marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles, and repeatedly getting fired.
- Cecil Womack wrote Teddy Pendergrass's oft-sampled 'Love TKO' and hits for the O'Jays, Four Tops and Patti LaBelle, and performed alongside Bobby Womack in the Valentinos, whose 'It's All Over Now' was later covered by the Rolling Stones.
Why it matters: The sisters' breakthrough on Daptone — endorsed by SZA, Timbaland, Pharrell Williams and Questlove for 'If I Let You' — directly undercuts the major-label stance that Black artists couldn't sell soul in the U.S. market. The album carries documented personal weight: Zeimani's 2020 loss of her husband to gun violence in Atlanta, layered onto Cecil and Bobby Womack's deaths, channels into a debut that the label says they funded entirely on their own.
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