Rhiannon Giddens is as much scholar as musician

Most people familiar with singer Rhiannon Giddens know her scholarly side.

She won a MacArthur “genius grant” for her work making sure the contributions of Black Americans aren’t ignored in the history of folk and country music. Earlier this year, she earned a Pulitzer Prize for co-writing the opera “Omar,” about an enslaved Muslim man who lived in Charleston, South Carolina. She’s produced an online series on the history of the banjo — which she plays adeptly — and has lectured at Harvard, Stanford and Yale.

Her saucy side, not so much.

That will change for anyone who hears “Hen in the Foxhouse” or the Nina Simone homage “You Put the Sugar in my Bowl” on her new album, “You’re the One,” out on Friday.

The disc is the most broadly inviting work of Giddens’ career, a potent stew of folk, country, rock, soul and Cajun steered by producer Jack Splash, who has worked with Alicia Keys, Valerie June, Solange Knowles and Kendrick Lamar. A listener can commiserate with some done-me-wrong songs, luxuriate in love or just dance.

To hear Giddens tell it, she needed a change after her work with “Omar.”

“I just needed a break,” she told The Associated Press this week. “I mean, do you want to go onstage and try to entertain, sing correctly, talk about minstrelsy, slavery and American capitalism in ways it’s not going to drive off your audience, while educating them at the same time and having them walk out with a smile on their face? It’s a lot.”

There’s no required study hall on “You’re the One,” but that doesn’t mean there aren’t meaningful moments.

“Another Wasted Life” is inspired by Kalief Browder, a New York City teenager who spent two years in solitary confinement at Rikers Island — three years in jail total — when he couldn’t make bail on a charge of stealing a backpack. He died by suicide after his release, after charges were dropped without a trial. Giddens, a 46-year-old mother of two who lives in Ireland with partner Francesco Turrisi, talks in detail about her childbirth experience and how the album’s title cut is about how the cloud of postpartum depression lifted for her. Jason Isbell duets with her on a song about a cross-cultural romance.

She spoke about her career with the AP. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.