00:00Yeah, alright. It's like rain in the desert, it's like finding a treasure, like stumbling in the dark and someone shines a light.
00:20The new album is entitled Real Love and it's sort of a self-explanatory kind of title. We decided to explore all aspects of love from the hurt side of love to the loss of love to love regain.
00:34Each song is attached to me in one way or another. We fought to get this record out, to keep its integrity, to not allow it to be changed necessarily by what the industry standards or what should be happening.
00:46I'm confident that this album is strong enough to get me back after Grammys again next year.
01:01Growing up we could only sing gospel, we could only listen to gospel, only sing gospel. My mother said, until you're 18, this is what you're going to do.
01:07Some of the same hymns and songs that Sam Cooke grew up singing in church and Otis Redding, I sang the same ones as a kid.
01:12I went to a Pentecostal church in Atlanta and it was pretty traditional. So like we sang, you know, it's really funny because even songs that they didn't know all the verses to that got lost over time.
01:21They'll just sing that one verse for like 20 minutes and just cry and pray and weep. So it was that kind of thing that was happening.
01:27So when I moved to New York, mama wasn't there. So I decided I was going to make a living singing. So I started working at the Motown Cafe first.
01:42And that took me back, you know, to the Motown period of, you know, late 60s, early 70s Motown. And then to supplement my income even more, I started singing with a doo-wop group.
01:51So once I started doing it, the music just sort of set naturally in my voice. It was like a natural progression for how I sang and where my heart is with music.
02:00One, we were just taught that, well, especially singing in church, that it's not about you. It's about God. So, you know, every now and then, you know, when you're a kid and you realize that you have talent to sing, you know, you get up in church and you start doing, you know, the little showboat thing.
02:16And yeah, and I got it. And then my mom's like, no, pull it in. We don't do that. It's about God.
02:21It's about God. It taught me to always find a deeper connection to the music, you know, and to really believe what you're doing, believe what you're singing.
02:28Hi, this is Ryan Shaw and you're watching Essence TV.
02:31Never, never, never let it go.
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