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Back in September, Shawn Mendes teased something big. A few weeks later, the singer followed-up with a couple of exciting announcements. Not only was Mendes ushering in a new era of music, but he had also been working with Netflix on a documentary. Mendes’ In Wonder documentary trailer was released Tuesday and it offers a glimpse of the singer speaking to his career and inspirations.

Mendes’ In Wonder documentary followed his extensive 2019 tour which boasted over 100 different shows. Throughout the preview, Mendes speaks to his struggles as a touring musician, as well as offers insight into his headspace on stage:

“You first get on the stage and ego comes rushing in. And it goes, ‘Don’t mess up.’ And then about 30 seconds in you go, ‘Oh yeah, I’m just a guy who loves music. Time to surrender.’ […] We’re on an 104-show tour and it’s pretty intense all the time. But this isn’t the story of a famous musician. This is a story about a guy growing up. I used to be like, ‘My idols were born legendary.’ But that’s just not the truth. If I tell the world I’m just a normal human, are they going to stop coming to the shows? Maybe I should pretend that I’m Superman for just a little longer.”

From the looks of it, the documentary will also touch on the budding relationship between Mendes and Camila Cabello. The two first met in 2014 when they were both just starting on their music career, but made things official in 2019 after they collaborated on the hit track “Señorita.”

Watch Mendes’ official In Wonder trailer above.

In Wonder premieres 11/23 on Netflix. Watch it here.

I am, generally speaking, not a fan of celebrities interviewing each other. Zendaya isn’t going to ask Tom Cruise hard-hitting questions about his personal life; they’re going to chat about process, and craft services, and vacationing in Italy, and other famous people stuff. It’s usually boring. I will, however, make an exception for Marilyn Manson interviewing Nicolas Cage. They’re fascinating oddballs who, if given the chance, will discuss talking crows, snakeskin jackets, mummy’s hands, and Werner Herzog.

Do yourself a favor and read Manson’s conversation with Cage in Interview magazine (the headline begins “C*ck!”), if only for the section where the National Treasure star discusses the last time he gambled. “The last time I gambled was about 30 years ago. I was in the Bahamas, and I walked into a casino and felt like I had my mojo with me, like nothing could go wrong,” he said. Cage wasn’t wrong: within 20 minutes of playing roulette, he turned $200 into $20,000, so he “went and found an orphanage in the Bahamas, met all the kids and the headmistress, and said, ‘This is for you.’ I put the 20 grand in her hand, walked away, and never gambled again, because if I did, it would ruin the power of that moment.”

Did this actually happen? Did Nicolas Cage donate $20,000 to an orphanage in the Bahamas, where he would later buy a private island? Put it this way. My man once said, “What is an octopus, $80? You’re not going to go into dire straits buying an octopus. The dinosaur skull was an unfortunate thing, because I did spend $276,000 on that.”

There is no Nic Cage story I won’t believe.

(Via Interview)

Nilüfer Yanya made a splash with her 2019 debut album Miss Universe, and now she’s ready to follow it up. Today, the singer-songwriter announced a new EP, Feeling Lucky?, and shared a video for the first track from it, “Crash.”

The simple clip for the rocking tune has Yanya performing the song as a flight attendant. Yanya said of the song and video:

“The video for ‘Crash’ takes place on a flight. Last year, doing a lot of touring I found myself becoming more and more anxious each time I boarded a plane, something which was new for me as I’ve never had a fear of flying. With each flight we took, it felt like the turbulence was getting worse and I was convinced my luck was due to run out. I didn’t write ‘Crash’ about being on an aeroplane but I really like it visually as an embodiment of the song.”

She also said of the EP as a whole, “One of the songs had the theme of luck in it as a concept, but then I realized they all do. That got me thinking about luck in general; good and bad. Things out of our control and things in control of us, how often we put acts and happenings down to the fortune of good luck or bad luck when things exceed our expectations or don’t go according to plan.”

Watch the “Crash” video above and find the Feeling Lucky? art and tracklist below.

1. “Crash”
2. “Same Damn Luck”
3. “Day 7.5093”

Feeling Lucky? is out 12/11 via ATO. Pre-order it here.

While Among Us was first released back in 2018, it has become quite popular in recent months during the COVID-19 pandemic. The game, a delightful murder mystery saga that takes place in a spaceship with up to 10 players, has given folks who are spending more time than usual at home a chance to enjoy some time with one another virtually.

Part of its recent popularity can be attributed to how streamers have taken to the game, oftentimes hopping onto Twitch with friends and making events out of getting a group of people together, even as they’re all dispersed around the globe. Apparently, this has caught the attention of New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and on Tuesday, she decided she wanted to get in on all the fun.

In the aftermath, a number of individuals — streamers, fellow politicians, retired Major League outfielder Hunter Pence — used social media to make it clear they’d like to get in on a game with the first-term representative from The Bronx.

The outpouring of interest apparently got the job done because Ocasio-Cortez — who was already in the process of making a Twitch account — apparently started making preparations to get in on the Among Us craze.

There’s no word on whether Ocasio-Cortez’s stream will only be used for Among Us, or if we’d get ventures into things like Jackbox or Fortnite. Regardless, we’ll have to wait and see if streaming on Twitch becomes a widespread thing among elected officials, because if it does, it stands to reason that particularly contentious games of 2K between members of the Senate will inevitably get brought up during debates on the floor of the Capitol.

Matthew McConaughey’s endless summer of the aughts was the stuff of legends. In between shirtless runs on the beach, he squeezed in a perpetual stream of romcoms, or perhaps it was the other way around. Even though he’s been crushing it as a dramatic actor for several years (Including Dallas Buyers Club, True Detective, and so on), his romcoms will never fade away, even if they faded into each other. In his new memoir, Greenlights, McConaughey details why he did so many fluff movies, and why he had to quit them.

It all started so innocently. McConaughey wrote (via Us Weekly) that these films were his “only consistent box-office hits,” which is why he kept finding them tossed his way. How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, Failure To Launch, Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past, Fool’s Gold — the box-office hits kept coming, and as McConaughey explained things, he was happy with obliging for awhile.

“The romantic comedies remained my only consistent box office hits, which made them my only consistent incoming offers,” the Wolf of Wall Street actor wrote. “For me personally, I enjoyed being able to give people a nitty-minute breezy romantic getaway from the stress of their lives where they didn’t have to think about anything, just watch the boy chase the girl, fall down, then get up and finally get her. I had taken the baton from Hugh Grant, and I ran with it.”

There’s nothing wrong with some frivolity, but eventually, things grew monotonous, even though, as McConaughey continued, “I enjoyed making romantic comedies, and their paychecks rented the houses on the beach I ran shirtless on.” So, he eventually had to shut down the fun, and after a $14.5 million offer arrived in 2010, McConaughey realized that he’d gone too far. “If I couldn’t do what I wanted,” he concluded. “I wasn’t going to do what I didn’t, no matter the price.” And as the rest of the story goes, McConaughey’s been alright, alright, alright ever since.

(Via Us Weekly)

Shortly after Tom Petty’s death in 2017, the beloved musician’s estate organized the Tom Petty Birthday Bash festival in his hometown of Gainesville, FL. The event was so successful that Petty’s estate decided to make the festival an annual occurrence. This year, due to the impossibility of live music events, Tom Petty’s 70th Birthday Bash will go virtual and invite popular artists like Post Malone and Stevie Nicks to offer tribute performances to the singer.

Along with Malone and Nicks, other big-name artists slated to perform on October 23 include Brandi Carlile, The Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, Gary Clark Jr., Margo Price, Spoon, Lenny Kravitz, Eddie Vedder, Rick Ruben, and many more. Taking place over the span of five hours, the Birthday Bash will also feature heartfelt testimonials from some of Petty’s musician friends and fans.

On top of paying tribute to the iconic singer, the Birthday Bash festival will raise awareness for the National Independent Venue Associations’ Save Our Stages bill, which would secure relief funding for venues across the country. The event will similarly focus on the organizations Arts In Medicine, which benefits the Gainesville community and beyond, Digitunity, an initiative working to ensure everyone has the technology they need, and MusiCares, the Recording Academy’s charitable fund that offers donations to struggling musicians.

The virtual festival kicks of 10/23 at 7 p.m. ET. Tune in here and check out the full lineup above.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Tom DeLonge is the musician most associated with curiosity about UFOs and extraterrestrial life, but he’s not the only one. In a recent interview, Miley Cyrus claims that she and a friend saw a UFO and an unidentified being operating it.

Speaking with fashion designer Rick Owens for Interview, Cyrus told the story:

“I had an experience, actually. I was driving through San Bernardino with my friend, and I got chased down by some sort of UFO. I’m pretty sure about what I saw, but I’d also bought weed wax from a guy in a van in front of a taco shop, so it could have been the weed wax. But the best way to describe it is a flying snowplow. It had this big plow in the front of it and was glowing yellow. I did see it flying, and my friend saw it, too. There were a couple of other cars on the road and they also stopped to look, so I think what I saw was real. […] I was shaken for, like, five days. It f*cked me up. […] I couldn’t really look at the sky the same. I thought they might come back.”

Owens than asked if she felt threatened by the situation, and she responded, “I didn’t feel threatened at all, actually, but I did see a being sitting in the front of the flying object. It looked at me and we made eye contact, and I think that’s what really shook me, looking into the eyes of something that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. But you’re so right to say that it’s a form of narcissism to think that we’re the only things that could be in this vast universe.”

During the same interview, Cyrus revealed that she is working on a Metallica covers album.

Find the full conversation here.

As far as the internet concerned (and with all due respect to Messina), Hollywood is dominated by the Chrises: Pine, Evans, Hemsworth, and Pratt. Why that order? Because that’s how I would personally rank them, and while everyone is entitled to their hunky opinion, it appears that the consensus “worst Chris” is Pratt. On Saturday, filmmaker Amy Berg tweeted, “One has to go,” along with photos of the four Chrises. “Respondents overwhelmingly voted out Parks and Recreation actor Pratt, citing him reportedly being a President Trump supporter and — in a claim that Pratt, 41, has denied — last year supporting a church that maintains anti-LGBTQ beliefs,” according to the New York Post. Berg did the same tweet structure later that day, except this time, she replaced Pratt with O’Dowd, adding, “I feel like this is harder.” Ouch. Poor Andy.

Pratt’s wife, author Katherine Schwarzenegger, has come to his defense on Instagram after E! News posted about the debate (beats talking about the other debate). “Is this really what we need? There’s so much going on in the world and people are struggling in so many ways. Being mean is so yesterday,” she wrote. “There’s enough room to love all these guys. Love is what we all need not meanness and bullying. Let’s try that.”

For what it’s worth, it’s unclear if Pratt is a Trump supporter, but we know for sure that Schwarzenegger (and the Jurassic World star’s terminator-in-law) isn’t. She urged her social media followers to vote for Joe Biden. “If that tweet itself is not enough to get you fired up to want to elect Biden and get rid of Trump as president of our country, then I don’t know what is. That’s the sickest tweet I’ve ever seen. Please vote,” she wrote.

“Please vote” is something we can all agree on. That, and the Chris club should have five members: Pine, Evans, Hemsworth, Pratt, and Kattan.

(Via Yahoo! Entertainment)

I remember first discovering Trey Songz. A young R&B singer with cornrows to the back, concealed by a navy blue skully, singing about making it out of the hood with his girl on a song titled “Gotta Make It.” The music video played incessantly on BET’s now-defunct R&B segment Midnight Love and it was Trey’s obvious attractiveness and ability to hold a note that captured my heart; along with millions of other young girls who were just discovering a then 20-year-old Tremaine Aldon Neverson and would continue to follow his career for the next 15 years.

My mother must have taken notice because for some reason, and on a rare occasion, she surprised me with a physical copy of his debut album, I Gotta Make It. Though I didn’t immediately pop the album into my portable CD player on bus rides to school, at some point I did and suddenly I Gotta Make It was all I listened to. I simply couldn’t get enough and was telling everyone I knew about Trey Songz. From “Cheat On You” to “Kinda Lovin” to “In The Middle” to my absolute favorite, “All The Ifs,” I Gotta Make It was an exceptional debut from an up-and-coming singer that stood out during a time when R&B was thriving more than it is today.

15 years later, Back Home candidly brings back those same pleasant emotions and feelings that I experienced as a young high school girl overflowing with raging hormones, hearing I Gotta Make It for the first time. It flawlessly encapsulates the best of his musical journey over the years. If there was any doubt in Trigga’s ability to keep up with his legacy, Back Home is a reassuring collection of love songs that display his growth as an artist and as a man.

“A lot of people are saying it feels like the old me, and no disrespect to that because I did want you to have that feeling, but old me couldn’t sing the way I can sing now,” Trey told Uproxx. “I feel like this is my best vocal project, I feel like it’s the most cohesive project and I feel like it’s the project where I probably didn’t think about the expectations as much as in the other projects.”

While recording Back Home, the Grammy-nominated artist spent a copious amount of time surrounded by family, friends, and protesting for social justice, in his hometown of Petersburg, Virginia — right where his humble beginnings as an aspiring singer began. He also recently became a father.

During our conversation, Trey Songz opened up about going back to Virginia to record Back Home, his 15-year long career, his special relationship with the late Aretha Franklin, and his balancing act to bring love back to R&B.

Are you still in Virginia right now?

No, actually, I couldn’t go to Virginia because I wanted to make sure I was all the way good before I went back home to my family.

How has dealing with coronavirus been for you? Are you almost through it, or what?

I’m actually at the non-contagious stage right now, I’m on my twelfth day of quarantine. They say on the tenth day, you’re not contagious. After 14 days, you’re supposed to go back and get retested, but it’s possible you could still get a positive sign because it sometimes lives within people for a while. You could be positive without being contagious. But I feel all the way better. I feel 100%. My symptoms weren’t too crazy. It did flare up for a few days and couldn’t smell, couldn’t taste, chills, fever-type stuff. I’m blessed to be feeling how I feel right now.

Good, I’m happy to hear that you’re feeling better! Congratulations on Back Home, being out. How are you feeling?

I feel good. When you’re working on something for as long as I’ve been working on that you finally release it to the world and it’s been received well, it’s always a great feeling.

What was life like for you just going through the day pre-COVID?

Man. This year has been a different year for my daily routine. My daily routine is highly impacted. Before COVID, I’m in the gym everyday, I like to bowl, I like to get out and be active. I’m a foodie so I like to go out and eat at different restaurants. That was diminished. I love to play basketball. I’m pretty simple. The thing about it is, if I wasn’t working, I’d be in the house. One of my friends made the joke, he said “You been in quarantine for about three, four years now.” If I don’t have to leave my house, I generally don’t.

No, I feel that. I’m a homebody, too. I don’t like to leave the house, so I was excited when it opened up a bit, not that I was excited but…

You was, but everybody going to be mad if you say you was excited.

They are, people get so mad.

Just say, you was excited.

Okay, I was! Let’s talk about a quarantine favorite right now: Lovecraft Country; because I’m not into that show but I saw you tweet “If you’re not into Lovecraft Country, there’s something wrong with you” or something like that. You didn’t say that, but it was something like that. Why should I watch Lovecraft Country? What makes it so good?

I think I said it’s the best show on TV, don’t at me. I said it’s too good. It’s very introspective. If Jordan Peele is involved, it’s going to have an angle of introspect on Black people and what we go through. It’s everything. It’s raw emotion, it’s great acting, it’s science fiction, it’s Black history, it’s outlandish. It’s like every episode is a movie. Every episode is like an hour film. It might be hard for you to get into, because it does take a few wild turns, but I want you to watch it.

I’m going to check it out. It’s just too gory for me.

Yeah, it’s a lot of that, but it definitely takes a few different turns. Just turn your head on the gory parts.

You’ve been in the game for about 15 years. I want to revisit I Gotta Make It and talk about that journey to Back Home, because I feel like one of the unique things about your career is you’ve been here through physical CD’s, DatPiff, MySpace, UStream to Instagram Lives and instant access to music with Apple Music. When you go back and look at the album cover for I Gotta Make It and you listen to the music on there, what type of feelings and emotions do you get?

It’s almost as if I go back to that very specific moment. I can see everything, because you can only do that thing for the first time, one time. When I go back and I listen to that music, I remember the studio session, I remember the excitement, I remember how passionate I was about it. I remember just how special it was. You kind of get used to doing things. You get used to putting an album out, you get used to the recording process, you get used to the magazine covers. I went back and I looked at all those things — the covers, the newspaper clippings — and it kind of just brought me to a place of “wow” again. When you’ve been doing it a while and you go through these cycles, you just get used to it like anything else. Taking that journey and really going back to those moments for me was kind of like reliving them.

Being that you’ve put out so many projects, including mixtapes, how do you feel about your own legacy as an R&B artist of right now?

I’m proud. I would be proud of myself if I never put out nothing but my first album. To be who I am and to mean what I mean to R&B music and to have people who sing like me, to have a voice of my own. I get demos with people singing with that growl in their voice. I’ve never wanted to be anything but myself. But then again, in the music industry, a lot of times people will push you this way or that way to compete with this person or make a sound like this person; because once something comes successful, everybody does it.

Right, we hear about those stories that all the time.

I remember when the four count was very successful and everybody was using it. I remember when auto-tune first came on, everybody was using it. I remember, even now, the melodies that everybody uses, you can swap out the artist and keep the same song. It makes me very proud 15 years later to have an album that is relevant and culture-shifting.

With I Gotta Make It, you worked with Troy Taylor and you guys reconnected on this one. What was that like for you?

There’s not been an album that Troy has not been a part of.

But he’s been with you from the beginning to now, so what was that like for you guys to come together for this particular project?

On this project, even though we weren’t in the same room in the making of a lot of these songs, we just connected differently. Troy, knowing me since I was 14 years old, has watched me become a man. At this point, he’s like the ying to my yang, basically. We worked very much hand-in-hand on everything, from song selections to sequencing. We would write songs and produce songs together on FaceTime. We would take songs off of the album, put it back on the album. It was less stress involved. Throughout my career, he and I have worked very closely, but as you excel into the game and you try to make a name for yourself, you often have to make sacrifices musically and artistically because you got a label involved. As I mentioned earlier, they like, “You in competition with this guy. They’ve done this. We want to see you do the same. Let’s use this writer because he’s successful right now.”

But, when you’ve been able to accomplish what we’ve been able to accomplish with this amount of time in the game, there’s more trust involved. There’s no A&R, it’s just him and I making music. When we turn a project in, that’s what the project is. That was a big difference in this album from the other ones.

For the projects in between, do you feel like the label was trying to pressure you in a different direction?

I would say that’s just what a label does. A label sees chart success and sees a formula they think can work. They will implement that wherever possible. That is business, so that’s understood. With that being said, I’ve never been cool with that. That’s why I put out projects like Anticipation and Anticipation 2. They weren’t considered albums because that’s what I wanted my music to be. Whereas when you’re working with a record label, you’ve got to have a single and you’ve got to have a record that can be positioned.

Even with those mixtapes, Anticipation and Anticipation 2, a lot of people feel like those are classics from you. Then you also had#LemmeHolDatBeat, with you rapping and singing, which I was a really big fan of. I want to talk to you about that because there are a lot of singers that rap and rappers that sing nowadays.

Everybody do both now, it’s crazy.

I’ve just rebranded every artist that low key sings and is a “rapper,” as just melodic rap. That’s going to be a new category. I don’t know.

Yeah, rap didn’t used to have many melodies. Used to be about your bars. Right now, as respectfully as I can say this, because I love a lot of the new music that’s coming out and I love that if they want to sing. But I do feel as though hip-hop is one sound, if that makes any sense. You get you a trap beat, a catchy melody and you might have you a hit record if you’ve got the right branding and money behind you. I do feel like some people are more talented at it than others, but auto-tune and a good melody helps a lot. In R&B, it’s still a challenge. You’ve still got to sing. You’ve still got to be able to sing to make real R&B music. I think that’s the difference in what I do and what a lot of other people do.

A lot of things have changed for you as well. You’re a dad now. Congrats.

Thank you.

How old is Noah?

A year and a half.

You seem to be enjoying fatherhood. What is your favorite thing about being a dad?

I could go on and on and on, but just watching my boy just grow and become his own person. Of course he has traits of his mother and I within him, but seeing him develop his own personality, watching him learn, seeing what he likes, seeing how sweet and innocent and` pure he is. It’s just amazing, day to day to watch a life mold. Knowing that I’m responsible for him and the kind of person he’ll be makes me want to be the best version of myself that I can be. Not just as Trey Songz the entertainer. More so, me the man. The person I am is far more important than the artist I am.

Also, the social justice stuff that you’ve been doing and how you’ve been using your Instagram as a platform to amplify voices has been so incredible. What made you decide, “I’m going to use my Instagram to call out racists” and get involved that way?

It wasn’t like this thing that I was like, “Oh, I’m going to do this.” The crazy thing about it, calling out the racism, was kind of just me getting sick of people finding a reason for any injustice. You post something with someone who is treated inhumane, and then you see people comment “Well, we didn’t see what happened before this” or “We don’t know the full story.” That’s inhumane, and if you finding excuses for people to be murdered then you probably racist. So for me having the platform I have, when I was blatantly pointing out racists, it was to show people “Look, this really exists out here. Y’all making excuses for something that’s real.”

Mike Pence said during the debate that he don’t know if it’s true, that the police system is corrupt in any way, shape, or form. You have corruption in all jobs. You have people that abuse power in every walk of life. So, when you have something like the police, who have the most power to be abused, [and] you can’t even say that you see power of abuse? You racist. For me, it was more so bringing attention to people and in a time where, especially now, in 2020, even if you not really riding for this or if you’re saying Black Lives Matter as a company and you don’t even really believe it, you’ve got to say it, because otherwise you’re going to be looked at crazy. In a time where white people will lose their job for being racist, in a time where you will be made an example of for the same thing. I’m going to use my platform to point that out.

Davido is on your album and I appreciate what he’s doing right now with what’s going on in Nigeria and using his platform similarly to how you’ve been doing here in America. Have you two connected on that at all?

I’ve actually reached out to him and every day it’s feet on the ground. I had no idea about SARS before the album came out. I’ve been to Nigeria. I made songs with WizKid, I’ve made songs with Davido. I’ve actually spent time in Lagos and I have many fans there. Me being active here in America allows me the insight and I got to speak out on these too. It’s actually worse over there because people that look just like you committing crimes against you. Here, it is often police brutality and abuse of power driven by race and a feeling of superiority.

In Nigeria, they dealing with that with people who supposed to protect them. They supposed to be a special anti-robbery unit and they more scared of the police than people robbing you. It’s happening to young people that want to dress a certain way, that have iPhones and are influenced by American culture. They’re being murdered, they’re being extorted, they’re having money taken from them, and people are just turning a blind eye. When you know better, you do better and my thing is, I’ve made a career and I’ve made a living for myself and a better life for my family because of the people who enjoy my music. Not to take anything away from my fans that are not Black, but I know that I’m in the position that I am because of Black people. When I see injustice and I can bring attention to it and at the very least inform people. That’s my duty as a man right now. I can’t look at myself the same if I don’t.

I know you were in Virginia as things in America as racial tensions intensified. What was that like for you, being home and doing the work there?

Virginia is known as the place where slaves were first sold and where the slave trade was the strongest. The city I’m from, Petersburg, is actually the Blackest city in Virginia. Having seen systemic oppression, having seen police brutality first-hand and second-hand, for me, that was one of my greatest achievements just to be able to bring so many people together for the same cause. Seeing the pride in my grandmothers’ face and my fans that’s been following me forever, it was a special thing. I was out there protesting, we did a food drive out there. We was able to feed 3,000 families. It was just a blessing and really surreal. You start out doing one thing, singing “Panty Dropper” and “Neighbors Know My Name” on stage and then you out there with those same people who supported you and you put your fist up and say Black Lives Matter. We matter. You matter. It’s really humbling.

You were making the album during this time too, and you made “2020 Riots,” as well. You became a father. I know you also lost your grandfather. How did all of those elements shape Back Home?

Everything that has happened in my life has been a part of the process of making music and a part of the process that this album sounding the way it sounds and becoming what it is, now. I felt most in making this album that we as a people, we as a culture, need love back in the music. Not to say that there’s not people making music with love in it, but it’s not the focus. There was a time where R&B and hip-hop were parallel and they existed in the same world. It was okay for LL Cool J to say he need love and for Naughty By Nature to say what they said. There was a place in superstardom for every avenue of the genre, and I feel like the toxicity and the don’t give a fuck-ness is really dominating music right now.

For sure.

The love and the soul that used to balance is out is not really there, and when it is there it’s not getting the light and attention that it deserves. With this album, because you know I have always had one foot in, one foot out throughout my whole career with, like you said, #LemmeHolDatBeat. If you think about it, “Bottoms Up” was on the same album as “Can’t Be Friends” and “Say Aah” was on the same album “One Love.” There was always a balance. With this album I wanted to lay down even more heavy the R&B presence of love.

Which song means the most you and how do you feel about the way the project came out?

The song that means the most to me without question is “I Know A Love.” I feel this is my best project to date. A lot of people are saying it feels like the old me, and no disrespect to that because I did want you to have that feeling, but old me couldn’t sing the way I can sing now. I feel like this is my best vocal project, I feel like it’s the most cohesive project and I feel like it’s the project where I probably didn’t think about the expectations as much as in the other projects. I don’t know why, because this is probably the project where the expectations were probably where they meant the most, being that I hadn’t put an album out in so long. This is the one where I felt the least pressure, although, I probably was the most nervous before it came out.

Oh really?

I’m always nervous before an album comes out, there’s no way around that.

What were you scared of?

Not even scared, just nerves. It’s like as if you wrote some of your most intimate feelings in a journal about someone and then you had to give it to them. You would definitely be a little bit nervous. The times where I haven’t been that nervous is the times where I need that feeling, because that feeling of discomfort is what makes it all worth it.

Do you feel like maybe you being back home in Virginia had something to do with you being a little bit more relaxed with the process?

Oh, yeah. Just being around so much real, genuine love. As an artist, when you’re moving city-to-city, state-to-state, you’re often around what can be described as fake love. Even if it is genuine, it’s not the people that know you. Fans love me to death, but they love the perception of me unless you really dove into who I am. No matter how comfortable you are as a celebrity, you’re always on guard. I was at home for almost three months straight. I probably don’t spend that much time at home within a year, accumulated. That continuous time to just be Trey from The Heights, Trey from Petersburg and be perceived that way every day and get so comfortable. When I was making my first album, that was who I was. I wasn’t Trey Songz yet. I was trying to be Trey Songz.

You going back home and getting those old feelings back, and you being able to relax and put out what you feel like is some of your best work is dope. With that being said, do you feel like you have a classic project?

Anticipation 2. It is one of my truest bodies of work because it was what I wanted to do. In every album, at the end, it was a process where we met with the label, and I would say it was a joint decision that these are the best songs, but those albums wouldn’t be those albums had it been up to me. They would have been different. I feel like the truest albums you’ve gotten from me are albums where there wasn’t any input from anybody else but me and Troy. That’s what happened with this album.

I also want to talk about Aretha Franklin because I know she was on the intro to I Gotta Make It and she has passed away since. What is something that you will always remember about your relationship with her?

It’s actually amazing. The relationship I had with her is through Troy. Before I got my record deal, I would go everywhere with Troy and he was a vocal producer. He was a producer of course but he was a specialist in vocally producing. I would go with him and I would sit in the back and I would be his vocal production assistant. When he got gigs or opportunities, he would tell me that they were coming and I would write songs. I wrote a song and Patti LaBelle actually ended up cutting the song. I don’t think it made the album. That’s crazy, like 18 years ago.

It was also written for Aretha, and Aretha had heard the song. She loved the song and one of the things I remember — and this isn’t even a thing anymore — she was like, “Honey, I loved the song but I can’t cut it because it’ll be over my cap.” What that means is if you have a cap of 12 songs, then any songs you put over that will diminish your mechanical rate — your funds. The money you get per song is less. I knew nothing about that until she told me.

Troy went out to her in Detroit but I didn’t go on this trip with him. He recorded it with her and he played her my new album. She talked on the phone with me and everything she said on the intro, she said that and more. She was impressed because although my album came out when I was 20, the majority of those songs I wrote and sang was from when I was 17 and 18. If you listen to I Gotta Make It, you’re listening to 17, 18, and 19-year-old Trey Songz. Troy asked her to do something for the album and what she did was speak to me after knowing the title of my album was I Gotta Make It. Right now, to this day, if I’m having a bad day I can listen to the intro. I got it acapella on my phone, too. I can just listen to Aretha Franklin telling me, “Don’t worry what nobody else got to say. Believe in your dreams.” That’s the most special thing ever.

The last time I saw her, I performed at Essence the day before her and I got to watch her set. The next day me and my mom we went back and we got to kick it with Aretha and her family. We was in there joking and chopping it up. It was one of the most beautiful moments. The crazy thing is it’s before Instagram and all that so I don’t even believe I have no real footage of it but it’s a memory etched in my brain. Shout out to Aretha for what she means to music and what she means to me. Her telling me I can do this was very much a battery in my back, you better believe.

How often do you find yourself going back and listening to it?

I haven’t listened to it in a while, but I used to listen to it all the time. When she passed, it was heavy on my mind. In the beginning of my career when everything is new, you’re learning how to deal with the pressures, the scrutiny, the criticism, the anxiety, everything that comes with becoming a star. Once you commit yourself to this, a portion of you belongs to the world. What artists like her, and her in particular, had to deal with to become who they were, they were laying the groundwork down for artists like us to be able to perform freely. To be able to perform everywhere and to be able to sleep in the same hotel as white people. There was a time when if you were an artist, you could not, not be conscious. You had to make these songs because it was so much of your existence.

You think about James Brown, you think about Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass, Aretha Franklin, and Chaka Khan. All these people, they had to make these songs because it was their livelihood. Aretha and any artist that came before me had to deal with these social injustices on a whole other level than we do.

Back Home is out now via Atlantic Records. Get it here.

Trey Songz is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In an effort to help the Texas Democratic Party flip the state in the upcoming election, Seinfeld alums Julia Louis-Drefyus, Jason Alexander, and Larry David are reuniting for a “Fundraiser About Something.” To add even more star power to the event, Late Night host Seth Meyers will be moderating the livestream, which “promises special guests and surprises.” Via The Hollywood Reporter:

“Texas is a battleground state, period. We knew that we had to reunite for something special and the movement on the ground for Texas Democrats up and down the ballot is the perfect opportunity to do just that,” say Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander and David in a joint statement about the Seinfeld reunion. “Texans are getting out to vote in droves and showing the world that Texas has never been a red state, it’s been a non-voting state. We couldn’t be more thrilled to host a ‘fundraiser about something’ for a terrific organization like the Texas Democratic Party, who are building the movement necessary to turn Texas blue in 14 days.”

The livestreaming event is being organized by Veep showrunner David Mandel, who’s been very active this election season. He recently produced an anti-Trump ad featuring Wayne Knight’s classic Seinfeld character Newman, and he arranged a Veep reunion with Louis-Dreyfus to benefit Wisconsin Democrats in late September. Meanwhile, Jason Alexander has been taking some clever shots at the top of the Republican ticket by noticing that Trump’s dancing looks very familiar.

A “Fundraiser About Something” will stream Friday October 23 at 6 PM ET, and small donations can be made at txdem.co/Something.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)