00:00Hi, Essence family. This is Yolanda Sanguini, entertainment editor at Essence.com. Welcome to Coffee Talk, your weekly dose of what's hot on Essence.com. This week we spoke to Chocolate Ty, Tyrese, who released his latest album, Open Invitation.
00:18This is the best album of my career. I did this album independent and, you know, for me, not having to deal with the pressures of being on a major label, you have a lot of different people, executives and A&Rs and presidents and all of this stuff.
00:43Everybody has an opinion about what songs you should sing, how you should go about this and that. And this time I was really able to take my time. I've read all of the tweets, the Facebook, the MySpace, the letters, the emails, and more importantly, I've ran into the fans in person and they've all said, listen, we love your movies, cool, but we need another Tyrese album.
01:11Tyrese also shared his experience working with new songwriters.
01:15What I did was, there was a bunch of producers and songwriters and singers that I knew of. A few of them I actually didn't know. They just came highly recommended. And basically, I put like 13 people in my house and we all were there for 13, for three weeks.
01:33And we just had the time of our life working on his album. And I created a competition amongst all of the producers and songwriters, kind of like the old Motown days where I'm like, look, you go over there and you got your workstation over here, workstation over there, and good luck.
01:53You know, you can stand around and crack jokes and laugh all you want, but we're in motion. We're rolling with the best lyrics, the best production, the best everything to put on this album.
02:05Of course, we had to ask Tyrese about his New York Times bestselling book, How to Get Out of Your Own Way.
02:10People didn't know I had layers. It was like, okay, you're sexy, you got muscles, you got water on you in videos, you got all these girls in the videos.
02:22But I'm a man of God. I'm a true man of God in every sense. I'm not perfect. I'm married to God. So my relationship with God is a work in progress.
02:33And when people pick up this book, it catches them off guard from just even the first seven pages. Like, okay, this is not some fake celebrity corny book where everything is safe and politically correct. It's bold, raw, uncomfortable truth.
02:56And because he's a sex symbol, we had to ask Tyrese about the most important woman in his life.
03:00I wouldn't really call her a woman, but I would say my daughter. My little girl, she's four years old. My daughter has changed my life forever.
03:13So there you have it, our conversation with the one and only Tyrese. Make sure to log on to Essence.com for your weekly dose of Coffee Talk.
03:21I'm Yolanda Sanguini, Entertainment Editor at Essence.com. Goodbye.
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