E-mail a friendLedisi
airdate September 2, 2009
Ledisi has been described as having a mix of Tina Turner's energy and Ella Fitzgerald's chops. Born in New Orleans, she grew up in Oakland, CA in a musical family and sang in a local band before forming her own group. She studied opera and piano for five years in UC Berkeley's Young Musicians Program and has done ads and soundtracks for the Sci-Fi Channel. A Best New Artist Grammy nominee for '07's "Lost and Found," she's also done a jazz album with bassist Marcus Shelby. Her fourth studio disc is entitled "Turn Me Loose."
Grammy-nominated singer talks about being able to come out of her shell when she performs. (1:34)
Full interview. (11:39)
Ledisi
Tavis: Ledisi is a Grammy-nominated R&B artist who won wide acclaim for her 2007 CD, "Lost and Found." Her latest, "Turn Me Loose," made its debut at number one on the R&B charts. Here now some behind-the-scenes footage of the making of "Turn Me Loose."
[Clip]
Tavis: So how does it feel to have a number one album? (Laughter) Number one - woohoo!
Ledisi: It's a beautiful feeling. I'm just happy my audience got it.
Tavis: When you say you're happy they got it, what were you afraid - maybe not afraid. What did you think they might not get?
Ledisi: Well, I switched it up this time around. Being the risk-taker that I am, people did not know that about me. I take a lot of risk. I was hoping people would get it. I put a lot of different genres on this. It's like why didn't you do what you did last time, the safe route? And I wanted to take a risk; a lot of innovators do that. So I want to be an innovator at the end of this, so.
Tavis: A lot of innovators do it, but they don't do it necessarily so early in their career. You got something that's working, don't fix it if it ain't broke. Why take the chance to switch so dramatically so early in your career?
Ledisi: Well, I've been doing this over 12 years. It's not early for me. The world has caught up.
Tavis: Fair enough.
Ledisi: "Lost and Found" was my first major label release. I had two releases prior to this. I've been doing this over 12 years, the same way for a long time, and I signed with a major label and that's why got me in the limelight. I was known underground for a very long time.
And then to come - the second major label album with Verve has been amazing. I had the opportunity to work with some wonderful producers and I wanted to do what they did a long time ago. I'm doing anything new; I'm just doing it right now.
Tavis: So it's old for you, it's new for us.
Ledisi: Yes. (Laughter)
Tavis: Nice way to put it. How did, and just between the two of us, how'd you convince a major record label to let you shift gears on something that they know worked the last time you went out with it?
Ledisi: They were even more ecstatic than I expected them to be. Having a label like this, that are open to music, they love music. Having a label like Verve, they love music, and they have worked with innovators for years so they expect artists to be artists.
And so when I brought in all this music, they were just ecstatic. Finally, we see how you are live; we hear it now on a CD.
Tavis: You write a lot of your stuff. Is that - you do it, and as I said, you write a lot of it, but is it important to you to have to write your stuff, or do you just happen to write your stuff?
Ledisi: I just happen to write it. This time, I opened up so much more writing with other people, Chianti (sp) and Terry Lewis, Jimmy Jam, Raphael Saadiq. I worked (unintelligible) we wrote together, and that's new for me. Normally, I'm writing by myself or with the other producer, but this time I opened up to different people.
It's not important, I'm so open. They're great - way better writers than me. It just happens I'm writing in my journal and everybody's there with me, writing it out. (Laughter)
Tavis: How did you get proficient at that, though? There are a lot of great artists who don't write their own stuff and they're still great artists anyway, but how did the writing thing come to be for you? Because you do write so much of your stuff.
Ledisi: Yeah, well, my mom, my first time writing, my mom had a little Casio keyboard and piano and I would always doodle.
Tavis: Your parents are musicians.
Ledisi: My parents are musicians; my mother, a wonderful singer, my dad. They all write. I've been around musicians all my life, so I had no choice but to write and it was the way to escape from either the abuse in the home, abuse at school. It was a way to just release all the words I couldn't say. I was very nerdy and shy, and still am, unbelievably. But during that time, that's where I escaped, is by writing.
And I'm not the best writer. I'm very simplistic and I write what everyday people think about. I'm not as deep as all the writers that I love, but I'm still growing. I'm still growing.
Tavis: You said something a moment ago that got my attention about being nerdy and shy. You got my attention because not long ago in this very same chair you're sitting in tonight Maxwell was here, who I've known for years.
Ledisi: I love Maxwell.
Tavis: Yeah, great artist. By his own admission, Maxwell, it's hard to believe, as sexy as he is to women, that he grew up, by his own admission, nerdy and shy. When you went to number one with this album drop, you moved Maxwell out of, (laughter) that other nerdy and shy person got move out of number one to make room for you.
Ledisi: Wow.
Tavis: I raise that only because I'm curious, and I've talked to him about this, how it is that you get up on stage and in your cage just turn it loose and turn it out, bouncing around in your stilettos that you always - you got them on now, don't you? (Laughter)
Ledisi: Yes.
Tavis: Bouncing around on stilettos like they're tennis shoes. How do you - where does that come from, given your nerdy and shy self?
Ledisi: It's the person - it's the artist. The artist - we have the wonderful opportunity of saying the things we wish we can say that everybody wishes they can say and do. And on stage, it's another thing. It's energy where you want to tell the audience, you're not alone. I feel the same way you feel, and I'm going to say the things you wish you could say.
And people love the honesty and the realness, and it's an instant gratification of oh, it's safe to stay here and play. But offstage, I'm nothing like that. (Laughter)
Tavis: Whatever happened, huh?
Ledisi: The hair comes down and the heels come off, it's a whole nother person.
Tavis: So in other words I wouldn't want to hang out with you offstage?
Ledisi: No, you would. Look, look, see, Tavis, you're starting on TV.
Tavis: Yeah, she's fun to be with on stage. (Laughter) Don't hang out with her in - you don't want to spend no private time with her. Yeah, that's not a good way to sell yourself.
Ledisi: It would be hard to get me to talk about a lot of stuff, that's (inaudible).
Tavis: All right. Well, I'm glad we're on TV then, so you're on stage. (Laughter) You feel better. You know I love music and I'm always going to concerts, and I can think of any number of artists who I love, but they're not going to give you - and they kill the show, but they're not going to be running around and jumping up and down. You go see Frankie Beverly, Frankie -
Ledisi: Smooth.
Tavis: Frankie's smooth.
Ledisi: Yes.
Tavis: Frankie's going to stay right where he is; he's going to kill it. But he ain't going to move too much from that spot he's in. (Laughter) And there are other artists like that.
You, on the other hand, just all over the place, again, as I said, in those stilettos. Could you sing standing still?
Ledisi: Oh, yes, most definitely.
Tavis: You could?
Ledisi: For a little while. (Laughter) Not very long, but I could do it.
Tavis: I ask that because I don't think - to this album cover, "Turn Me Loose," I don't think if they - as long as we turn you loose you can do it. I'm not sure you could actually stand still and sing a song. (Laughter) But that image -
Ledisi: I could, it depends on the song, the dress, and the heels, it depends on all that.
Tavis: But the energy, seriously, though, the energy is a part of - that's just the way you let it out.
Ledisi: Yes, I'm a person that my mom, even in her rehearsals, watching her, she always gave 110 percent, like it was her last note. And that's how I am on stage. This may be my last show, so I'm going to give 10, 15,000 percent to my audience.
They don't want to hear about your bad day. They want to be uplifted. I always imagine myself as if I'm the audience and I pay good money to see you, my last dollar to see you, I want to be lifted, I want to be energized, I want to leave there excited. And that's all I did on my album. It's not what it was, the Ledisi on "Lost and Found." This is the energy that I give at my show.
Tavis: So you've become a number one artist. Without getting the kind of radio play that a lot of artists do, and have to have, in fact, to become a number one artist. What do you make of that?
Ledisi: Well, I just focus on the music and give my heart into it, and hope that radio picks it up. And I focused on that on this album and for six months I couldn't write a thing because I was focusing on I got to stay on the radio. "All Right" had been on the radio for a long time in the morning, it was like the little train that could and it kept going.
And it takes people a year later to get my album, or sometime they get it now. But with this particular album I couldn't think of radio or nothing would come out when I did. When I thought about all the pressure of trying to compete with "Lost and Found," nothing would come out. So once I let that go and I completely focused on the music and what I was trying to say to my audience and to myself, and with my producers, that's all that mattered to me as an embodiment, as a whole album, not just a particular song.
Tavis: What's the importance on the second project for you of having the kind of collaborations that you mentioned earlier? Jam and Lewis, Raphael Saadiq - serious collaborations.
Ledisi: Wow. This has been dreams manifested, working with every producer on this album, of course working with Rex Rideout again, because that's my safety net, my angel. But having Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam - Jam and Lewis, they're, like, the gurus of songwriting and production, and Raphael Saadiq's like my cousin I've been waiting to work with for years. We're not cousins, but it feels like it because I've known him so long, being from Oakland, California as well.
So it was just a dream, a dream. And we all sat down and talked first and hung out before we even wrote a note, and I'm like, these are high-end producers that have Grammys and they want to work with me, they already know my name. I've gotten far. So it was a dream for me.
Tavis: Back to where we started this conversation earlier, there is so much good stuff but different stuff on this project. What makes you think when you put a project - and obviously it's working, because people are buying it - what made you think, though, putting all this - you're from New Orleans. You grew up in Oakland, but you're from New Orleans. It's like a gumbo. You've got so much stuff in here.
Ledisi: Yes. (Laughter)
Tavis: I ain't going to call no names, but I've tasted some folks gumbo, and it. (Laughter) Just because you throw all that stuff in that pot -
Ledisi: Don't mean it work, right.
Tavis: - don't mean it's going to - exactly. (Laughter) Don't mean it's going to work.
Ledisi: Exactly.
Tavis: How did you know that this was going to work?
Ledisi: I didn't know it was going to work. I'm not going to be the one that -
Tavis: Did you care?
Ledisi: Yes, I cared. I know one thing, I'm singing my face off. I gave my heart and soul. I work with the best, I studied, I looked at everybody else and what made them great and studied what they did. See, that's the thing - we don't study enough now. We just throw things out there. That's what, to me, is what's wrong with the industry now. We're just throwing stuff out there and not looking at what made things great.
And studying, really take our time with the music, and we don't have enough of that going on. I studied, and it's for young, it's for old, it's for hip-hop, jazz, R&B, soul, rock. I have so many different versions of soul music, I can't deny all those people and just focus on a smooth jazz version of me. There's too much great music out there for me. It doesn't mean I'll do this all the time, but I had to make my mark right now.
Tavis: Well, it worked. It works. I'm going to turn you lose now.
Ledisi: All right. (Laughter)
Tavis: So you can go back to being your nerdy, shy self, and let your hair down in the room by yourself. (Laughter) Ledisi's new project is called, appropriately, "Turn Me Loose." It's a great project; I highly recommend adding it to your collection. Love you, glad to have you on the program.
Ledisi: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Back to September 2, 2009