The Colombian-Canadian powerhouse just dropped her first-ever album, and she isn't holding anything back

With great (read: minimal) power comes great responsibility, and today I am here to tell you one thing: you need to listen to Jessie Reyez&rsquo;s new album. The Colombian-Canadian angel&rsquo;s debut album,&nbsp;Before Love Came to Kill Us, drops today. It is objectively phenomenal&nbsp;and includes some Very Cool features, including Eminem and 6lack.

For those who don&rsquo;t know, Reyez began her music career in 2014 when she and King Louie released a single, &ldquo;Living in the Sky&rdquo;. She then released her debut EP,&nbsp;Kiddo, in 2017, and signed with Island Records later that year. Her second EP,&nbsp;Being Human in Public, was released late 2018 and was nominated for Best Urban Contemporary Album at this year&rsquo;s Grammy Awards. Reyez also had a cameo in the Netflix movie,&nbsp;Someone Great.

In honour of her debut album, Reyez talked with us about working with legends, doing hot yoga, and being nominated for her first Grammy.

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Tell me a little about your musical background.

I was born in Toronto to a Colombian family. My brother was the first one to introduce me to reggae. I fell in love and discovered Bob [Marley] and Tanya [Stephens] and Barrington [Levy], and it was just sick. I used to sing at church and I liked other mediums as well; I used to dance, I used to draw, but I guess what always felt like home was music.

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What is your creative process and has it changed since you first got started?

Not really, I just vibe. It&#39;s usually the music first, so if I have my guitar, it&#39;s what kind of emotions the chords elicit. If I&#39;m working with a producer, if they&#39;re playing the piano or&nbsp;playing me beats, it&#39;s whatever comes out. But it&#39;s always based on my life and&nbsp;whatever I&#39;m feeling. If I walked out of here and broke my leg today, then tomorrow I would sing about having a broken leg. It&#39;s just talking about my life. It hasn&#39;t really changed much. There&#39;s also certain tidbits that I pick up from when I work with legends; I was trying to record a voice note of a melody and write it down and Babyface was like, &quot;Jess, if it&#39;s really that good, you&#39;ll just remember it. You won&#39;t have to write it down&quot;.

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Tell me about your debut album,&nbsp;Before Love Came to Kill Us.

It has a lot to do with life and death, but I replaced life with love, so it&#39;s the beautiful side of death and the sad side of love. If I told you we&#39;re all going to die tomorrow, then today we&#39;re going to live more authentically, we might confess something, and we just live with our hearts forward. The sad side of love?&nbsp;That&#39;s the day that you meet the love of your life. You might be meeting the person who&#39;s going to hurt you the most because, statistically, they&#39;re going to cheat or it won&#39;t work while you&#39;re young. Or, if you guys are the minority and you make it until you&#39;re grey, no one gets out of love alive. One of you is going to have to die. It always ends in goodbye.&nbsp;

Wow. That all rhymed. But yeah, it&#39;s about life. It&#39;s about truth.

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What was the process of making the album?

There are certain songs that I held back during the time that I made&nbsp;Kiddo&nbsp;that I knew I wanted to save for the album. The reason&nbsp;behind dropping two EPs prior to the album was because we&#39;re in a time where when people take in music, you&#39;re taking it in on DSPs, like Spotify and Apple Music, it&#39;s a playlist, right? There&#39;s only a few select artists who can drop one album and people actually respect it enough to be like, &quot;I&#39;m going to put my phone on airplane mode,&nbsp;put it down, lean back, sage the room, and just take it in&quot;. Like Kendrick [Lamar]&nbsp;and <a href="https://www.lofficielsingapore.com/Culture/beyonce-tribute-bryant">Beyonc&eacute;</a>, these beautiful, wonderful, talented artists. I felt like as a step in paying my dues with&nbsp;Kiddo&nbsp;and&nbsp;Being Human in Public, it&#39;s almost like I had to prove that I&#39;m capable of putting a fucking good project together. I&#39;m excited because I&#39;ve been able to follow the blueprint that I&#39;ve had and&nbsp;my team has had, to build a family with the people that support me. People like my music, my fans and all that, so there are people waiting for the album. It&rsquo;s lit; I&#39;m excited that people are anticipating it.

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What is your favourite song off of the album and why?

&quot;Ankles&quot; is my favourite song off of the album. It&#39;s probably one of the rawest. We only did two takes. We didn&#39;t comp any vocals;&nbsp;we didn&#39;t do anything like that. I was in LA, I was depressed because a lot of my music comes from a sad place, and I was holding a cup of whiskey. It was running low, so when I start, you hear the ice because I was in there just running. It was one of those where the lyrics came real quick. I love that it&#39;s raw. I love that that we could only choose from two takes. I love that it&#39;s another record&nbsp;from a long time ago that I was like, &quot;I need to hold this for my album,&nbsp;this has to wait&quot;. I love the features we have on it. And it&#39;s actually a quote that my mom told me when I was crying over an ex. She was like, &quot;Mija&quot;, &#39;cause he had cheated and she said, in Spanish, &quot;Those women, those girls, they don&#39;t make it to your ankles. They don&#39;t even make it to your ankles&#39;.&nbsp;When I was in LA working and thinking about that, I just thought of my mom and started crying. Then I was like, &quot;fuck this,&quot;&nbsp;and that song came up. So, &quot;Ankles.&quot;

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Let&rsquo;s talk about some of the cool collaborations you have on the album.

I&#39;m excited about Melii. I&#39;m excited about&nbsp;Rico [Nasty]. I&#39;m excited about them being on that album, and particularly on that song (&ldquo;Ankles&rdquo;), because I feel like it&#39;s a self-love, self-worth&nbsp;anthem but also like a &quot;fuck y&#39;all&quot; anthem, which is great.

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What was it like working with them?

Oh, sick. Boogie&#39;s dope. Boogie&#39;s always been dope. Jid is amazing, I think he&#39;s super talented. Rico and Melii are nuts. 6lack is nuts. YBN is nuts. It&#39;s just crazy. I know a lot of people saying, &quot;Were you guys&nbsp;fortunate enough to be in the room together and collab that way?&quot;&nbsp;But like, we&#39;re busy, what the fuck, we&#39;re&nbsp;busy. I&#39;ve been on the road, I&#39;ve been doing interviews, they&nbsp;have been doing interviews and on the road too, so thank God for the internet because I was getting verses last minute and plugging them in and mixing and all of that, so I&#39;m really happy that we were able to make it happen, despite all of us being busy as fuck.

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If you could collaborate with anybody who would it be?

<a href="https://www.lofficielsingapore.com/men/not-just-a-pretty-face-the-cult-men-who-have-fronted-prada-campaigns">Frank Ocean</a>, in a perfect world, and Kid Cudi. Frank&#39;s influenced and been there for so many musicians. It&#39;s just so strange and so funny and so beautiful that his story can resonate so much. There are songs on&nbsp;Blonde, there are songs on&nbsp;Channel&nbsp;Orange, it&#39;s a lot that hits and has memories and nostalgia attached to me that&#39;s originally someone else&#39;s story. I respect him so much as an artist, as a writer, as everything.

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You were nominated for your first Grammy. Tell me about that experience.&nbsp;

I was fucking floored. I didn&#39;t even know the nominations were coming out. When they got announced, we were in Miami and I had a session till like 6:30 in the morning and then I had promo the next day, like a whole day of interviews. At 7am, I was already sleeping. My managers got a call, people screaming, &ldquo;Holy shit, she&#39;s on the list&rdquo; and they&#39;re like &ldquo;wake her up!&rdquo; One of my managers made a joke:&nbsp;he&#39;s like, &ldquo;It&#39;s seven in the morning, you want me to get fucking fired? I&#39;m not going to wake Jessie up&rdquo;. Then they&#39;re like, &quot;The nomination would be there when she wakes up, don&#39;t worry about it&quot;.

But then at 2 pm, my assistant and my family&nbsp;were like this is enough, we have to wake her up. I thought someone had died because I never get woken up by five people at my door. I was like, &quot;What&#39;s going on?&quot;&nbsp;I&#39;m in a T-shirt and wearing one sock, my hair&#39;s frizzed to shit.&nbsp;My mom&#39;s like &ldquo;Congratulations!&rdquo; My dad&#39;s singing &quot;Felicitaciones a Ti&quot;,&nbsp;and I&#39;m like, what the hell is going on? I looked at my sister and she&#39;s like, &quot;You got nominated for a Grammy, bro&quot;. My jaw hit the floor. I was in disbelief until the day of.&nbsp;

And then we lost. But it was cool, there was something that happened that just resonated. I lost, and we&#39;re all lined up, my mom, my dad, management, my team, the producer, all that.&nbsp;We&#39;re sitting there for a little bit after I had lost&nbsp;and I look over my manager, and he&#39;s like, &quot;Congratulations&quot;. It just meant a lot. It&#39;s true, it&#39;s a loss but it&#39;s still a win; we&#39;re here, we&#39;re in the room, we&#39;re on the board.

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What inspires you?&nbsp;

My life, what I go through. It&#39;s usually sadness &mdash; sad songs&nbsp;come out of me easier. I feel like when you&#39;re happy, it&#39;s like eating a salad, so you&#39;re good. It feels good when you&#39;re happy. But when you eat something that&#39;s old and moldy and fucking poison, that&#39;s like heartbreak and you don&#39;t think about it, but you&#39;re just like, bleh. It&#39;s kinda how songs come up, the sad songs just come out quick and fast and harsh and potently.

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I am surprised that your &quot;good&quot; food option was a salad.&nbsp;Like, you could&#39;ve gone for something like a cake, I don&#39;t know.

&#39;Cause a cake you think is good for you, but it&#39;s not! A cake is fucking bad for you.

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What are your hobbies outside of making music?

I used to do a lot of hot yoga. I love it.&nbsp;It helps me centre. I used to smoke a lot of weed, but&nbsp;six years ago, I made the decision to focus all my energy on being creative.&nbsp;I gave it a break because I wanted it to stop until I won a Grammy, but&nbsp;I needed something to help offset my anger issues and my temperament.&nbsp;Hot yoga came into my life when weed was put on pause, and it just really helps. It&#39;s not so much the feeling when you&#39;re in the class, because it sucks. It&#39;s hard, you&#39;re sweating, it&#39;s intense. But you leave the class and it&#39;s just like, poof, a cloud. I love it. I also like poetry, but it&#39;s kind of in the same vein as music. I still write poetry. Also, camping: being in a tent, being at a lake with my family, barbecuing, sitting on grass, walking barefoot. It&#39;s my favourite.

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Where do you like to camp?

North of Toronto, there&#39;s this beautiful reserve called the Algonquin. It&#39;s my favourite place in the world. There&#39;s another spot called Lions Bay in BC. It&#39;s beautiful too. It&#39;s like heaven; it&#39;s one of those places where you sit down and you look around, you&#39;re like, God&#39;s here. It just feels different.

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What are you most excited about for the future?

Getting the album fucking out of me; I&#39;ve been anxious. I&#39;m excited to get to the point where I can step back, because I can&#39;t right now. Taking a break right now is a joke and it&#39;s going to be&nbsp;for a long time because of the pace we&#39;re moving at and the goals that we have in mind. Right now it&#39;s difficult to enjoy, when you&#39;re not sleeping and it&#39;s just like this, this, this. But those moments where I can step back, those come after tour, after awards, after all that. I&#39;m excited to get it done.

Jessie Reyez Spills On Her Debut Album, Hot Yoga, And Being A Grammy Nominee

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