![]() ![]() When that song got finished I was like, “What am I going to call it? I’m just going to call it ‘Aaliyah.’” After I did that, I thought, “Wait a minute. I didn’t fit into that mold of what a female looks like. I was just taking in what he was saying, but then when I went home, I started writing and recording, and the first song was “Aaliyah.” It was a concept I had been thinking about doing for five years, with me being a tomboy and growing up in a time where in the mainstream you have to look a certain way. But then I did that interview, and we spent the whole day together, and the writer was talking about connecting me to Nina Simone. But I didn’t know where I wanted to go with it. “You’re an alien in that you’re female but you’re as lyrical as you are.” It’s something a generation hasn’t seen in a long time. It was something 9th Wonder had presented to me, and I was like, “I can kind of dig that. At the time I did that interview, I was just doing songs. The concept for Eve came to you during an interview with the magazine Oxford American ?Ĭompletely. Being a griot for whatever is going on at the time. And we’re both from North Carolina, so for that song I just wanted to talk about me, because I felt like at the core of who I was was something that represented who Nina Simone was at her core: Talking about the times. When I thought about Nina, I thought, “What does she represent for me?” A quote that always sticks out is, “It’s an artist’s duty to tell the truth and speak the times.” That’s something I’ve always tried to do in my career. ![]() Mark Byrd sent me the record, and it already sampled Nina, so that was easy. Is that how the opening track “Nina” started? I need something emotional, or soulful.” And they would send me beats and it would make me feel a certain way. I would be like, “Eric G, I need something funky. So I said, “I need some militant, Black Panther revolutionary type vibe.” That’s how I would approach it. I had hit him up, saying, “I need a song that I could call Assata,” because I want to write about Assata Shakur. I would get a beat and be like, “What does this sound like?” For one song that didn’t make the album, Sounwave sent me a beat. I would start with the woman: Who do I want to write about today? And what would dictate who I would write about would be the beat. With this one, it’s a concept album, so it’s easier. Where does the songwriting process usually begin? ![]() “I haven’t been nominated for much, but what I have, I’m thankful for”). ![]() “Frustrated…beyond,” she wrote on Instagram. (A few weeks after the interview, Rapsody would express her disappointment when Eve was shut out entirely of this year’s Grammy nominations. Her latest work is a dense concept album centered around black womanhood, with each track (“Tyra,” “Serena,” “Whoopi”) named after a woman who inspired Rapsody and represented an element of her identity or artistry. “That’s my favorite part, the writing,” she says.Įve is Rapsody’s first release since her Grammy nominated, Kendrick Lamar-featuring breakthrough (and Roc Nation debut) Laila’s Wisdom arrived in 2017. The 16-track album is packed with historical references (Betty Shabazz, Sojourner Truth), dexterous wordplay (“emit light, rap, or Emmett Till”, she sings in the album’s opening line) and wide-ranging literary allusions to writers like Lorraine Hansberry and Nikki Giovanni. “I don’t get to talk about it enough.” The North Carolina rapper is sitting in a spacious lounge at Roc Nation’s office, staring up at a giant screen projecting the lyrics to her latest album, Eve. “I love talking about lyrics,” says Rapsody. ![]()
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