00:00Hi Essence family, this is Yolanda Sanguini, entertainment editor at Essence.com. Welcome
00:09to Coffee Talk, your weekly dose of what's hot on Essence.com. This week we hung out with Ruben
00:15Studdard who talked to us about his latest album, Letters from Birmingham, going through a divorce,
00:20and his thoughts on American Idol. June 28th I'm Single is pretty self-explanatory, you know. I
00:27kind of wanted to leave the I'm Single off of the title but the label encouraged me to put it there
00:32because you know I keep saying it over and over again on the record but it is what it is. You know
00:36I recently got divorced and kind of wanted to I guess start my project out kind of letting people
00:44know what was going on in my life and you know kind of being transparent with my fans so that's where
00:50that is and that's it June 28th I'm Single. Everybody's always like Ruben's so sheltered. Ruben never really
00:56talks. Ruben never really like gets deep like he you know I hear all this this uh
01:04this constructive criticism sometimes and then you know when I finally decide to kind of open up
01:09everybody's like so why are you who are you finally you know you know it's what I went through you know
01:16and I kind of want to be in front of the story you know um I think a lot of times people sit back and
01:21allow people to speculate and I always do that I never really come out and talk about what's going
01:27on I just let people say whatever they want to but you know God has given me this gift of song and
01:33opportunity to express myself musically and you know people have done this for years I'm not the first
01:38person to put their business in a song and I'm not going to be the last. I like the show in general I
01:43like all the changes they made I like the band I like it's just great I wish we would have had all that
01:49stuff when I was there but you know stuff you know everything has to progress we were pretty close
01:56um because they really made us into a family unit like we lived together ate together I mean we were
02:04together all the time you know sometimes 16 17 hours a day we were with each other even after the show
02:11was over and the people would get sent home they would stay out and do all the press especially you know
02:18when it got close to the end like when it was just five of us we started rehearsing for the finale so
02:24we we basically spent a whole year of our lives with these people and um we have you know really
02:31built lifelong friendships come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination
02:41hey everybody this is reuben stutter and you're watching essence tv
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