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November 19, 2025 34 mins

R&B Star Kehlani stopped by the Cruz Show to talk about her new songs "out the window" & folded + she gave us details on her new album + talked about being a Mom, switching up albums, needing vocal chord surgery  & more. She also went off on AI artists in the music business. 

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh my god, is that Nico Blitz hood?

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Do you see him?

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Know what sew me? Do you see him?

Speaker 3 (00:06):
Know what saw me?

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Do you see him know what that saw me? How
can you told Sanaa he gonna.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Get ye.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
From the bed to the which I will get depended.
Should never took ambition and get into.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
You shot me?

Speaker 5 (00:43):
Oh my shot?

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Heyday?

Speaker 6 (00:47):
You should be here right o, baby? You don't should
be here rying.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Cray.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
I just got hustling. Tell me, accuse me? Hear a
song when you look at me as I go that wrong?

Speaker 6 (01:14):
Maybe I'm powerful fantasy you were your almost I won't I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
So don't move it up?

Speaker 4 (01:35):
Yo, is a crucio.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Un real ninety two three?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Here?

Speaker 4 (01:45):
That was crazy crazy right?

Speaker 6 (01:46):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (01:47):
He just took me off control.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
Nico Blitz right there?

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, where to y'all? Y'all made that. I was a
little scared of some of that, but okay, here we are.
We made it to great.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
To listen back to the catalog like that.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
It is, I'd be forgetting how much music I have.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
It's a lot of music. It's a lot of just
twenty fourteen.

Speaker 5 (02:03):
We've been dropping crazy Cloud nineteen Cloud nineteen it was crazy.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Lord, it's been a decade. Guys.

Speaker 5 (02:09):
Congratulations, thank you huge man twenty twenty four. You gave
us two of them, right, you gave us crash while
we wait too.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, I said I wasn't done, y'all.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I thought y'all had me in the first, and.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
Then we got a new album on the way.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Sure do Yeah? Sure?

Speaker 4 (02:25):
What can we say?

Speaker 2 (02:26):
I can say that it is a very confident body
of work.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
It is a very usual, actualized body of work.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
I think I really I wanted to prove to myself
that I can make what I love the most, that
I could really tap into all the things that made
me me and kind of get back into my student bag.
I think it's a very studious that the outfit today, Yeah,
you know, very very studious and magical and a Hogwarts

(02:57):
kind of.

Speaker 5 (02:59):
I was gonna say I didn't want to.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Harry Potter.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
I love the Harry Potter moment.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah you know, right, yeah, petroleum jelly everything.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Right now.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
You want to get back to that though, Well.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, I really wanted to just make I wanted to
make a great R and B album, and I am
working on making a great R and B album with
some of my favorite people. Of all time, who I've
always loved who Like in other eras of my life,
the time hadn't worked out for us to work together,
and for some reason, everything is just falling perfectly into place.
I'm not even having to do nothing, and it's just like, Oh,

(03:36):
this person called wants to.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Do a session today.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
This person wants to get in, this person wants to
hop on this, this person wants to know if you
have a song. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
And it's just happening, and I'm just letting it all
just unfold.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
Let it happen. It's happening, right, It's all happening for you.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah for sure.

Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yeah sure, it's no longer happening to you. Yeah, for you.
The universe is answered back absolutely.

Speaker 7 (04:00):
What were some of the things you would say that
you had to tap in, because you know, you said
I had to tap into things about myself to.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah this, I think I really had to get the
making music for any other reason than loving the craft.
I'm not saying that I ever had that as a
major motive, but there was times when it came from
angles like I have to prove myself right now, or
I need to exit this conversation and maybe enter this
conversation or this was so that I could make something

(04:26):
so people could, you know, go to the club or
any just any other reason than just like I love music.
I want to make the best music I can make,
and I want to be in love with it to
where when it comes on in a situation like that,
I don't go like this to any of the songs,
I just love it forever. I want to love this
album for the rest of my life. So I think
I'm accomplishing now.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Bit this morning you made me cringe a little bit.
But also, my voice has changed so much.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
I used to be a really heavy smoker, and I
used to kind of just not really take care of
myself in that way. And I'm really healthy. My voice
is really healthy. I sound really mature. I put a
lot of the work in to like get my voice
to a really healthy, mature place, and you can just
hear it differently now. I feel like then some of
the songs, But again, I was nineteen or twenty and
I'm thirty now.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
I would hope my voice has been chucked.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
Oh of course, yeah yeah.

Speaker 5 (05:14):
Now singers like you write your voice is your tool. Yeah,
and you sing so much that you almost at the
end of the day could sound like a smoker, because, oh,
for sure, you constantly use your voice.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, and I have voice us right right, and I
have not those on my vocal chords, like I'm overdue
for a vocal cord surgery. Yeah no, like oh no,
feeling bad, Like it just is what it is. It's
always been like that. It's It's given me a really
cool texture to my voice. I just don't have the downtime.
If I'm not on tour, I'm making an album. If
I'm not making the album, I'm then touring the album

(05:44):
like I'm never really in an off season musically, gotta
make time. I'm gonna make time at some point. But
it just means I lose my voice quicker than like
most people. And like I'm telling I'm constantly calling the
emergency like voice doctor to come save me and help
me get me through things to be able to do
pull up and do a performance. I feel like people
hear me more than any other artists get on stage

(06:05):
and go, I'm sorry, y'all, y'all gonna have to help
me sing it today because my voice is hoarse.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
But you know, one day, one day, all the time.

Speaker 5 (06:12):
One day, one day, is there vocal resto? Do you
not talk for a few days?

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Talk you drink all type of nasty stuff and eat
nasty stuff and go on a non aestic diet and
do all these Like will the surgery change my voice?
The surgery will definitely change my voice. Hopefully it doesn't
get any higher. Hopefully it's just more clear and more strong,
and my ability to keep my voice for you know,

(06:36):
longevity purposes.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
I think that's that's really the goal.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
I want to be able to like not have the
third show on tour be any shakier than the first show.
And I always end up pushing through. It's been very
rare that I've had to cancel something more more so
often because I'm sick than my voice is gone. But
I really just want to I want to be like
an athlete, you know, and I kind of I kind
of operate in that way, but I need my voice
to keep up with my Like Adrendaine really.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Thought of that because like, as a DJ, like one
of my biggest fears is like actually losing.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
My you're hearing yeah you got headphones?

Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah, right, So then as a vocalist, You're just like, man,
I'm really not trying to lose my voice. Later down
the line, I.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Think about how often you go out at night and
you're like yelling over music because you're talking and you're
talking on you're getting these exciting conversations at.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
The club and you get music.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Let's get it right.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
And then the next morning you're like, yeah, now you're
on a tour. You're the singer. You have to host
the after party, drink some alcohol. You're yelling at you,
you're talking to people, you're talking in the meet and greets.
You get to the show, you're like, I'm cooked. Do
you have three shows in a row?

Speaker 4 (07:37):
You're traveling, even the conversation.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
The ac on the bus, drying you out, the smoke
in the club, Like, there's just all these factors Ryan,
all that good stuff, Yeah, that you you just have
to consider. And it's like an athlete can get injured,
you know, playing at the park and then they're a
professional based basketball player and they get to the and

(08:00):
it's just fall. It's so crazy to me because I
feel like basketball injuries be over the dumbest stuff I've
said this, So it's like never when they're doing something serious.
It's like they step back and bam, angle broke ac tour.

Speaker 7 (08:12):
Like there was last year in our fantasy basketball league.
Somebody was out because they got us. No, they got
a splendor putting together a dresser.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
They will be they'll be playing so hard. They just
take one step and they twist something. I'm like wow.
So it's it's like it's like that for us too.
We could just talk like I was talking. I was
talking wrong. There's a such thing as talking wrong, where
like you're talking out of the wrong register of your
voice or using the wind wrong, and it's making your
chords scrape each other rather than like close, they need

(08:43):
to close.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
They can't like do this, you know.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
So, so when.

Speaker 5 (08:46):
You're on a roller coaster, you just gotta feel it.

Speaker 4 (08:48):
You can't express it.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Oh my god, if I have shows coming up, like
if I go to a roller coaster on an off day, I.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Have too shit.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
Yeah, you just have to feel it and not express it.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Right, I have to be quiet. I'm on there, like
in a way, it helps you be president to be
hyper aware.

Speaker 5 (09:04):
Also as a parent, I'm a parent, right, you can't
yell at your kids.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
I don't yell at my kid, all right, at all. No,
I'm never yelled her, but that's just been I'm not
here to shame any parent for sometimes. The only time
I've yelled her is when she was she picked up
an incense when I wasn't looking and dipped it into
the candle and the it's already burned halfway by the
time she goes, mom, oh my god, it's hot, And

(09:27):
I said, no, what I said, put it down.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
I freaked out.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
But then she's never experienced me yell at her, so
she melted down. I melted down. I'm really like a
talk like talk to her about everything. Yes, And that
was like a real choice. You know, we all grow
up differently and want to experience, you know, parent differently.
I'm not here to shame any parent for having to
raise their voice, especially in the situations there's people with parents.

Speaker 5 (09:50):
You got boys, you gotta raise your I have a.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Soft little girl.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
I have a little soft girl, like where the second
you're she always says like, oh, you're using your serious tone,
because I'd let her know I'm talking in my serious
tone now, which means when I'm saying something worth paying
attention to, maybe a little differently than what I was
saying before, and I changed my tone and maybe my
cadence of like I really mean this, And I explained
to her, like I really really mean this a little

(10:13):
differently than what I was just saying before.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
And that's how we kind of get through the moments
where I want to but also.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Feelings what if I gotta yell when I'm when she's ten,
you know, I don't want to stop myself from like
I might have to at some point be like girl,
but it's still in a gentle way.

Speaker 4 (10:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, I feel like we're going to give a lot
of this back and forth. Yeah she got that already,
y'all she did. Did you have to coach her?

Speaker 2 (10:48):
No, she's just really shy, like she's extreme. She's like
a very like mom, did you put that Sophie that
you took with me? It was not for Instagram? I
told you which one you can put on Instagram? I
told you one is just for my grandpa. I'm like, okay,
now let's go. You know your your boundaries with all
the things. And she actually was super shy in that
interview until she whipped out her little la boo boos,
and she was able to like ask me the questions

(11:10):
through the laboo boos. So now I'm getting interviewed by
the Laboo boo and now her confidence is coming out,
and now she's like, oh, okay, like here's what I
wanted to say.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
And I'm like that's fine, Like whatever mode, what is it?

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Modality? Like whatever tool you needed, ever helps? And it
was just really funny because the second the cameras turned
off and I said it, there she goes jumping and
yelling and being like, Oh, I should have asked you
this and then and then maybe next time I could
ask you this, and then I could wear this outfit.
And I was like yeah. But the second the cameras
came on, she was like, oh, we're all like that,

(11:43):
you cross like a parent. Sorry, guys, I'll loosen up
the motherhood of it all.

Speaker 5 (11:53):
Yeah, no, listen, we're Dad Jeff and I. You know,
they're on their way. They're engaged.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
No kids yet, you know, saying Les wants kids, but
you know there's there's a.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Time, place journey.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, enjoy it right now, girl, go do all the vacations,
leave the country.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
If you feel like it, just hop up and go.

Speaker 5 (12:10):
You can, Yeah, don't work it.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, have fun, disappear.

Speaker 5 (12:13):
We love that Yo out the window. I love out
the window because it's like Yo, there's like don't leave,
don't stay, Like there's not enough songs like that. A
lot of people, a lot of the attitude of the
world is leave. I don't care. There's someone there's someone
you know right behind you.

Speaker 4 (12:28):
That's that's next.

Speaker 5 (12:29):
But you're saying yo, and like folded to like I
folded your clothes, so there's still space for us something.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
I think I really missed a certain energy in R and.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
B that wasn't so jaded.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
And I would never put the blame on a generation
or any I was a part of that, you know
what I mean for a while, I was in the
generation that was like really getting into my like hyper individualistic,
like super healing. I don't need y'all if y'all y'all
got me messed up, Like that's that's how I felt grantsed.
I think that's how a lot of us women were
experiencing love in this generation and in this time. And

(13:10):
you get to a more mature age and you realize
there's a lot more that goes into these dynamics and
relationships like sometimes it just isn't over when you thought
it was. And sometimes it isn't that easy to walk away.
And sometimes you do mess up and you want to
get on your knees and be like please, whatever you do,
like you lose that pride that you kind of have
in your early twenties of like yad and fie anyway.

(13:30):
Is not only that anyways? And I think that that's
where a lot of my perspective and a lot of
the change in my music is coming from.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
Is just I'm an adult.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Now, like a real adult, Like, yeah, I've been coming
in here since I was, you know, nineteen, and I'm
thirty now, and like I just have a lot more
It's a different perspective and different things to say.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
You know.

Speaker 4 (13:50):
The narrative right now is having a boyfriend is embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
I don't even deal with the boyfriend stuff.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
So you guys do straight women, you do what you
want the boyfriend conversation.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Are you know. But I also feel like I'm like,
that's not my ministry.

Speaker 7 (14:10):
No way, where you do you do mention? Like a
lot of women were going through that kind of phase
of like Okay, well I don't need you, and now
we're tapping back into our femininity.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, and I feel like that's what was missing.

Speaker 7 (14:21):
It's just like, Okay, well now I want to express
my femininity to this one person and I want them to.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
I mean, you have to feel safe. Yeah, And I
feel like there is yeah word word to my sense
the I feel like there is a certain level of
grown and sexy that you can only feel when you
feel safe. That can like this is a trifecta. It's
like a domino effect of you know, emotions that you

(14:47):
can experience. If I don't feel safe, I'm going to
be on guard and therefore my perspective is going to
be very guarded if I feel safe. And I will
say a lot of my safety as an adult comes
from my own, like the parameters I've said around myself
and the things that I built around myself and the
healing that I've done myself rather than waiting for someone
to get me into my softcarel my soft girl era
has been introduced because I decided that it was my

(15:08):
time to do so, not because of a relationship. I
spent most of a year single, like I really just
wanted to, like technically a year actually just like being
like I want to set this aside, and I don't
want to like lock in anything.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
I just want to put myself in a position.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Where like I'm waking up every day, I'm going to
the gym, I'm eating healthy, i have my schedule. I'm
not waking up and considering anything else before me except
my child. I'm spending oh the time with my child.
We're doing fun things together. And then by the time
I get in a relationship, that will be secondary in
a good way, in a positive way. And that means
that already said right, and that means that the softness

(15:47):
had to be introduced before, you know, before you do
anything else that's right.

Speaker 5 (15:50):
Like your songs I think are the closest to like
cater to you that we could get right to you.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
And you know what, that's not a bad something.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
A lot of people will say they care you coming
out right now would be embarrassing. I don't know. I'm
a lover girl down and I think when you are
really in love and somebody makes you feel taken care of,
if you want to take care back in the in
the way that exchange makes sense to you.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah, you know, Kelly, there's like a kid or to
you folded mash up. I don't know if you ever
heard that one?

Speaker 1 (16:20):
You know what I really heard.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
I performed the Catered to You after Hours mash up
on tour, so I didn't know if.

Speaker 4 (16:26):
I'm like, I'm.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
Like, oh, okay, yeah, I performed it on tour. I
still perform it sometimes. So that's my jam.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
What do you think about like folded just being that
one song being like mashed up over and over and
over by all the DJs over the past.

Speaker 4 (16:41):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
A couple of months.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
I've been getting told my whole career that I was
one song away. I wouldn't say my whole career because
you know, right for a while now, for the last
like five six years, people were like, man, you you
do the big tours and the album. You're like a
project person, like the the album do well and like yeah,
you're a body work girl, like whatever, and then you

(17:04):
I always get, but you're one song away from this
leap that everybody wants you to make from poking through
this ceiling that we feel like you deserve to poke through.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
You had the artist development you've taken. It's been years.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
I've been doing this since I was you know, thirteen
fourteen and Folded finally breaking that mold. It's been a
really interesting feeling because on one hand, I'm like, wow,
it's been so long. But on the other hand, I'm like,
but if you peep that, I have the you know, foundation,
and I've been lucky to like, if this goes away,
when this, when people move on from Folded, no one

(17:38):
can say I'm just the folded girl, you.

Speaker 4 (17:41):
Know, because yeah, if you look behind, there's so much years.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
And years and years and tours and tours and tours.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
I remember playing venues that were three hundred people and
now I'm playing some arenas in certain places, and like
I built that break by break. It wasn't due to
my one song or my one project, so I'm really
grateful for that.

Speaker 5 (17:56):
You got to think back to songs like eight and
Groove Theory close off.

Speaker 4 (18:00):
You got to think back to.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Songs like that, and that's that's pretty recent.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Still still thinking back to Cloud nineteen, I'm thinking back
to you should be here. I'm thinking back to Sweet
Sexy Savage, Like I'm thinking about just teenage me, so
SoundCloud me even.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
Man, I remember when Cloud because I'm from the bas
so I remember when Cloud nineteen dropped, that shit just
took fire everywhere.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, it was it was. That was a Bay Baby
project for sure.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
That's right. Were you a love letter ghost writer in
high school?

Speaker 1 (18:27):
I've never been a ghost person at all.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
People.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, and I put my name on it. Just foolish.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
I'm just out there, just foolish, just down for Yeah,
I said it, I putting it on my chest. Yeah,
I wrote love letters, I wrote notes. I wrote Yeah.
But we know by then we was having phones and
computers and stuff, so I was only people in my
Space comments, all the leaving in Facebook comments and stuff
like that.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, come on.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
I'm so sorry.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
I got a hell of questions now. So I was
talking to WOP four thousand.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
Can you confirm whether you created his name or not.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
I'm pretty sure I gave him that name.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
I'm pretty sure at the time, I was walking around
just adding things to the end of people names in general.
Like I feel like, I feel like in the Bay
we do that. Like people was calling me Lonnie Bowl.
You were just adding stuff that, right, we do all.
I feel like there's a million of those in the Bay.
And I think at the time, I think I had
just said gwap dat four thousand being funny and he

(19:29):
was like, that's fine, and he kept it and like
I forgot that until I seen his interview and.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
I was like, oh that did happen. Yeah, but I.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Said it so in passing like it wasn't serious. And
the fact that it's lasted this long word.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
To gap.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
That's right word, it's all good.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Do you do I do reiki?

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Like?

Speaker 1 (19:52):
Do I get it done?

Speaker 4 (19:53):
Do you do it?

Speaker 6 (19:54):
No?

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Why am I giving that right now?

Speaker 3 (19:56):
I don't know?

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Is that the Harry Potter of it?

Speaker 4 (19:59):
You'll know what re no good?

Speaker 2 (20:01):
I think like it's it's energy work, like above your
body and your energy feel to be honest, I just
don't have time.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
My mom do reiki, yeah, ma, mama. Love my mom.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
When I retired her, my aunt. When I retired her,
she right, my auntie. If y'all know, my aunt raised
me and for that I will forever take care for So.
I card my mom. And when I retired her, she
went to school. She went to like massage school and
like energy school, and she just be knitting stuff and
doing reiki and buying crystals and doing whatever she want

(20:35):
to do her life. Now it's great so yeah, we'd
to my You know, if you in the bay, you
want some reiki done? Come right?

Speaker 1 (20:42):
She sure knew. She love a house call. Come on,
great body worker.

Speaker 4 (20:47):
I just want to be touched.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah right, they say above you we'll.

Speaker 5 (20:54):
Take it out. We get it, man, we'll take it out.

Speaker 4 (20:56):
We can you know what I mean? Not like out
the window full come into your head? How quickly do
you act on it?

Speaker 1 (21:02):
Like you get that idea usually like everybody else, you're
doing something different than sitting down to write.

Speaker 6 (21:06):
And how quickly you do you have an idea.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
And then take action immediately and expound on that idea.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
This is so funny. This reminds me.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
My friend Jamie was in the corner over there told
me this quote about Michael Jackson that she learned recently,
where like Michael Jackson, even if he got an idea
in the middle of the night, he would wake up
and do it because he believed if he didn't, this
idea would go to some cloud that went to Prince
and then Prince would.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Get the idea. Yeah, and I think I'm.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Pretty sure that it came out that they had these
ideas about each other, like and Prince was like, I
gotta do it before Michael does it. I don't have
that feeling about anyone else, like it's not particular to
anyone else, But I do believe that God gives you
what is for you, and if you intercept spirit in
that way, you intercept God in that way, like it
will trickle its way and find create creatively.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
I think it will find its way. So I witness
it so many times.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
I have an idea, I don't act on it, and
then someone else does it and I'm.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Like, dang, God da.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
But I also am like a mad scientist in the
way of like I'm an anxious person.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
When I get an ID, I get an ID and
I'm like, next thing.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
You know, there's three different group chats. There's three new
group chats. And she's laughing because you know there's three
different group chats. There's like here's the here's here's here's
the visual people. I need to make this happen visually,
and here's whoever's gonna go into how stylistically we're gonna
do this, And you know we're gonna do We're gonna
go to the store and we're gonna get boards and
then we're gonna cover all the boards with this is
the board of what it's gonna sound like texture, rely,

(22:28):
and this is what's gonna look like if you think
of color scheme. Next thing, you know, four months later
the album is a completely new album. Those boards are
sitting collecting us. But at least I tried at least,
and the music exists somewhere.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
And it's in my hard driving the ethers.

Speaker 5 (22:45):
So usually people like you you have like inventions too
in your head that like, if you had time, you
would invent something all the.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Time, especially when I used to not anymore.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah, I was like, oh, you know what would be crazy?
Right now I'm more kind of like now I'm too
just logistical, like I'm like, that would cost a lot
of money to make.

Speaker 5 (23:03):
Yeah, yeah, no I would, right, yeah, And we have
music to make music.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Back to it.

Speaker 4 (23:09):
Back to it man album on the way, Yeah, early
twenty twenty six.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, I usually come in the spring.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Spring is kind of like my little, my little happy
time to bloom.

Speaker 4 (23:20):
You have a title worked out?

Speaker 2 (23:21):
I do, and y'all can't know it because I'm gonna
announce in December.

Speaker 5 (23:24):
I'll just asking if you have it worked out.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
I do.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
I've had it this is the first album where I've
ever known exactly what I was making this second I decided,
I will say this album came together in about four months.
Everything on this album came after folded. Oh wow, yeah,
so I it's almost done. I'm in like final vocals, mixing,
the features are rolling in, they're all coming in.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
They're all really cool.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
They're all people that I really respect and look up to,
and they were just like supernatural, girl, of what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Let me get on the song. I was like, what
you got up? Anything you want?

Speaker 2 (23:57):
And I was making another album for this where you know,
I was referring to that when I went and got
the boards and we did it up, and I was
in my room and I made like eighty songs in
my room, just alone with my engineer, just like she's
coming over.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
We're writing it in my bedroom. Whatever.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
And then one day I go to Hawaii, I'm writing,
and I make one song and I go.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
This is probably what I should be making. I have
to pivot.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Everything else was a little sounding like I made it
in the corner of my bedroom. It was a little
more introspective and darker and a little just like I'm
in this crazy period after everything I experienced last year,
and I just want to like tuk away, took away,
took away, and I made the first song that felt like,
oh I'm out here, yeah, and I'm it feels like
a breakout, feels like external to me, and I was like,

(24:46):
I probably should pivot to that. It makes sense after
the year I've had, after the Grammy noms for the
last project, after the last project going the way it did,
and the tour going the way it did, I was like, Okay,
I should probably lean this way.

Speaker 4 (24:57):
And then you were feeling away.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
I was swinging away stuff to prove.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
And then a couple months later than that, I ended
up randomly going to Miami because there was a feature
I needed to knock out, and the guy on the
song was like, you have to come to Miami. We
have to do it in person, and I was like sure.
Nothing ended up happening to that song, and I was like,
I don't want to waste time. We should just go
to this studio house and make music. And Drey Harris
came with this beat from him and DKA the Punisher

(25:24):
and Chris and they just handed over to me in
their room and I.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Just kept singing come pick up your clothes.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Like I just kept mumbling it and everybody was like, wait,
we should we should expand on that, and the song
became what it was and now here we are and
now everything on this album is after that.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
So wow.

Speaker 7 (25:40):
Wait, So because you had that album that you were
working on, do you think that would ever get released
or is it just kind of one of those things
where like maybe I needed that to get to this.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
I think it was more of a cathartic experience.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
There's like a couple songs that I go back to
where I'm like, this is actually the greatest song I've
ever written in my life. But by my metric of
song writing, like when I'm listening to Joni.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Mitchell or the Beatles or old.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
James Brown or like old when Quincy Jones is orchestrating
everything and I'm Stevie Wonder and I'm listening to like
grandly written emotional songs. By my metrics, I was writing
some of the best things in my life.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
I've experienced.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Those songs not be for the time I was putting
them out. You know, well, maybe when I'm in my
forties and it's like it's time to have these very mature,
very like extravagantly written, because it was just me and
my engineer is no musicians.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
It was just me, just like throwing up all over
these beats.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Basically, so when it's time for those that they ever
have to escape to vortex like they will, But right now,
I'm just I'm still thirty. I'm still I got some
things to say right now that are more urgent than
those things that might you know, need to come out
when I'm forty.

Speaker 4 (26:49):
So this new album is a breakthrough, then it's a break.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
I am busting a sailing. I think I've needed to
you know, break out of for a while. But also
I fully believe in God's timing, and I fully believe
now just is the time for it to have made
sense astrologically, even for me in my age and my perspective,
in my mental health journey, in my motherhood, like everything
was leading to this being the healthiest time in my

(27:13):
life for this kind of breakthrough to happen. I don't
think I could have handled the success that I'm currently
experiencing at any other time because I wasn't healthy enough.

Speaker 5 (27:23):
No, for sure, this is why a I could never
Oh you feel me, This is why AI could never
because there's no real emotion and there's no real emotion
like that a I can't replace emotion.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, And I mean I think where it's going to
be one of those things where like it's like it's
like popping and pimple, like it's going to get so
crazy and then it's gonna explode and then we're gonna go, Okay.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
What was that? That was crazy? Let me get back
to the world.

Speaker 4 (27:46):
Did you see what came out of it?

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah? Right?

Speaker 1 (27:48):
Gross.

Speaker 5 (27:52):
We had Eric Belinger on he signed to AI Artists,
and Timbland's all about it as well. I know you
and Sissa feel a way about it, right and that's
in that and rightful.

Speaker 4 (28:00):
So you know, Jermaine Duprie is like, that's not the way.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
I think.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
It's one of those things where the argument is that
life is changing regardless, and culture is shifting and technology
is always going to advance. But I just believe in
purity to the arts. Like I'm not ever gonna apologize
for being a purist in arts to a certain extent, obviously,
not to the point where I'm like, we need to
all play violins and be classically.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
Trained, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (28:26):
I think that the moment you can equate prompting something
and having it make this entire and I think the
really what I think is people. I don't think the
public knows how AI music works. I think that they're saying,
and I'm going to use the girl for an example.
They're arguing with us, saying, no, she's writing these songs

(28:48):
and then just this thing is creating the image and
the voice.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
No, no, no.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
All you have to know, all you have to do
is prompt the AI as inn. I can go in
right now and say, hmm, I want a mid tempo
ballad that relates to this certain demographic of people that
talks about this kind of struggle that has Brandy ad libs,
Brandy vocals, a third verse, a key change, a modulation,

(29:16):
and then see what it gives me back, and then go,
maybe I don't really like that. How about a second
verse that has something to do with joy and then
losing your joy? That's not writing a song that's erasing
all these incredible songwriters in the in the history who
were able to transmute emotion and able to learn song structure,
and go, well, how do I get him in the
first verse? How do I translate this conversation that we're

(29:39):
having into these four lines that just punch you in
the gut the second you hear it. Then how do
I make that go into something that makes people groove
in the pre hook? And then I get to this
hook and I have to make people want to sway
their hands at this concert.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
All of that is an art.

Speaker 5 (29:54):
Cheating.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
They aren't doing any of that. It's none of that
is happening. It's going how about you. It's rolling the
dice and then saying, here's my result that I've got
with my first dice. Roll, let me maybe make some
edits there, and it's doing it for me. I'm all
for tools, I'm all for people having proper tools. I'm
all for people having opportunity where there was an opportunity,
but it is erasing everything people put into that.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
What about the mixing engineers.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
What about the producers, what about the instrumentalists, What about
the people that you call to make the cover art
and the photography has gotten us so far in music culture,
we equate some of our favorite you know, musicians.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
With their iconic album covers.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Now you can just put me in the background of
Da Da Da Da now put me in a jungle
Boom boom.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
No, I'm in a jungle for my album Jungle.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
And then what about all the voices that they're using
to put together too, and we can't prove ability?

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Is just it's not there, Guys.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
I'm seeing people in these AI artists common saying you
are anointed, like you are so gifted from God? What
everybody else should consider making better their music? We are
training this musician. Everything we've done, everything we've done has
trained this that AI Artists dropped a project called Unfolded

(31:12):
two weeks after I dropped Unfolded, and it is currently
at the moment being talked about the most. And you're
supposed to tell me I have no right to be upset.
That is a computer. I'm not even mad at the girl.
Let's be clear, get a girl. You look great, but
don't ignore what you've done. And you know you're getting
this at a time where there's no parameters, no protection for.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Us as artists.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
You stole all of our voices and mixed it up,
voices that we trained for, voices we've had to like
lose and finding a voice I need a surgery for
like well, like I said a life I had to live.

Speaker 5 (31:44):
Are store the sacrifice rights to get here.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
And again, if someone is here today and they blow
up overnight, I'm not gonna tell a human person you
didn't deserve to blow up overnight. You must have put
you must have made something so incredible that you blew
up overnight. I'm not going to tell them, Oh, you
didn't have no struggle, You didn't do this since you
were fourteen and have a bunch of nose and doors
slammed in your face. But you were a human who
made something as a human and people loved it. I'm

(32:10):
going to respect that the same the computer I can't respect.
I can't respect. And it's the lying about it.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
It's the lie. Oh well, I'm writing the songs and
it's just singing it. That is a lie. Is a lie.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
And and I don't want to be like this part
of the asshole. I don't know if I can say
that's Hary, the asshole who was in the comments of
everything being like, oh no, this is just not the truth.
But if we can, if we can say what it is,
if we can tell the truth about it, maybe it
can have its own charts, Maybe it can have its
own charts.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Maybe it can have it. Yeah, let the computers do
get out.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
Oh my god, I want to see which computer was
better than which computer. But at this point you got
why am I competing with a computer? Yeah? Come in
the room and write the song. Come in the room
and produce the song. A matter of fact, let's work together.
Write so good. Why don't you write with me for me?
If you can't sing, come right.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
Let's rite. Yeah, but it's the computer.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
And then y'all want to cap about Ie Robot and
I robot taking over everything and got it?

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Okay, same thing.

Speaker 4 (33:14):
I feel it. No, listen, I know it's a it's
a it's a wild conversation to.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Have, you know, gets me tight?

Speaker 5 (33:19):
No, I know, I know.

Speaker 4 (33:20):
Sorry, I know, I know.

Speaker 5 (33:21):
Is happening to us right, passionate it's happening to us,
you know? And Eric Blinger was like, I'm not going
to be the last one to not.

Speaker 4 (33:26):
Do it, you know.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
I mean, look, everybodys trying to get their money. I
respect it, but can't we just bring the love back?
It's real, bron The album, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Bring the love back?

Speaker 5 (33:39):
AI Me against AI out soon in spring? Nah, y'all
congratulations comes here anytime. It's okay, Hey, let's get a
Cruise Show real ninety two three.

Speaker 7 (33:50):
I heays Jack get Rich for the Cruise Show. Thanks
for listening to The Cruise Show podcast. Make sure to
subscribe and hit auto download so you don't miss an episode.

Speaker 6 (33:58):
So
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