WHOT Episode 152 – “Goat Head” by Brittany Howard
Hosted by Mangus Khan

[A subtle organ hums. Bassline slow as molasses. Then her voice: soft, wounded, precise.]

“You’re listening to Late Night Grooves.
WHOT.

The signal that lives in the margins.

I’m Mangus Khan.

And this is Episode 152.

Tonight, we don’t just listen.

We reckon.

Because some stories don’t fit neatly into a melody.

Some truths come carved in the bone.

Tonight’s track:
Brittany Howard – ‘Goat Head.’

From her solo record Jaime.

And this one?

This one doesn’t care if you’re ready.

It just exists.

Like pain you forgot how to name.

“I was four years old when they threw a goat head in the back of my daddy’s car.”

And just like that—

The myth of a post-racial anything crumbles.

No build-up. No soft landing.

Just trauma—placed right there in the back seat.

Brittany doesn’t sing this with outrage.

She sings it like someone who’s had to live in the after.

Who’s had to grow up with blood on her history and grace in her lungs.

The music?
Bare. Measured.

Because when you’re telling the truth, you don’t need theatrics.

You just need clarity.

And that’s what “Goat Head” is—

A memory so sharp it shaves your soul.

But here’s where it goes even deeper—

The question she asks at the end?

“What is a Black life worth?”

That’s not rhetorical.

That’s personal inventory.

It’s about growing up wondering if the world sees you fully, or only in fragments.

It’s about code-switching as protection, and memory as inheritance.

This is not a song about justice.

This is a song about remembrance.

About being made of two worlds—Black and white—yet accepted by neither without condition.

Jaime, the album, is named for her late sister.

And you feel that ghost here—

Not haunting, but witnessing.

Watching from the corners of every note.

Because this song?

It’s not just an act of defiance.

It’s an act of preservation.

Brittany Howard isn’t asking you to agree.

She’s asking you to listen.

To sit in discomfort long enough to understand the weight she carries quietly.

Episode 152.

Brittany Howard.
Goat Head.

A hymn to identity, fractured and fused.

A groove with no forgiveness—only reflection.

This is Late Night Grooves.
WHOT.

And I’m Mangus Khan—

Still walking with ghosts.

Still naming what they tried to erase.

Still here.”

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