NEWS
EVENTS
Love & Hip Hop queen K Michelle talks psychoanalysis and soulful music
RnB/Hip Hop | Wednesday 8th April 2015 |
How you doing K Michelle?
I’m doing great, busy working!
I came across information that you might be coming to the UK for an extended period of time, is that correct?
Yes I’m excited about it. I actually was supposed to be there in April, but I have my own TV show and we start filming in April. So as soon as that is done I will be there for a couple of months.
You got the new album, that’s Anybody Wanna Buy A Heart?, you got the hot single ‘Love ‘Em All’. Two things I like about you as an artist: I think you’re the best vocalist, female or male that has come out on the scene for the past five years, and I think that there’s an honesty in your music that is missing from the music industry. You seem to say honestly what you are feeling and that really translates in what you deliver.
Absolutely, I just think that’s important. I don’t like to sing things that I don’t know anything about. I’m a very emotional person, which sometimes is good and sometimes is bad, and what I feel like makes people relate to me is the fact that I can’t hide my emotions. So if I can’t relate to a song, my fans are going to know that, cause I’m not really good at faking that. So I have to go out and do my own music, I have to write my own music, because no one can tell your story like you. So I just have a lot of respect for R&B artists and pop artists who write their own music.
I understand that you’ve actually got a degree in psychology from Florida A&M University. How does that play out in your creative process? Do you use any of that?
A lot! I really like to get in people’s minds man. You know I write a lot about love and a lot about life. When people want to be psychologists and psychiatrists, they have that in them, just like you have it in you to be a singer. I’ve always been interested in things like that, and studies of the mind, but I do think that all of that plays a part in me being more relatable, and plays a part in the chemistry that people have for me.
Indeed, indeed. So moving onto the VH1 reality shows Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta and Love & Hip Hop: New York, do you feel like your experiences there is what you intended to come away with from those first two reality shows?
Ab-so-lutely! What I’ve come away with has been the reuniting of my career and reinvention of it, and people are getting to really know me. Love & Hip Hop, people got to know the aggressive side, my show, K Michelle: My Life, they’re getting the whole. The show was renewed for a second season, so there’s another season of that to start in March. And actually I met with the president of VH1, and they’re gonna try and see what they can do to have that airing in the UK. I know a lot of my fans there watch it online and I don’t think that’s fair.
Wow, wow, and congratulations on your second season! So things are going to higher and higher heights for you.
Thank you. I’m also doing Love & Hip Hop: LA as well. I’m helping the girls, kinda mentoring the girls on the show, so you’ll get to see me on that as well next season.
So everywhere we look it’s gonna be K Michelle, K Michelle, K Michelle! So you have your debut album, Rebellious Soul, and you have ‘V.S.O.P’, that was the first official single. That one had a bridge between the old and the new, it had samples from classic soul songs and obviously you brought the contemporary R&B sound to it. What’s the creative history behind that song?
I just do what feels good, man. I think we overthink music, its kinda like, if you are a true musician, God put that in you, that’s in you, no one can take that from you. So if you be quiet and listen to yourself, and do what you’re supposed to do, and do what the universe is telling you, you’ll be fine. So I don’t make a conscious decision on “this is what I’m doing with this music”, I just make the music and go for it.
My favourite song from the album is ‘My Life’, featuring Meek Mill. I don’t even hear that song, I feel it. What creative space were you in when you decided to make ‘My Life’? Where did that all come from?
Life man. That record was one of those kinda telling what I’ve seen. It says “what you know about the grind in the street/He move and work outta town every week/I know about it.” You know, “what you know about them girls on the pole”, I did, I used to be stripper, and I was a college graduate, a stripper, all of that, so I know about different things in the street and different things about life. So that is where that record came from.
That brings us up to your second album Anybody Wanna Buy A Heart?, that debuted at number 6 on the Billboard 200 chart, and Billboard themselves have called it one of the best R&B albums of 2014. You’ve been in the game for a minute, but now you’re getting the accolades, do you feel any added pressure now to deliver?
Oh yeah. Maybe not added pressure, maybe just a feeling of “finally”. I have been doing this and doing this, and it’s always been looked over, and for whatever reasons I’ve had to fight so hard for people to be accepting of my music and give me my credit. It’s starting to happen and I’m just like “finally”, so I’m at the “finally” moment, and I’m gonna ride it until the wheels fall off.
Most definitely! ‘Love ‘Em All’, that’s another one that I not only hear but I feel. It seems to be talking about how you get over a relationship, can you describe what place that one came from?
So many people in the US are concerned about who I’m dating. That is the biggest thing, everybody wants me to find love, and everybody wants to know what’s going on. I date a lot, and I often get judged for my dating, but what people need to understand, I didn’t say I’m dating and opening my legs for everybody, I’m just being a normal woman, I’m not dating any more than the average woman, but because I’m in the spotlight, you know. I like to call myself a maneater. I’ve become so numb to the things that men have done to me, and the things I been through that I’ll cut you off quickly, so I could love you on a Monday and then be over you by Tuesday. That’s ‘Love ‘Em All’, I make you feel good and you’ll think I’ll never leave, and then you’ll look up and I’ll be gone!
