ELEVATION

I always like to start off with a theme or a concept to really build around, to start wrapping my mind around the music and the lyrics and the melody and all these things that I want to use. And so when you title something Elevation, you got to be ready to push yourself to higher heights. You got to be ready to do some things you’ve probably never done before; try some things. And you’ve got to be ready to push the limits on the things that you’ve done well up until this point. So, Elevation just gave me a starting point, a pushing point, if you will, of just getting me to that place where I needed to be to make the project.

Putting my new album Elevation together was a process that involved me just challenging myself; challenging myself to do better, to do more in spaces even where I felt I was great in. Just having those hard conversations with myself and saying, hey, you can do better at this or you can be better at that. You can have a tighter melody here, or you could dig deeper lyrically here, or sonically. From a production standpoint, you can grab from more different spaces and challenge yourself to put something cool on something different. So, this process has been, to me, one of my best because it’s at a moment where I’m having a lot of success. I could’ve settled in that space, and just repeated it, and I just didn’t want to. I wanted to do more. I wanted to go higher. I wanted to prove to myself that I’m not at the mountaintop, that I still have a ways to go, and we’re going to continue elevating with this Elevation.

— via iHeart

The collaborations on the album, I think, give it a different kind of life. I really wanted to tap in with people that I admire from a gift standpoint, and people, for the most part, that I’m close to. Luke James is like a little brother to me, lived with me pretty much, actually really lived with me. And, to still be able to make music with my brother, who is one of the coldest vocals ever to grace this universe, I mean, that’s a blessing. Omari, he goes from ghost to being this gifted poet/rapper, and I get to be part of the reason people get to hear it on a mainstream level. JoJo, we spent a lot of time in another place together and now we’re both in new places, finding new life, and we get to find it together on this new album. So a lot of these features represent people that I’ve admired. I mean you talk about Keith Sweat, an OG in the game, a guy who I look up to, who’s mentored me and given me good information and good advice about my own career. All of these things come full circle. It’s not just kinda like throwing names in a hat and seeing who you pull out. But these are people who I’m connected to in some way, shape or form, and I think they help make the fabric of this album just a little bit more expensive, and I appreciate them for being here.

— via iHeart