Over the last 14 years, Musiq Soulchild has released six LPs of Grammy-nominated and commercially successful contemporary R&B. But he hasn’t avoided problems concerning artistic expansion.
“You’re trying to live up to something that’s gone,” he says. “I can’t be the same person that I used to be. That moment has come and gone. It’s just scientifically impossible. But we stress ourselves out, lose our hair trying to live up to something that just isn’t real.”
Soulchild gathered instant acclaim back in 2000 forthe soulful vocal performances and feel-good R&B featured on his debut LP, Aijuswanaseing. Even though he’s successfully stayed within the realms of neo-soul and R&B on subsequent releases, being a celebrated genre artist has had stifling side effects.
“There is this concept that I initially came out as an R&B artist,” he says. “No. I was an artist who was able to be immediately successful with R&B music. I think that just sticking to one genre of music is like asking an actor to play the same role in every movie that they’re in. For some people, for whatever reason, it makes sense for a musician to just make one thing.”
Soulchild’s latest release, 9ine, shows that he’s now trying to break free from the shackles imposed by listener expectations. While the record is a collaboration with fellow R&B mainstay Syleena Johnson, it’s composed entirely of reggae songs.
“It was something that presented itself to me and I just went along with it and something amazing came out of it,” he explains. “[Syleena’s] an amazing artist and a good friend of mine and we got a chance to be creative for the sake of being creative. If it made a whole lot of money [that would be] fine, but that’s not why we did it.”
In a commercial sense, 9ine isn’t one of Soulchild’s bigger career triumphs. Of course, making a satisfactory commercial imprint while expressing exactly what you want is never a guarantee. This means that in order to keep fans and industry bigwigs happy, one’s true ambitions are often compromised.
“Through the years I’ve basically conceded to a lot of what the label wanted me to do or whatever radio wanted from me,” Soulchild admits. “I may have put my own personal creative passions aside to serve that.
“Despite that I was still able to make stuff that people enjoy,” he clarifies. “I never made it about me. If I made it about me, I would be a very bitter artist. But I’m not – in fact I’m very grateful that, despite whatever the projects may have been, people were able to enjoy what I put out. I was able to commercially thrive in this game.”
Musiq Soulchild will join Maxwell, D’Angelo, Common and many more at the inaugural Soulfest this October. In the meantime he’s hard at work on a follow up to his 2011 solo LP, MusiqInTheMagiq. This time he’s not focusing on what’s likely to be commercially viable.
“I have to consider you guys according to what I know you’re going to need, regardless of what the trends are,” he says. “What I came down to is, regardless of what the trends are, you’re going to want good music. Good music is not contingent on what’s going on at the moment. Good music depends on the time, effort and the quality of the product. I definitely want to make sure that you guys are getting the best that I can give you.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
