I went home and brainstormed, and Heaux Tales came up.” She envisioned an album of intimate confessions, the kind you spill out after a glass - or bottle - of wine.
#Jazmine sullivan insecure producer full
When I write, I see it almost in pictures, like a full production. When I was growing up, my mom was a playwright. Sullivan was intrigued: “I’m like a Disney kid. The idea came from her label a few years ago, when she wasn’t sure what she wanted her fourth project to sound like. Sullivan is chatty but precise, especially when she talks about how methodically she approached the new work. And she’s been writing Heaux Tales, her first concept album. (“I can’t explain it,” she says of working with Ocean, “except that it’s a beautiful mess.” She cackles.) She’s watched her mother battle breast cancer. She dropped singles - the very good Bryson Tiller collab “Insecure” for the HBO show of the same name - and lent her voice to Frank Ocean for Endless’s background vocals. Sullivan has been busy since fans last heard her on Reality Show. She’s still wearing a robe and getting ready for a COVID-safe rehearsal downstairs. “Can I keep my camera off?” she asks when I call her up on a December morning. All three have earned Grammy nominations. Sullivan makes fans wait for it, averaging a longer hiatus between albums than most: There were two years between her first one, Fearless, and her second, Love Me Back, but five between Love Me Back and 2015’s Reality Show. Her songs often have two modes: rootless uncertainty and a boundless enthusiasm for the new - man, relationship, vision of life.
Across three albums, the 33-year-old singer-songwriter has thrown her head back to cry out in song, sometimes wishing for love, sometimes recovering from it. Heartache, heartbreak, that liminal space between desperately missing an ex and wanting them dead, burned, and buried - this is what she makes music about. “The thing that came to mind was losing somebody you loved.”Īmong today’s crop of R&B artists, Sullivan is a voice - a singer in the tradition of Mary J. “I just tried to think of the saddest thing I could think of,” she says. It became the first single, “ Lost One,” from her new album, Heaux Tales. “It just hit me.” She jotted down lyrics for a plea: “Just don’t have too much fun without me / Don’t have too much, don’t have too much fun / Please don’t forget about me / Try not to love no one.” Her request is selfish, but it feels real. “It was so heart-wrenching,” she remembers. Jazmine Sullivan was flipping through tracks on her computer, finding material to put words to for her new album. The guitar sounded a bit out of tune, but she liked it.
Photo: Malike Sidibe for New York Magazine
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