<p>Donny Hathaway wrote 'Someday We'll All Be Free' two years before he died, which changes everything. The promise in the title is not a politician's promise or a preacher's promise. It is a promise from a man who knew he might not be there to see it fulfilled.</p> <p>Bobby Womack in 1985 does not have the luxury of Lalah's inheritance or Alicia's arena. He has the grit of a man who has been waiting so long that hope has calcified into a habit, all feeling burned away. His voice is rougher than Donny's, more weathered, the voice of someone who has watched every version of 'someday' arrive and disappoint. The arrangement is built around his guitar and a rhythm section that sounds like it has been driving through the night without headlights. Where Donny sang the hope with the purity of a man who had not been broken by the wait, Bobby sings it with the specific texture of a man who has been broken and keeps going anyway. There is no cathedral in his version. There is no stadium. There is just a man and his guitar and a promise he is not sure he believes anymore but refuses to stop making, because stopping would be a kind of death the world's waiting has not earned yet.</p>