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It seems there was no limit to Jay-Z’s rapport with the Miller family in the 1990’s. Silkk The Shocker recalls Hov declining payment over a verse.
Contrary to popular belief the legendary MC wasn’t always about the almighty dollar. As spotted on Vibe Magazine Jay-Z apparently told “Give Me The World” talent to keep his coins after doing a verse for him. Silkk recently sat down with the Art Of Dialogue platform and discussed his career. Midway he revealed his interaction with Jay over “You Know What We Bout”.
“Our relationship was dope because when I did the song with him, I thought I had a budget for him,” The Shocker shared. “I was like, ‘Yo, I got a hundred racks’ — that’s a lot of money back in the day too! I’m sure he could’ve used the extra $100,000; who ain’t gonna use that? When I hit him up, I’m like, ‘Yo, the song is dope, you killed it. Where I should I send that bread to?’ Jay was like, ‘Nah, it’s good, man. Just keep it and we’ll figure out something later on down the line.’”
Silkk also detailed why the gesture speaks volumes about Jay’s character when we fast forward to today. “What I came to learn was that it’s bigger than [money] for him,” he explained. “To me, that’s consistent with [where he is] today — if you look at him, it’s not a fluke that he’s successful.” He went to also reveal that he went on to repay the favor. “I don’t care how rich you are, you going [to] be like, ‘Man, send my bread.’ But he was just dead cool. He ain’t even second-guess it like, ‘Yeah, send me half of it.’ The good part about it: down the line, I kind [of] did something for him and I just thought it was solid.”
You can see Silkk discuss the situation below.
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Kimbra is very aware of how big things became.
“Let’s be honest: me and Gotye’s names kind of became household names for a period of time,” the New Zealand-bred, New York City-based singer-songwriter reflects after catapulting to unlikely superstardom with their Hot 100-topping, Grammy-winning 2012 smash “Somebody I Used to Know. The duet went on to become one of the longest-charting hits in Hot 100 history, and remains one of the best-selling digital singles ever.
Over a decade later, however, Kimbra now finds herself picking up the pieces from a particularly turbulent period of her life since her last studio album, 2018’s Primal Heart. The title of her new album — A Reckoning, which was released last month — came to her before the songs did, as a perfect summation of what happened to her following a personal loss, the end of a relationship and a deal dissolution with longtime label home Warner Records, all amidst the pandemic.
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A Reckoning is the result of choosing to turn inward and confronting her own emotions and thought patterns head-on. Co-crafted with Son Lux’s Ryan Lott, with features from Erick the Architect, Pink Siifu and Tommy Raps, the honest, genre-blending body of work twists aggressive beats, R&B-influenced melodies and shape-shifting organic sounds around vulnerable confessions, prayers and empowering declarations. “Replay!” is an ode to compulsive thoughts partially inspired by Kelis’ vocal delivery on “Caught Out There,” while “Foolish Thinking” is a moving piano ballad composed as a letter to her future daughter.
“We love people going through the rough, and then emerging to tell us what the war was like,” she says. With a renewed confidence in herself as a storyteller and in her purpose as an artist, Kimbra is ready to share what she calls a “redemption story.”
It’s been a while since 2018’s Primal Heart. What’s happened since?
We’ve all been through so much. The Primal Heart campaign came to an end, and I began to think about what I want to say next. I went through a stage of really struggling to write. Maybe it was because I was struggling to articulate what I was feeling. I hadn’t landed on something that felt honest. I don’t want to sell people something I don’t really believe.
I wrote “Save Me” in 2020 as things were really collapsing. My relationship at the time was coming to an obvious end as well. I was breaking up with my label. My team was changing. I moved upstate. I lost my best friend out of nowhere back in New Zealand. Some real lows.
I think, sometimes, our greatest breakthroughs happen at rock bottom. “Save Me” was a bit of a breakthrough – that feeling of hopelessness and being stuck with yourself. I struggle with a lot of anxiety and difficult thoughts. If I hold them in, it gets dangerous. I named something in me that I needed to get out. That’s where A Reckoning began. I had titled it before I even had all the songs.
Did the thought ever come that music wasn’t going to be the space for you anymore?
No, and that’s the biggest fear of all: that music won’t save me, and I won’t be able to get out what I want to say. When you keep turning up and believing that there’s something there, it comes through. It took other people — like Ryan Lott, the co-producer — to help identify what the sounds were going to be to tell the story. It’s an act of faith to make an album. You can turn a s—t sandwich into a beautiful liberation. [laughs]
Was there a sonic mood you were striving for?
I think the cohesion in my work is often the storyteller at the center, the voice that leads you through these different worlds. There’s a juxtaposition in the aggression of certain sounds against something very soft and tender, which is really me in a nutshell. I have all these conflicting things that live within me. My art is an attempt to translate my inner world to be understood, like all of us. The sonic identity is ever-changing, because I’m ever-changing.
When you talk about longing to be understood, does that extend to your former label?
Yeah. They wanted to extend my deal. It was already at six albums. They wanted to go to eight. They wanted to pick the producer. I can’t work that way. I need to have the agency in my work to put the right people in place to tell the story. I don’t do this to just sell a product. It’s my life.
It was a rock to my confidence. That’s another kind of reckoning: How bad do you want it? Are you gonna fight to get your music out there, form the right team, and keep turning up when you don’t have also someone breathing down your neck saying, “When’s the record done?” Now you have to motivate yourself.
How did you assemble a team of collaborators on your own?
I met Ryan doing a co-headlining tour with Son Lux. He has such a strange sound world to his music. I bring these catchy melodies – an almost R&B thing. That was an intriguing combination. I often bring people in when I’m struggling to finish a song, or there’s something not quite right. Bringing rappers on to jump on songs, or bringing Questlove in to help the rhythm section of the track — who’s doing this in their own work that could throw another color into the canvas? I’m hunting for the moment when I go, “Ah, that captures something I haven’t yet said.”
“Gun” was written in a Rihanna writing camp. Are you writing for others often?
I’ve done a little bit, not a ton. The whole place was dedicated to writing, every person in the studio. Her vocal coach would come through and guide me on how to perform the demo as her. I’m trying to embody the strength I see in Rihanna.
I’m just a kid from New Zealand. I still can’t believe I have a billboard up in Times Square. I look at a lot of the pop stars as being a lot more strong and badass than I am.
Fake it ’til you make it.
Exactly. And that’s what I did for that song. I don’t feel like I’m the s—t right now, but I’m gonna sing “I’m the s—t, so shout my name,” because I know Rihanna would say that and sell that.
There’s a certain kind of oppression that happens to artists, where you start to believe that you are a product of the people. I had to confront the fact that a lot of people I trusted had broken that trust. It’s about building yourself back up again and realizing there’s this inner strength that deserves to be spoken out loud. I just needed to wait until I was at the time of my life where I could sing a song I wrote for Rihanna. I think it was meant to be mine all along.
Can you talk about the collaborative doors that opened after “Somebody I Used to Know”?
I mean, let’s be honest: me and Gotye’s names kind of became household names for a period of time. There was a lot of respect that came from that song. When I would reach out to my favorite guitarist, they would know my name and have an interest in working together. And it wasn’t just, “Oh, you’re that girl with the random, massive song.” It was, “You made something that I really felt.” What a blessing that I got to penetrate the hearts of millions of people all over the world.
Are there sessions that didn’t see light of day that you wish had?
Yeah, there are songs lying around with various people. I just don’t know whether to name them, because it might still come out. The mysterious thing about music is you make things, and they may not reemerge for another 10 years. That’s another act of faith, to just keep making things, regardless of what timeline they’re on.
Are there plans for a musical reunion with Gotye?
Gotye has been working very hard on music. I’m sure he’ll come out the cave at some point to talk about it. It is not my place to talk on that, unfortunately. I’ll leave that up to him. But, let me tell you… anything is possible in this world. [laughs]
Do you retreat from popular music when you’re making music?
That’s a good question. I do take intentional breaks. Maybe just instrumental music for a while. I think constantly listening to vocals is a lot of stimulus for a vocalist. If you listen to SZA all the time, you might be writing a lot like SZA. Sometimes I will just listen to Philip Glass records or something, so I can work out what is my most genuine melodic perspective right now.
I’m really inspired by artists that are very ambitious in their records. I think Kendrick Lamar is one of those artists. He takes on a spirit of jazz that I think is very important — being able to jump around a lot, but have a very clear message and vision. He knows why he’s here and what he’s doing. It’s aggressive, it’s tough, but he can really speak truth to a lot of things in the world, in a very prophet-like way. Frank Ocean has been one of those groundbreaking songwriters in the last 10 years that I still go back to, with some of the most timeless songs.
Do you feel you still grapple with imposter syndrome?
Totally. I have that mentality still of being a young kid, insecure in high school. The only way I try to combat that is to remember that everyone feels that to a certain extent. You got to accept that you never really feel, at any point of your career, that you’re deserving of that place, or that you’ve done enough work to get there. It’s trusting something I’ve done connects with the world. It’s bigger than me.
I try to be humble about that. If they believe I am this person that’s really helped them through it, then let me turn up to that. Even though I feel s—tty today, that’s the service of the work.
What is your approach to feedback about your music online?
More and more, I’ve realized that anytime you take a risk and try to do something slightly daring, there will be people who don’t like it. There are people who like you to stay small, especially with women. Sometimes when I receive negative feedback, I almost take it as an affirmation that what I’m doing is pushing into something new. It makes sense that someone hates that version I did of a Beyoncé song, or something. Don’t get me wrong: it can really deflate me when I get something negative. People can be very cruel. But f—k, it’s just part of it, man. Every job has its thing that you have to be able to armor against.
So many artists who have come before me have experienced people not giving a s—t when their records came out. They were reviewed terribly. And then years later, they’re heralded as absolutely game-changing. People’s perception of you is always going to be changing. You’re not in control of that. At least there’s a reaction! Better than people kind of being like… eh.
You mentioned covering Beyoncé – you recently took on “Break My Soul.”
I’m always looking to find a new angle on something. I love the dissection process of a song that we all know really well. It comes back to wanting to have fun with music. If I’m always thinking about what other people want to hear, it’s not very fun. But if I’m loving it, then chances are someone else is probably going to feel that same way.
You have a Soundfly vocal arrangement and production class. What are your thoughts on the amount of female engineers in the studio? Has there been a shift?
I’ve seen the conversation change most among men. That’s where it’s important. Women have always been talking about this, but if we’re not being heard or respected by the people that have the power, nothing changes. It’s the same with the #MeToo movement. What we really needed was men to be in the conversation, rather than just being outside of it. I’ve seen a shift there.
There’s a musicality that comes from women in production and technical roles that is different. The feminine in all of us is very healing. We’ve been living in a patriarchy for so long. I think people are sensing we need a shift. It starts with conversations. If more people talk about it, we’re going to be more open to our cultural settings changing as well.
As the dust settles after releasing this record, what goals do you have, personally and professionally?
I really want to take this music to people one-on-one, and lift people up after all this s—t we’ve been through. I’m excited for that.
I’ve written more music in the last five years than I think have in my f—king entire career. I have more bodies of work that I’m currently working on: one is highly collaborative, and one is super dance floor with BRUX, the producer who did “Replay!” We started writing a lot of celebratory, anthemic dance tracks. I’m working on a lot of very heavily leaning R&B stuff. And then I want to make a very organic band record.
As I approach thinking about motherhood in the future, it would be cool to get as much out in this time of my life so I can take a break for a bit.
Personally, I’m always on a journey to keep healing. I make music so that I can better myself, and to be a more empathetic person in the world. That’s always my hope, through the vehicle of music, that I’m growing as a person, and hopefully helping people.
P!nk acknowledges that parts of her new album, Trustfall, could be considered corny by today’s pop standards. Take lead single “Never Gonna Not Dance Again”: Produced by Max Martin and Shellback, the happy-go-lucky groove finds the pop superstar shrugging off problems large and small in favor of unabashed movement, and declaring, “One thing I’m never gonna do/ Is throw away my dancing shoes,” before the bright, splashy chorus kicks in.
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“Never Gonna Not Dance Again” is marked by a dance-pop earnestness that’s seldom heard at the top of streaming charts or in viral hits these days. “I was like, ‘Well, it’s kind of my formula, isn’t it? That sounds like a P!nk song,’” she tells Billboard during a January Zoom conversation of the single, letting out a sigh at the idea of a retread. “And then by the end of it, I’m like, ‘I don’t care. I feel happy. I don’t care if it’s cheesy!’”
Trustfall, out Friday (Feb. 17) on RCA Records, could have been a darker affair — after all, the follow-up to 2019’s Hurts 2B Human was conceived during the pandemic, during which her son Jameson endured a scary battle with COVID-19 at the age of three in 2020, and her father succumbed to cancer in 2021. Yet P!nk’s ninth studio album confronts personal trauma with tempo: working with a wide array of collaborators, from longtime producer Greg Kurstin to ascendant dance artist Fred Again.. to Swedish folk-pop duo First Aid Kit, the best-selling pop star pushes the pace on Trustfall songs like “Runaway,” “Last Call” and the title track, while learning to appreciate the growth that periods of loss often present.
“I think it is one of the best records I’ve ever made,” says P!nk. “And I feel about it the way I felt about Missundaztood and I’m Not Dead and possibly The Truth About Love. And so I’m really excited and anxious.”
P!nk is also eager to dive into her upcoming Summer Carnival 2023 tour, where the longtime arena headliner will bring her cavalcade of pop hits to stadiums across North America, beginning July 24. Although P!nk says that she has found a sense of calm thanks to time at home with her family — husband Carey Hart, and children Willow and Jameson — she also can’t wait to perform in front of the biggest audiences of her career.
Ahead of the Trustfall release, P!nk discussed how the album came together, returning to the road and the way TikTok has (and hasn’t) changed her approach to pop. [Ed. note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.]
What moves Trustfall into that class of albums that you feel like are some of your best?
It took time, because COVID gave us all a little bit of time. It’s been three years, and for a little while, at least, there wasn’t a lot else going on. Normally I’m like, “Okay, turn on the faucet, let’s go” — like a race to the finish, how many songs can you write? And they’re all meaningful to me, it’s all my feelings. But this [album] felt like, “Yeah, I felt like that last year, but I don’t feel like that anymore. Now I feel like this.”
The sequencing of this album was really important to me, in case someone does listen to it from start to finish. Because life is like this to me — it’s an emotional roller coaster and it’s a f–king journey, and this album is that. This album could have easily been, Side A is Roller Skate Time, and Side B is No Sharp Objects in the Kitchen Time! But that’s not life. Life is messy and beautiful and messy again.
It was so easy to name the record. I feel like getting out of bed, and getting dressed, and dropping your kids off at school, and being in a relationship, and parenting, and participating in elections — it requires a lot of trust. And most of the time, we feel like we’re falling backwards, and we don’t know where the ground is.
And so much has changed since your last record — which was less than four years ago, but the world has been upended in a lot of ways.
I think we’re all walking around with this sort of low-level trauma that we’re not even aware of. In the last three years, for all of us, this has been our generation’s “thing.” Growing up in a military family and having a dad tell you, “You’ve never been through s–t” — and I’m like, “Well, I have personally! It’s all relative, dad!” But then you’re like, “No, we really haven’t been through anything, as a whole.” And it feels like we have now, and are still, and we don’t know what’s coming next as a whole.
Plus, I lost my dad. And then a month later, I lost another person that was incredibly close to me. And then I’m raising little people, and celebrating my 17th anniversary — and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to say that, but neither did he. But yeah, it’s just life, man. Adulting is a lot.
What was that process like, in terms of experiencing that heaviness, reflecting on those themes and synthesizing into a handful of songs on this album?
Probably harder for the producer than it was for the writer. [Laughs.] Poor Greg Kurstin. When your writer walks in with the song “Hate Me” in their pocket, you know it’s gonna be an awkward day. God bless him — he’s been through so many of those days with me. I just walk in and start crying, because for me, I’m like an open wound walking around in the world. I’m so sensitive, and I can’t hide it. And so people just have to just watch me cry sometimes. Or I go on rants, too. That’s never good!
But I’ve always done that. “Family Portrait” was that for me. It was this really, terribly uncomfortable situation for my family, and [the song] was kind of like an outing. If you’re in my life, then you kind of signed a waiver that I get to write about it. Carey knows! So you just write what you feel. And that’s why I’m not writing like, happy love songs, because I’m useless when I’m happy.
When did these songs start coming together? Was it a burst of creativity, or over a prolonged period of time?
It was three years in the making. “Lost Cause” and “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” were the two album-starters. And “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” was my reaction to adrenal fatigue, cortisol, stress. It was like, “F–k this. If the world’s ending and we’re sliding sideways off our axis, I’m gonna get my roller skates. Let’s take a cocktail class online! What are we doing?” So those songs on the record were a reaction to, “I can’t care all the time. I also need to feel joy, and let that s–t run off my back.”
There’s a lyric in the song “Kids in Love” that goes, “If you don’t f–k up, then you’ll never learn,” and it really pops out.
I learn through experiential f–kery. I mean, that’s my whole life. I have to remember that as a parent, also. I have to remember that.
How you end up working with First Aid Kit on that song?
I’ve been a fan of theirs for so long. And then I went to the BRITs [in 2019], and they gave me this ridiculous award, and I got to sing with Dan [Smith] from Bastille. And we’re hanging out at the after-party, and these girls were there, and Dan introduced them — and I heard him wrong, so I didn’t know it was First Aid Kit. So I was thinking they were some band that I didn’t know about! I was like, “What kind of music do you make?” And they were nice about it. And I was like, “What’s the name of your band again?” They’re like, “First Aid Kit.” I was like, “Shut… the front… door. I’m your biggest fan.”
It was a full turnaround. It was like, P!nk didn’t know who the f–k they were, and then I was like, “No, you don’t understand! I’ve been listening to you forever! You’re from Sweden!” I was like, “Do you think like we can all start a band! Dan can be the singer, and I’ll learn drums!” So we started a band in our heads — me, First Aid Kit and Dan from Bastille. I think that’d be a cool band. But I just wanted to work with them, because they’re awesome. They’re my new Indigo Girls.
Pop music has also changed so much since your last album was released — TikTok is now enormous, and these years-old songs are being revived…
[P!nk visibly winces]
I definitely see that face you just made!
I’m sorry. I’m sorry!
Are you getting that a lot through your kids, the TikTok dances and challenges?
No, they don’t have phones. I won’t let them! I was asked to be on a TikTok two nights ago and I made them very upset when I said “No, thank you.” I mean, look, I don’t want to be a dinosaur. But I want to bring back Atari. [Laughs.] Play Frogger and ExciteBike.
Things have changed, and that’s not what I do. And I’m okay with that. The people that have been coming to my shows, we’ve grown up together. I’m a pop fan. I like The Beatles, I like doo-wop music, I like Broadway. I come from a different thing, and I’ve got to be true to me. I don’t get played on the radio that much anyway, so I’m not really going for that. When I’m making a record, I’m like, “Who am I? How do I feel? What do I need to exorcise?” And, “How’s this going to be [performed] live — what can I climb onto for this song? Or will I be able to say this without crying and humiliating myself?”
So yeah, I can’t do that. But that’s great, because there’s so many people that can!
The thing is, you do still get a good amount of radio play — “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” hit the top 10 of a few Billboard charts. And of course, you have tons of older hits that still get played on radio, and have been streamed millions of times. But I’m always interested in how veteran artists react to, and want to pay attention to, new technologies and platforms.
I don’t really know. With me, when you’re a certain age and a woman, they tell you that what you do doesn’t matter, really, anymore, so just do what you do. And I’ve kind of always felt like that — at 16, I felt like that. But I don’t write songs for other people. I’m very narcissistic when it comes to songwriting, in a very pure way. I write what needs to be written for me, and if somebody else can relate to it, then that’s awesome. We’re all having this human experience, and we’re not all that different.
And I love parts of it, too! Like, Billie Eilish — how do you even put a song out like that, and then it’s No. 1 on radio? Like, 10 years ago, that’s unheard of. These artists are pushing the envelope and we need them to push things forward. My daughter is obsessed with Olivia Rodrigo, and that’s awesome to me, because that girl fronts a full band and writes her own music and writes great songs, and I’m super here for that. I think it’s awesome. It’s just not going to be me.
You’re playing stadiums in a few months, and mentioned thinking about how these new songs are going to be played live. Where are you at in the process at this point?
It’s been a while, but we had a tour meeting the other night with all the key players, and it was sort of that first creative [meeting]: Thinking outside the box, what can we do, how can we top that, what’s physically possible more than once? Like, getting shot out of a cannon — that would be fun, but you can only do that once!
I walk away from meetings like that like, “Oh God, I forgot how much fun I’m about to have.” It puts years back on my life. It is so fun, what I get to do, and I love it so much. And I love that Jameson’s gonna remember it, because he’s gonna be old enough, and I love the people that I get to work with. And then I get new material — there’s nothing worse than going and playing a show, and it’s all the same. But you get new shit to work with, and you’re like, “Oh, I can do anything I want with this, literally! Can I fall from the ceiling and live?”
No ceilings on stadiums, though!
True. There’s that feeling where, “You put two Fenway Park [shows] on sale, for who? Billy Joel? Stevie Wonder? Oh, just me?” It’s very exciting, and I feel like it’s the longest fluke in history, too.
“We’ll never do a second album again,” jokes Inhaler’s Elijah Hewson, feigning the exhaustion that, at this time last year, was very real for the well-coiffed singer-guitarist and his Inhaler band mates.
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After two years of pandemic dormancy, the Irish pop-rockers stormed the stage in 2022, amassing more than 100 gigs in support of It Won’t Always Be Like This, the group’s blistering post-punk-goes-pop 2021 debut. The album, which was largely written and recorded during COVID, hit No. 1 in the U.K. and the Dubliners’ native Ireland, shocking the new-coming foursome.
And so came the need for a worthy follow-up — this time on a working band’s notoriously chaotic schedule. But the tireless lads pulled it off, booking long studio hours in early 2022, between tour stints and festival sets.
Just 15 months after their thrilling curtain-raiser — and with nerve-racking slots at Glastonbury and Lollapalooza now in the rear-view — Inhaler returns with Cuts and Bruises, another jangle-and-thump effort full of confidence and anthemic abandon, out this Friday (Feb. 17) through Geffen. The guitar-heavy sequel sharply merges callbacks to the band’s ‘80s muses — The Stone Roses, Joy Division — with touches of American fascination, courtesy of the band’s run of packed club shows across the U.S. last spring. Suddenly Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan have joined the party as influences.
After last year’s hectic return to normalcy, the band — Hewson, guitarist Rob Keating, bassist Josh Jenkinson and drummer Ryan McMahon — plans for a busy 2023, with another list of festivals booked, not to mention opening slots for Harry Styles and Arctic Monkeys. It’s easy to imagine a 1975-like obsession before this next album cycle is finished, although the band mates, who have been making noise together since their early teens, can scarcely believe any of it.
Billboard caught up with the ascendant band to retrace their wild 2022, unpack the origins of Cuts and Bruises, and learn how a well-timed documentary influenced their promising next chapter.
How was your very busy 2022, and being able to get back on stage and debut songs written in pandemic isolation?
Ryan McMahon: When we went back to gigging, seeing all these new, unfamiliar faces, singing back the songs was quite a shock to our system. And that was crazy for us to get back out touring and going into places in America, for example, where we never thought we’d be able to go and people knew our songs. We were talking a lot about how we’re very guilty of feeling like we’ve got this sense of imposter syndrome in our minds. We don’t feel worthy, in a lot of ways, of some of the things we get to do.
How has the reception been with U.S. fans, who have been a little slower to catch Inhaler fever?
RM: It’s surreal, because we always pictured America as this fictional place.
Elijah Hewson: I think people [in America] listen to music in a really different way than they do in Europe. Not that it’s like they don’t listen to music as much in Europe, but I feel like when we came here, right off the bat, people were very warm to us and we felt like it gave us a lot of drive and a lot of it made us feel like, oh, “Come on, lads.” And I guess it’s that age-old thing of Irish people coming to America and feeling like the whole world’s at their feet, at their fingertips.
Since you last spoke to Billboard, your debut album, It Won’t Always Be Like This, hit No. 1 in several countries, including your native Ireland. What’s it like to have a chart-topper in your own country?
RM: We still almost feel like it didn’t happen. I mean, when you get into a band when you’re 12 or 13, you don’t ever think that you’re going to go and take on the world with your boys. You just want to get into a room and make noise, because you’re not really that good at anything else. And so fast forward nine, 10 years later, and you wake up to find out that your album that you wrote during a pandemic is No. 1 in the country that you grew up in? It’s hard to put into words, really.
Let’s talk about the new album. First off, why call it Cuts and Bruises?
EH: I think we kind of realized that being in a band is maybe, sounds silly, but more of a commitment than we thought. Not in a sense that we have to work, but I think in relation to our relationships with each other. It’s a little bit like a marriage, and I think there’s always going to be a little bit of residual scar tissue left over after so many years of working and playing with each other.
We’re starting to realize that it’s important to look after those relationships and pay attention to them, and we have a responsibility to look after each other. And I think that just kept coming up, after the pandemic and being on the road together, it just felt like the only thing we could write about. So I guess the title reflects that, in a way. And it’s not a serious injury. It’s something that we’re able to brush off and heal from.
In a way, the pandemic bought you guys extra time to fine-tune your first album. But Cuts and Bruises was made in the real world, in between a rigorous touring schedule. How much harder was this one to finish?
EH: Switching between those two processes was very exhausting. And I think we all kind of crawled out the back end of 2021 just feeling like we were just really, really — not burnt out, but I think we’d given everything that we could, and I think in some ways the pressure of that, and the spontaneity of it, and the speed at which we did things probably did help the album. And thankfully, we had our producer [Antony Genn] in there to kind of light the fire under our arse, as he often does. And that really kept us on the straight and narrow while we were back in the studio.
How did this new influx of touring experience — and growing confidence in your abilities — influence the writing of Cuts and Bruises?
EH: I think we learned a lot of lessons on the first one, and I think when we came into the second we had a better picture of how we wanted to do things. … I think the main thing we said is we wanted less information, to let the songs breathe a bit.
I think we were just more confident, and you don’t have to add as much if you are confident in the songs and material. And that was the basis of what we went off and I think it guided us pretty well. But other than that, I mean, you’re going in hoping that you come out with something at the end that is bigger than the sum of its parts. I don’t think anybody really knows what they’re doing. And as David Bowie said, “If you knew what you were doing, it’d be boring. You’d be disappointed.”
Is there one song on the new album you’d point to as the guiding light for what this project is trying to say?
EH: Maybe “Now You Got Me,” because it’s about commitment to something, and a lot of the lyrics are about joining the band and stuff like that. And I think that paints a picture, for me, of the whole album and where we are right now.
RM: [The song] sums up just the overall residing theme of it being an album of love songs, about loving your friends, really.
You guys talk a lot about being in a band and your commitment to each other. I know you all watched The Beatles documentary Get Back, which touches on some similar themes. How did that impact how Inhaler functions?
EH: It couldn’t have come out at a better time for us to be preparing to go into a studio to make a new album. And it was also very interesting for us to watch that and watch some of the conversations that they’d be having with each other as the biggest and best band to ever exist. And we’re just watching it going, “Hey, we argue about that!”
The lead single “These Are the Days” is a big, anthemic song. How’d you land on it to introduce the new album?
JJ: It was funny, because “These Are the Days” was kind of overlooked at the time but we played it to our producers and our managers and they were like, “Hey, there’s something there. Let’s get cooking on that straight away.” Even though it was one of the later demos to arrive, it was one of the first songs we’d finished and we thought it was a good way of coming back into releasing music and saying, “Hey, here we are again. Are people still interested in us?” It just worked out in that way.
How about “If You’re Going to Break My Heart,” which is a departure for you guys? It sounds like an American folk or country song.
RM: That came to us from listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and The Band and Bruce Springsteen, and us falling in love with America, really, and touring it and visiting places like Nashville and sort of familiarizing ourselves a bit more with country music and the storytelling that goes behind that. In music, country artists are the best storytellers. I think that’s what we were aiming for. I think that song actually came fairly naturally to us in the studio, because it’s not super rigid-sounding. It’s a lot more loose and it sounds like a live band, which is, again, what we wanted to achieve with this record.
What does it mean to you to be a rock band in 2023 that’s still finding an audience in real life, especially as so many artists your age are living on TikTok?
EH: It’s everything to us. When we were kids, the most uncool thing you could do was pick up a guitar and join a band. And everyone was like, “Oh, that’s cute.” I think we were just doing it for ourselves, really, because that’s how we found each other — we just wanted to listen to Stone Roses and Joy Division, and it drew us close.
And we saw Arctic Monkeys came out with AM in 2013 and that was very guitar-driven, and “Do I Wanna Know?,” it was a huge single, and I think that gave us a little bit of hope. And I also think that maybe people are just sick of hearing stuff that doesn’t feel authentic. And I think it doesn’t get much more authentic than hearing the clang of a guitar, and that’s a very visceral, physical sound. Maybe that’s why people like listening to bands like us, I guess. But we’re still like, a “pop and roll.” We’re not like idols. We’re still very kind of freaked out that this has even happened.
When Lele Pons posts on Instagram, she does it with a mix of glamour, self-deprecating humor and simplicity that has charmed some 50 million fans into following her. And over the past two years, many of her buzziest posts have showcased the Venezuelan influencer’s love for her fiancé, Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Guaynaa, who counts 6.2 million followers of his own. But Pons, 26, and Guaynaa, 30, are much more than just a captivating couple, and their recent engagement isn’t limited to marriage: They’ll now be also making music together.
“Beautiful, my love. Wow!” Guaynaa gushes at his newest collaborator and bride-to-be on a recent sunny morning in Miami at the restaurant-lounge El Tucán, as Pons gets made up for a photo shoot, trading her clean face, sweatshirt and sneakers for an executive skirt suit with a plunging neckline, towering stilettos and cherry red lips.
Pons kisses him with caution, trying not to stain him with her lipstick. It’s one of many gestures of affection they will show each other throughout the day — suggesting that they really are as passionate as they appear on social media posts.
The vision that she has when carrying out a project is incredible. For me, she is the best content creator in the world. — Guaynaa
From the moment they made their relationship official on Instagram on Dec. 12, 2020, to their exciting proposal before thousands of people during Steve Aoki’s set at the Tomorrowland festival in Belgium on July 31, 2022, Pons and Guaynaa kept their fans’ attention with funny photos and videos in which they didn’t shy away from showing snapshots of their lives. And they haven’t stopped since, with a combination of comedy, moments of vulnerability and messages of self-love. (Cellulite is no longer a reason for shame thanks to Pons.)
They’re not the first music artists to unite their lives and intertwine their careers, but their relationship is different from others, as she is best known for her work on social media and he as a respected singer-songwriter in the industry. Working together has its inherent risks, but it could also result in bigger careers for both. Their joint power was shown in their only song released together so far, “Se Te Nota” (2020), whose video has accumulated 422 million views. It’s Pons’ most-viewed music video and Guaynaa’s second most-viewed, after his hit “ReBoTa” (2019) with 526 million.
“This could be a project that will bring us many surprises, both on Guaynaa’s side and on Lele’s side, because she hasn’t released music in a long time and Guaynaa has been on a music hiatus for nine, 10 months, and I think there will be something cool for this generation that follows Lele and the public that anxiously awaits Guaynaa,” says Juan Diego Medina, Guaynaa’s new manager.
Now I have a really good structure to put out a lot of songs, not just one every six months. And finally, I have someone like him (Guaynaa), who is my adviser and can help me more than anyone else. — Pons
In the last months, Eleonora Pons Maronese and Jean Carlos Santiago Pérez (their real names) have been planning a wedding while spending hours in the studio creating songs and producing an album that they plan to release soon after they tie the knot on March 4, in their adoptive city of Miami, before more than 300 guests. The 10-song set, tentatively titled Capitulations and to be released under a partnership between Interscope Records and Guaynaa, will include eight duets, one solo song from Pons and another one from Guaynaa, spanning a variety of genres, from urban pop (“Abajito”) to reggaetón (“Natural”) to reggae (“A Que No”) and bachata (“Todo Sabe Más Rico”).
On Lele: Silvia Tcherassi dress, Le Silla shoes. On Guaynaa: Dickson Lim suit, Prada shoes.
Mary Beth Koeth
Nir Seroussi, executive vp at Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA), says: “This album is a celebration of Lele’s and Guaynaa’s relationship and the perfect way to share this precious moment with their fans. While the wedding will surely attract a lot of attention, the focus of our plan is to showcase the music. With this project, Lele and Guaynaa stepped out of their comfort zones and tapped into an artistic side we haven’t heard before.”
It’s their first collaborative effort since 2020’s “Se Te Nota,” that playful urban pop song about wanting someone in an obvious way that spent 18 weeks on the all-genre Billboard Global 200 (where it peaked at No. 44), 25 weeks on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart (No. 19 peak) and 11 weeks on Hot Latin Songs (No. 25). It was also the seed that led them to spend more time together and, eventually, fall in love.
They made their relationship “official” that December, but their first kiss came nearly two months earlier, on Oct. 27, when the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series for the first time since 1988. “It was a very exciting and very special moment,” Pons says.
The content creator, with over 50 million followers on Instagram and 29 million more on TikTok, rose to fame on Vine — the short-form video platform where she became the most followed woman (11.5 million) before it shut down in 2017 — and went on to create comedy skits on YouTube, where she has 17.8 million followers. Her interest in music, however, dates to her childhood, when she took opera singing lessons, and in recent years she has released more than a dozen hit singles, including “Bubble Gum” with Yandel and “HIT IT” with the Black Eyed Peas and Saweetie (both from 2021).
On Lele: Aknvas dress, FEMME shoes. On Guaynaa: TAAKK top, Versace pants, Prada shoes.
Mary Beth Koeth
Guaynaa, the son of troubadours who began creating music as a child, has made a name for himself as an urban pop artist with his own style and the audacity to experiment with all kinds of genres. He rose to fame in 2019 with “ReBoTa,” a mix of reggaetón and dembow with which he debuted on the Billboard charts, and has since released collaborations with artists as varied as Lola Índigo (“Respira”), Los Ángeles Azules (“Cumbia a La Gente”) and Sebastián Yatra, with whom he recorded “Chica Ideal,” which reached No. 1 on the Latin Airplay chart.
Now they take on their joint music project not only with great enthusiasm, but with great responsibility. Especially after a year that wasn’t all laughter and comedy. In early 2022, Guaynaa was rushed to the hospital after a car accident in Los Angeles, where a drunk driver hit the vehicle he was traveling in, causing the artist a serious cervical injury that required microsurgery and therapy. “It was a very complex recovery process. [I had to] stop all my projects,” he recalls, thankful that Pons traveled to meet him immediately and always accompanied him. Once recovered, it was his turn to take care of his fiancée, who underwent an operation for appendicitis last October.
In the process, Guaynaa also ended his deal with Universal Music and signed a management contract with Medina of La Industria (Nicky Jam, Manuel Turizo), who says the singer is in talks with a couple of record labels. Pons, signed to Interscope, also has a new manager, Polo Molina (Gerardo Ortiz, the Black Eyed Peas), but her manager for social media continues to be John Shahidi of Shots Studios, with whom she has worked for years.
“He and I are good friends,” says Molina about Medina, whom he worked with when the Black Eyed Peas and Nicky Jam teamed up for “Vida Loca” in 2020. “So, when he started working with Guaynaa and I started working with Lele, it was perfect. We just called each other like, ‘Hey, let’s do an album. Yeah! Let’s do a tour.’ Obviously, there’s a wedding going on, there’s a honeymoon going on, but I think they have all the ingredients to be superstars.”
And everything is practically ready for the big day. Before taking off to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Paris for their honeymoon, Pons will wear three dresses throughout the evening: one by Zuhair Murad to walk down the aisle, one by Julie Vino to dance at the party, “and the very, very last one, which is for when you’re already feeling unwell, by Pnina Tornai,” she says with a laugh. There will be Puerto Rican, Venezuelan and Italian food (in honor of her ancestry), and both a band and DJ to provide music till the wee hours.
They also expect to sing and have some of their guests sing as well, including relatives and close friends like Puerto Rican pop icon Chayanne (Pons’ uncle) and a stellar bridal party including Paris Hilton, Anitta, Kim Loaiza, Hanna Stocking, Isabela Grutman, Nicole Garcia and Isadora Figueroa, as well as Sebastián Yatra and Mau and Ricky Montaner.
“They all have to sing! I’ve sung at everyone’s weddings,” says Guaynaa, while Pons reminds him that someone already said she wants to do it: Spanish singer Natalia Jiménez.
During our lengthy interview, in which they spoke mostly Spanish, Pons and Guaynaa talked about their life together, their plans and their respective roles in the industry.
The wedding is only a few weeks away and the album will be released soon after. How are you handling the stress?
LELE PONS: We try to help each other with the stress, and the people around us too. (Turns to Guaynaa.) Like your dad, he calms me down a lot. Your mom calms me down a lot.
GUAYNAA: It’s a process, but we always take a couple days a week to do nothing and be at home snuggling, watching TV, talking. That makes us more appreciative and makes us step out of the house with the idea that someone is waiting for you at home to have a nice time when the lights go out, that someone is there for you.
Aknvas dress.
Mary Beth Koeth
What do you want to say with this album? Is there a particular message?
GUAYNAA: Look, there’s partying, there’s dancing.
PONS: But there are also moments about not wanting to sleep with the person you’re with, like the bachata. All couples have problems, and that’s very important. Not everything is love and kisses. There are moments that you know are difficult, and if you love the person that you’re with, you are going to have to solve it.
Who wrote the songs, and how was the working process in the studio?
PONS: Guaynaa wrote the songs. I’m more into marketing and music videos. We both contribute. We sing together, we help each other. Many times, I change the melody when I don’t like it, like in the song “Abajito.”
GUAYNAA: I try to compose, direct, produce. And Eleonora is basically giving her opinion also in terms of production and lyrics, but in a more relaxed way. The process was quite varied. One song was written in Mexico, the rest in Miami. There were collaborations with songwriters that I’ve worked with. For example, “Estrella Fugaz” was written with Elena Rose. It’s a very special song for us because it essentially represents what our love story is.
Working together can be a double-edged sword. How has this experience been for you?
GUAYNAA: Lele and I beat to different rhythms. In music, I can tell you that it is quite cool, because she has a different thinking and approach and drive, she has other filters in her head when she analyzes music. My filters are more about the conceptual elaboration of the album, the musicality, the storytelling, the beginning and the end. There were many disagreements for that very reason, but at the end of the day, I think we managed to develop a project, and that makes us very happy.
What has been the most fun for each of you?
PONS: For me, it was when I had to sing in the studio and Guaynaa would come in to help me. (To Guaynaa.) It was fun because you did things to make me laugh and [help me relax]. And for you?
GUAYNAA: The most fun? (Laughs mischievously.) Oh, for you to say you liked a song, because you were like: “I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t like it… This one I like!” Yes!
PONS: [But] when it comes to songs, I trust in him. Even if I don’t like it, I have a lot of trust in Guaynaa as an artist and I tell him, “OK, bebé, if you really want to release this song, let’s do it.”
Each of you has your own passionate fan base. How do you reach out to fans and build a consensus, especially now that you’re releasing a project together?
GUAYNAA: I think people want music.
PONS: Yes, they already have everything else on social media.
GUAYNAA: They ride the wave and surf with us. People want music, they’d like to hear music from us out there. I mean, there were many people last year who, for example — now that I told you how difficult it was — got upset at my fan base or Lele’s fan base: “Why aren’t they working? Why aren’t they making music? Oh, they’re more dedicated to their relationship than to their careers.” And it’s really that we had a disability — I couldn’t go out and sing with a hole here (points to his neck, referring to the injury from the car accident), and she couldn’t go out and sing with stitches in her belly. It was a very complicated scenario.
Guaynaa, if you could change something in the music industry right now, what would it be? [The singer parted ways with Universal Music and his previous management after releasing his debut album, La República, in 2021.]
GUAYNAA: I would require at least four years of [music business] studies, a master’s or bachelor’s degree for those who want to sing and enter the platforms. Because it seems quite unfair to me that because of ignorance errors an artist’s hard work is put at risk and therefore, their family’s sustenance — like a bad agreement, a bad contract. I have always said that this is like parenthood: First they give you the diploma and then you start studying. I would like for people to study first and then get their diploma.
TAAKK top, Versace pants, Prada shoes.
Mary Beth Koeth
Has your relationship with Lele or your greater social media presence influenced the way you make music today?
GUAYNAA: Definitely. There are many aspects in music, and I’ve always been a guy who goes out with reggaetón, then makes cumbia, salsa, alternative music… that’s the way I feel comfortable; that’s me and that’s my DNA. So, yes, I think it has given me another notion because I am aware of other things, I see other trends, and when I’m making music that’s leaning to that side, I already have some more knowledge.
How do you structure your businesses?
GUAYNAA: Our businesses are structured completely separately. We do give each other feedback and help each other, but she keeps her business structure on her side and I keep mine on my side.
PONS: Guaynaa is very good with finances, and he has a team that is very united, while I have experience in content creation and marketing. I help him with his social media, and he advises me on my finances, my business and, on many occasions, my personal decisions.
Lele, we know you more as an influencer than as a singer. How important is your music career to you right now, and what have you learned from Guaynaa as a musician?
PONS: My music career is very important. Now that I have a manager who is also in the music business and has had a lot of success, it’s like a new chapter that I want to try. And not only that, I love making music! But there has always been some sort of obstacle. For example, the hospital, or me having to do another project. Now I have a really good structure to put out a lot of songs, not just one every six months. And finally, I have someone like him (points affectionately to Guaynaa), who is my adviser and can help me more than anyone else.
Guaynaa, we have enjoyed seeing you showing your funny side with Lele on social media. What have you learned from her as a content creator?
GUAYNAA: I would say that I’ve learned about passion, attention, projection, planning. The vision that she has when carrying out a project is incredible. For me, she is the best content creator in the world.
PONS: Thanks, bebé. That’s because you love me.
GUAYNAA: It’s one of the things that I most admire about her, her ability to evolve. Because she started doing something, she grew and did other things, became bigger and did more. Reggaetón came knocking at her door looking for her creativity. Now she is in another facet, and her ability to reinvent herself is very admirable for me.
What has been the biggest challenge and the biggest advantage of working together?
GUAYNAA: The biggest challenge has basically been evolving in this ever-changing industry. And the greatest advantage, I would say that who we are as people: We have many friends, we enjoy the love and respect of many, and that makes it easier for us to work and get things done.
PONS: Being on the same page when he and I are very different in the way we work. For example, I like commercial songs, while he likes more artistic songs. This makes us the perfect team, because we come to an agreement and there is balance in every decision.
Lele, going back to the wedding, to what song are you going to walk down the aisle?
GUAYNAA: “Rompe, rompe…” (He sings the first lines of Daddy Yankee’s “Rompe,” which she loves, making her burst into laughter.)
PONS: “A Thousand Years” [by Christina Perri].
GUAYNAA: And for the first dance, “Bésame la boca… bésame la luna.” (He sings Ricardo Montaner’s romantic ballad “Bésame,” smiling proudly.) I chose it.
“That’s the only place where I can relax,” 50 Cent says, his pearly whites glistening as they’ve done all day. He’s not talking about the recording studio or the performance stage — he’s talking about his Hollywood work. “When I’m chilling,” he continues, “there will be some sort of film and TV involved.”
Once considered rap’s top villain during the days of promoting his explosive 2003 debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, 50, at 47, is now a consummate professional. He’s punctual, debunking the theory that hip-hop stars always arrive on “rapper time.” He’s well-mannered and respectful, saying, “Please,” and “Thank you,” after each request. He’s also a great listener, allowing the staff to complete their directives during the photo shoot without stiff-arming his way into the conversation. It’s all in keeping with Curtis Jackson III’s drive to achieve a loftier ambition no one could have predicted 20 years ago: to become the biggest mogul in the TV industry.
“50 is one of the smartest guys in the rap game,” says Tony Yayo, 50’s childhood friend and co-founder of their hip-hop group G-Unit. Yayo recalls that, as kids, the South Jamaica, Queens, artist was more interested in selling pills for profit than playing with G.I. Joes. “When you look at guys like Jay-Z, Diddy and 50, those guys are geniuses,” explains Yayo. “They come from the same place we come from and made something out of nothing.”
It’s that same hustler ethos that landed 50 his deal with Interscope Records in 2002, after surviving being shot nine times outside of his grandmother’s house in Queens just two years prior. By signing under two Interscope imprints — Eminem’s Shady Records and Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment — 50 became the final piece in what would become one of hip-hop’s strongest triumvirates.
From his first day in the spotlight, 50 was a brawny, gun-toting MC that imposed fear upon rivaling East Coast rappers. He decimated the mixtape scene by remixing popular hit records and peppering them with his street flair. No instrumental was safe, and once 50 got his hands on Dr. Dre’s bombastic production, his rise was imminent. He rocketed into mainstream acclaim with “Wanksta,” followed by the multiplatinum No. 1 smash “In Da Club.” His thunderous reign continued with 2003’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ and 2005’s The Massacre, two gargantuan Billboard 200 chart-toppers that sold a combined 14 million records in the United States, according to Luminate. And his various feuds with hip-hop figures, from Murda Inc. to Kanye West, kept him in the news as he kept collecting hits.
Although 50 enjoyed the competition, his attention began to wander from music. He launched his own video game with 2005’s Bulletproof, got a sneaker deal with Reebok in 2004 and invested in vitaminwater, receiving a 10% stake in the company that same year. Within three years, vitaminwater sales grew to $700 million, and parent company Glaceau was sold to Coca-Cola, which earned 50 Cent a whopping $100 million in profits.
His wins on the business front crossed over to Hollywood. After revamping his production company G-Unit Films (now G-Unit Films and Television) in 2010, 50 began developing various network projects; his first success was Power, a crime drama intertwining the glamorous club scene with the murderous drug world. He and TV writer Courtney Kemp Agbor teamed up for the series’ pilot script, which was pitched to then-Starz CEO Chris Albrecht. Thanks to the pair’s authentic storytelling and creative chemistry, Power became a hit and later earned them a $150 million deal in 2018 that included a three-series commitment and allowed G-Unit Film & Television access to all the Starz and Lionsgate platforms.
“He was in this for real,” Albrecht says of 50. “This wasn’t something he was doing for amusement. This was something he was taking as seriously as he ever took his music.”
Tom Ford jacket and sweater, Saint Laurent jeans, Too Boot shoes, Fratelli Orsini gloves.
Jai Lennard
As Power’s executive producer, 50 watched the show garner praise for six seasons and spawn multiple hit spinoffs such as Power Book II: Ghost, Power Book III: Raising Kanan and Power Book IV: Force. His show BMF, which followed the rise of infamous Detroit drug dealers the Black Mafia Family, launched on Starz in 2021 and is now in its second season. He has tapped several of his peers for cameos: Kendrick Lamar on Power, Eminem and Snoop Dogg on BMF, Joey Bada$$ for Raising Kanan, Mary J. Blige for Ghost. “I’ve seen him act, produce, direct and write,” says Blige. “I’m so impressed by his transition from rapper to amazing producer.”
50 has also negotiated deals with other networks: In November, he partnered with WeTV to launch the investigative series Hip-Hop Homicides. Hosted by Van Lathan, it examines the shocking deaths of rising stars in the genre like XXXTentacion and King Von. Last fall, 50 also inked a three-project partnership with Lusid Media for an unscripted crime series slated to debut later this year on Peacock. Plus, he and mentor Eminem are working on a TV adaptation of the latter’s 2002 semi-autobiographical film, 8 Mile. “He’s got scripted and unscripted shows,” Albrecht says. “He’s a force.”
And just as he has remade himself as a TV mogul, 50’s love for music is resurfacing. Eight years after selling his radio income stream to Kobalt Music Group in 2015 (worth $6 million), he is now working on a studio album with Dr. Dre, Eminem has sent him new songs to collaborate on, and Nas has tapped him for a feature on his forthcoming King’s Disease 4. And after a string of one-off shows and a subsequent international run last year, 50 is also planning to tour domestically for the first time in 13 years. He is already set to perform at Las Vegas’ Lovers & Friends Festival in May. One recent performance, as a surprise guest during 2021’s Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show, even earned him an Emmy.
“The guy’s a machine; he always been like that from the block to now,” says Yayo of 50’s work ethic. “That’s the meaning of Get Rich or Die Tryin’. We got rich — and we still tryin’ to get more money.”
In his first solo cover story for Billboard, 50 talks expansively about his legacy in hip-hop, his long-term relationships with Dr. Dre and Eminem, and his seemingly bulletproof climb up the TV industry ladder.
With hip-hop turning 50 this year, how do you view your legacy within it?
My run was so uncomfortable that everyone would like to forget that it happened. That’s just the way it is with the artist community. I didn’t come in being friendly because I had to find a way into it — not find a way to be good enough to work in the community. The biggest compliment in the early stages was that artists felt like they’d made it when they got the deal. You had to earn the right to have the deal.
Get Rich or Die Tryin’ came out 20 years ago. Now that you’re working with Dr. Dre again, is the creative process different?
I’ll go in and start to record the best music that I can come up with from everybody else. Then I’ll find some pieces, and when I accumulate stuff that I feel like is good enough, I’ll bring it to impress Dre and [his team] to get cooler stuff from [him]. At that point, they’ll go, “I see where you headed.” They already know musically what I’m thinking is the right direction at that point. When I start projects with Dre, I would write to the first song that came on. I don’t care what it was, even if the beat wasn’t finished. I would write the record to break the ice, and we’d have something playing like [Dre] just got here even if he’s been here two or three hours and we got a record playing. He will change the drums and everything that you got there until you got something that’s a hit record.
The difference now is, with a lot of the stuff I would send, I’m looking at the angles of it happening from different perspectives instead of putting myself in the middle of actually doing something to someone. I wrote a lot of the material like that [before], but there are a million other approaches to use. So I’ll do those other things so I can still capture what goes on in the environment now. But it’s through the lens of not being in the game — it’s the perception of the game, from my perspective.
Alanui shirt, Tom Ford t-shirt, The Tie Bar pants, Mr. P shoes.
Jai Lennard
Eminem has been another longtime mentor. What has it been like working with him throughout your career?
Em’s not going to say the s–t the way I say it because it just is what it is. There’s his humble nature — he’d call me and ask to do him a favor and rap with him on a song. Like, “You know I’m on your label, right? Yeah, whatever you need me to do.” He would always ask me, “Could you do me a favor? I always thought it would be dope if we did this together.” I’m like, “All right.”
He’s never been part of any of the confusion, because there’s going to be confusion in your career. You’ve got to do maintenance on people. The imperfections of the music business are the people in it. You’ll see artists miss [with a project] and still stay in good graces because they’re still being prioritized and the system is working to keep them in place. Then you’ll see amazing artists [who are not prioritized]. You’ll listen and think, “What happened to them?” It’s because the business was done with them.
You’ve been a mentor yourself to artists like Pop Smoke and DaBaby. What are your thoughts on this generation’s rising hip-hop artists?
I only like the ones that I see myself in. A lot of the other s–t, I be like, “Yeah, what the f–k is this, man?” I’ve got to believe them and the s–t they’re saying to be into the artist.
They [also] have to want to be mentored. I’ll talk to them and touch base with them because I see that in them. You go, “Yo, you have to focus on what you came for and what’s important to you, and get those things together versus just riding it out.” The way I had competitive energy: Hip-hop culture makes you battle. I love Nicki Minaj, but the funny s–t is, I like watching her when she’s upset. I like that because she has something that comes from the experience of living in South Jamaica. I’m looking at it like, “Yo, I know they think she’s nuts, but they only think that because they don’t understand.” I get it. She thinks you’re trying to play her.
When Cardi B came, I thought she was dope. She’s from the bottom. She was in Club Lust in Brooklyn. [Going] from that and actually making a hit record and turning into who she did? I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t like to see that. It felt like she got everything — married, the baby — it came really fast. That’s the American dream right there.
When her and Nicki clash, I go, “Oh, s–t, it’s going to be interesting to watch how it plays out.” Lyrically, I won’t say anything competitively about the two of them, but I love Nicki. I don’t have anything against Cardi. I think anyone who comes now, she is going to check their temperature. Nicki is going to check if this b-tch is friendly or looking to take over the s–t.
In addition to your musical beefs, you were part of a notable TV feud, when Power was pitted against Fox’s series Empire. Do you have any regrets?
Nah. In regard to Empire, that was about Fox having more marketing dollars than Starz. Starz didn’t have the money. So when we hit the bull’s-eye with Power — it’s very rare to get an entire audience excited — I’m looking at Fox hitting the bull’s-eye behind us with Empire. On Fox, they were offering the PG-13 version of the story because it’s network television. Because I can be R-rated and portray a more graphic experience, I knew that Power would eventually prevail.
[Fox] stole my idea because they said in the [show’s promo tagline], “Empires are built on power.” That’s good marketing. Because I’m at a disadvantage in not being able to market at the same level, we’re going to have a problem. That’s where the beef comes from. [But] I love [Empire star] Taraji P. Henson. I think she’s amazing. Terrence Howard was my co-star in the first film I worked on. Of course I wanted to see their show be successful.
French Montana has called you a genius marketer. Some of your beefs were personal, but how many of them were strategic?
They were [all] strategic — [the industry set them up] in response to what I was doing. I kept saying, “They dead, get rid of them,” and [the industry] would come in and resuscitate them to bring them back. Now I just have to f–k you up a little bit so you don’t go near [that artist] again when I get him back into that position again. I tap the artist for doing that, like, “Move! Why you keep trying to do that?” They’re using their energy and fan base to resuscitate the artist I just put to bed. That was why I was doing that.
It’s the same mentality of the street. When you get into business, you can’t bring that with you. They’ll split the culture in half.
Hugo Boss shirt, The Tie Bar pants, suspenders and tie, J.J. Hat Center hat.
Jai Lennard
Did you miss writing and recording music?
I get the attention that I want from music when I want it. I just went out and toured 45 countries, and everywhere was sold out. That made me want to offer new music that I could integrate into everything now. I’ve done what I wanted to do in the [sales] capacity. I’ve sold over 35 million records. Not singles — albums. With Em, it’s different because he’s never going to stop [recording]. It bugs him out that I can do TV production.
Before Get Rich made you huge, Master P was booking you for shows. What was your rate then versus how much you command internationally today?
I think he gave me like $80,000, and now I’m getting like $900,000, $1 million. The coolest thing we create in America is celebrities. If you see LeBron [James’] fan base internationally, you’ll argue, “Why is he staying here?” He’s that big internationally. For the most part, I can’t speak for everybody, but the international side of the game is different.
Do you feel like prime 50 Cent could break through and do the same commercial damage in today’s climate?
It would be a lot different. I look at the new artists that embody the streets like they’re the new 50 Cent. What’s going to be difficult and important for them to do is figure out how to navigate themselves. If you ask them if they’re afraid of anything, it’s going to be tough because they’ve been facing those obstacles the entire time, so they’re not scared. But they can f–k it up for themselves, like with whom they bring around them and the energy they carry. It can destroy a force.
That’s the obstacle they’ve got to get around themselves. I think if they get that information fast enough and can look at it the right way, they’ll be able to do [music] longer. If not, they’re going to crash right in front of you.
People who are extremely guarded about their private lives — particularly their love lives — would do well not to get involved with an ace songwriter. Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” left music fans speculating for decades about the narcissist at the core of her venomous takedown, and Taylor Swift rather famously built a big part of her catalog on a string of disappointing relationships, dropping clues about her subjects’ identities but declining to name them.
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Alana Springsteen delved into her own real-life bouts with heartbreak in her first full-length album, 2021’s independently released History of Breaking Up (Part One), and again in 2022’s Part Two. Now signed to the New York division of Columbia, her first release for the label — “You Don’t Deserve a Country Song,” issued last month — reflects her efforts to purge the emotional residue after the split that informed those prior projects.
“Coming off History of Breaking Up (Part One) and (Part Two), it made a lot of sense to start the year off with this song,” Springsteen reflects. “If they found my music through that period, this is going to feel really familiar to them.”
The room was crowded when “Deserve” came into the world in fall 2021. Springsteen already knew three of her four male co-writers — Michael Whitworth (“Break It In”), Geoff Warburton (“Best Thing Since Backroads”) and Will Weatherly (“Thinking ’Bout You,” “Lose It”) — and was introduced to Mitchell Tenpenny, who subsequently made her an opening act during a 2022 tour. Her willingness to put her emotions on the line in that room impressed him.
“You can tell that she was vulnerable about it,” Tenpenny says. “She’s opening up in a room full of dudes to tell us how she feels, and I respect the s–t out of that. She’s a badass.”
Springsteen possessed the musical catalyst for the day’s work at that writing session. She introduced a stuttered, descending acoustic guitar line played at an aggressive pace in an open tuning, and it sifted into a sort of cluttered conversation. In the middle of it, Tenpenny offered a title that he had logged in his phone, “You Don’t Deserve a Song.” It resonated with Springsteen’s recent breakup.
“When things were good between us, we would actually have conversations and talk about me being a songwriter, and maybe writing something about our relationship or him getting to hear his name on the radio,” she recalls.
They tweaked Tenpenny’s title to accommodate the genre — “You Don’t Deserve a Country Song” — and set out to write a tune that refuses to acknowledge a relationship, even if writing it undercut the actual message.
“I thought it was cool to say you don’t deserve it while you’re giving them a country song,” Tenpenny says. “I’m writing it about you, but I just love the irony in saying you’re not going to do it. You’re doing it because that’s what we [as songwriters] do.”
They wrote the chorus first, with the singer vowing not to do the standard things that jilted lovers do in broken-hearted country songs: no drinking alone at the bar, no stalking the ex’s house. All the writers knew her emotional situation, regardless of whether they knew her ex.
“I actually have no idea who this person is in Alana’s life, but I have that person in my life,” says Weatherly. “That’s what makes the entire thing more universal. Everyone knows that person in their life.”But with each of those five creatives contributing their viewpoints, “You Don’t Deserve a Country Song” has a certain orderliness to it. Every stanza serves a different purpose, structured in a way that makes chronological sense to the listener, even though the room itself was a bit disorderly.
“It is chaos when everybody’s tossing out ideas, but everyone in their own mind has an idea of what they think it should be,” Whitworth notes. “Five people’s ideas amalgamate into the final product, but every one of us could have written our own version of that song.”
They first explored the details of writing a song — putting pen to paper, rhyming and forming chords — while vowing not to waste the effort on the ex. Verse two invoked other classic country songs that mined the same subject: “What Hurts the Most,” “You’ll Think of Me” and “Neon Moon,” the latter written by Ronnie Dunn for Tree Publishing (now a part of Sony Music Publishing) when Tenpenny’s grandmother, Donna Hilley, was one of the company’s leading executives. The titles appear in the story with surprising subtlety.
“Maybe it doesn’t catch you on the first listen, but it still services the song and the hook,” says Whitworth. “There’s a backstory no one would ever know listening to the song, but we kind of put in songs that got us into country music.”
Weatherly oversaw the demo, using layers of guitars over a pulsing, synthetic bass to create a near-constant sense of forward motion. He built the sound to a crescendo at the end of the bridge, where Springsteen proclaims, “You don’t get to hear your name on the radio.” He followed it with a down chorus, designed for a short respite before raising the intensity once again at the close.
“As a listener, I don’t want a kick drum hammering my ear the entire time,” Weatherly explains. “So you either do a down bridge and an up chorus, or you do an up bridge and a down chorus. You give the listener a moment to breathe.”
Weatherly’s demo was so well-executed that producer Chris LaCorte (Sam Hunt, Cole Swindell) gave him co-producer credit after using the bass and some of the percussion parts from that demo for the master recording. They were only cutting one song at the time (as opposed to three or four songs in a session), so to keep costs down, they built it with the musicians recording individually in their home studios. The cast included drummer Aaron Sterling, guitarist Sol Philcox-Littlefield and keyboardist Alex Wright, with LaCorte playing bass.
LaCorte lowered the key a half step, beefed up the basic foundation with a few extra tracks and recast the bridge, making that the part where the song’s intensity drops. As a result, the line “You don’t get to hear your name on the radio” stands out.
“A lot of times, I look at how the songs would be performed live,” he says. “This is a moment here where it’s just you and a spotlight out there on the catwalk, you throw the guitar behind your back, you grab the mic, and you’re just singing these lyrics. It’s super intimate, and that was kind of the moment I wanted it to feel like.”
Springsteen’s final vocal had all the intimacy that was required — and all the bite, finding that part of the spirit by listening to her now-disgraced former boyfriend’s voice on an old phone message “Her pitch is crazy good,” LaCorte says. “She has such an ear for pocket or the timing of her words. And she’s so in tune with it, too. So we’ll record a bunch of passes and piece together our favorite stuff. And she’s right on top of me for getting the timing right. I love an artist that’s particular about their vocal.”
“You Don’t Deserve a Country Song” teases Messing It Up, a collection due Mar. 24 as the first installment in a three-part album, Twenty Something. “It’s for everybody who’s decided that they’re done putting somebody else’s happiness first and they’re deciding to choose themselves,” Springsteen asserts. “I think there’s a lot of power and competence that comes from that.”
Two decades after breaking through on a national level, T.I. is still writing his legacy.
While Tip usually shies away from watching scary movies himself, the hip-hop polymath expanded his filmography by starring in the psychological horror movie Fear, which hit theaters in January. In addition to playing Lou in the Deon Taylor-directed independent flick — joining a cast that included Power’s Joseph Sikora, Terrence J, Tyler Abron, King Bach and Rudy Modine — T.I. also served as a producer and investor in the movie, which was filmed in the midst of the pandemic.
And he and DaBaby linked up in Charlotte in early January for a soundtrack collaboration, also titled “Fear.” DaBaby tells Billboard, “My guy Deon Taylor called me and I got to see the trailer for the film and I got to curate the song directly off that. [Deon’s] quickly become one of my mentors in the last couple of months. Ever since I ran into him at Draymond Green’s wedding, he asked me if I was interested in being on the big screen since he saw some of my music videos. I told him, ‘Absolutely.’”
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Will T.I. follow up that project with a Super Bowl cameo? The rapper has been rumored to make a guest appearance at Rihanna’s Super Bowl LVII halftime show to perform their Hot 100-topping 2008 duet “Live Your Life.” T.I. caught up with Billboard to discuss the Super Bowl possibility, his ranking on Billboard and Vibe‘s greatest rappers list, Drake interpolating “24’s” on Her Loss, and more.
How was working with DaBaby on “Fear” for the Fear soundtrack?
T.I.: It was dope. Me and bro had a mutual respect for a long time. I always spoke about working together and working on film. He’s been picking my brain about it. With his videos, you can tell he’s got chops and he’s ready to evolve into another form of storytelling. I’m eager to assist the next generation however I can.
DaBaby and Deon Taylor attend “Fear” World Premiere at Directors Guild Of America on January 21, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.
Arnold Turner/GI for Hidden Empire Film Group
How did you feel about showing up on our greatest rappers list at No. 32?
There’s so many phenomenal talents, prolific artists and iconic figures that have passed through this culture. I ain’t got no time to hold no emotions about it. I’m just thankful to be here, thankful to be part of the collective that gets to do what we love for a living and inspire people on a daily basis. I’m just happy to be around the elite. The people I used to wake up not wanting to go to school and listen to. I’m on a list with them.
Now I became the person that little truancies used to get up and not want to go to school. It’s an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to be on that list. I think it’s some people that I came before I think that I should’ve went behind. What’s the process? So people just saying let’s piss people off? If you wanna piss people off and get instant engagement, make a list about anything.
What did you think about Drake interpolating your song “24’s” for “Rich Flex” on Her Loss?
I think it’s dope. I think it’s incredible, on the 20th anniversary of Trap Muzik this year, we’re still showing the relevance and the impact of the music from having the icons of today just still find value in it and I think it’s dope that he did it. I’m happy to be a part of it in any way possible.
Are we going to see you at the Super Bowl performing “Live Your Life” with Rihanna?
Zip it. Ay man, I will not confirm or deny any potential appearance. It’s an awesome opportunity. It was awesome to have the opportunity to work with such an iconic figure and such a prolific individual and such a beautiful spirit altogether. We’ll see what happens.
You’ve been a mentor to a lot of artists, and recently spoke about how 21 Savage thanks you every time he sees you for not giving him that first $1 million.
It’s amazing to be in a position where you enter into a whole new generation and be this institution of culture and see the new leaders of the generation pass through your studio and find their sound and start building, meeting each other, and learning the business. I teach the way I was taught, and I was taught you gon’ sacrifice something to gain something. Part of that sacrifice early on is that up-front advance money. Then you get some equity on the back end. That’s the model I’ve been preaching for a long time.
Young Thug was another one of those artists you mentored. He’s in an unfortunate situation right now.
I still have the utmost faith he’s going to come out better than ever. God has the last say, regardless of what I think. He’s going to be a better person and in a better position.
“What You Know” celebrated an anniversary last weekend. What do you remember most about making that record?
I remember how fast I recorded it — it was extremely fast. As soon as [producer] DJ Toomp came in and played some records, as soon as I heard that beat, I knew that was it. I just went in there and did it. Everybody knew this was the first single. That was probably one of the most obvious first listens I’ve ever experienced.
What was your response to RZA’s comments hating on the South taking over rap in 2007 at the time?
I had heard that. There’s gonna be some knee-jerk reactions when it comes to change. Things are being presented a little differently than you’re used to receiving, I can understand how it may take some getting used to. Personally, he never exhibited that kind of energy toward me, and I think that Southern lyrics as a whole are made in response to people in the South and the dialect is much different than the North. I can understand if you from up North, how you might feel a little left out.
Kill the King is your final album? The last one has to be A1.
It’s definitely a feeling of that. Perfection is necessary. I kind of have to put an exclamation point on this career that is taken me to heights that I never imagined and led me places that really surprised me. I never thought I’d be in some of the great positions that I found myself in. This would be the exclamation point, and I have to do it.
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