Having sold 160 million albums, you could easily retire now it you wanted to…
But how bored would I be? It's not like I'm 50 years old and I'm, like, “let me retire.” I've got a lot of energy. Also, I started doing this when I was right out of high schoool — my whole adult life has been in the spotlight, so it feels like I've grown up doing this. I could retire, but I love making music, I love the studio and love doing what I do.
You've made it to superstar level but stayed with an urban music feel. How important has urban music been in making you the success you are?
I grew up on urban music, but a lot of the mainstream public don't listen to hip hop stations, don't go to the clubs, don't know DJs and don't live that lifestyle. They don't really know about that side of my music, but for me those moments working with Snoop, Jay-Z, Mobb Deep or Nas are really fun moments. I love doing ballads and I will always do ballads, but I would be bored as hell if that's all I ever did. People don't know how many collaborations I've done. Now that hip-hop is finally being accepted on pop radio and embraced around the world, people are like, “So you gonna change your sound and like work with rappers now?” and I'm like no, I've been doing this for years! Do your research.
You were a pioneer of vocal/rap collaborations…
Mary J Blige did the ground work for a lot of those collaborations — I credit her as an artist with that. Songs like “Hero” — in terms of well-known people in the pop world. I was pretty much the only one going there.
Your record label Monarc — you must have artists coming through. Who should we watch out for?
There's a group I've been working with. They are young — only around 14 or 15 — but they're very grown up in their minds. One's a rapper from Oakland, the other is a singer and I don't think there's ever been a duo like this. It's very unique, really fun working with them. They're like my little sisters, it's real cool. There's another extra surprise artist I'm working with, and Trey Lorenz who sang “I'll Be There.” There's also some gospel artists I've been talking to because it's very important to me. I love gospel music and there are so many talented gospel artists.
Number one singles and albums, numerous awards — what is your biggest achievement?
People have come up to me and said, “Your music has helped me get through some difficult times in my life” mdash; that's very important to me. Being a mixed race person, I know how I felt growing up — I felt like an outsider. I didn't have somebody to look at and think this person I mixed race like me, they're ambiguous-looking and yet they've made it and people understand who they are, what they are. A lot of people say how when they found out I was mixed, it made them feel better about themselves. For me that's a huge achievement.
Your divorce was well publicised, tabloids are always printing stories about you, you're constantly surrounded by the press — is it hard being continually in the public eye?
The private life they create for me is, like, bizarre and I read the stuff and sometimes it just makes me laugh. They once wrote this thing about me and a fat farm breakdown: “Her staff were forced to go on the same diet and then they snuck out to eat cheese burgers, then took breath mints so she wouldn't know.” I'm sitting there thinking, I wasn't in a fat farm, I was in a spa with fattening food there that I could've eaten. I don't even care about fast food, and if they had wanted to eat hamburgers till the cows came nome, I wouldn't have cared. I put that story up on my kitchen wall, because I thought it was just so funny. It's weird to be in the public eye, but I feel like I'm the same person internally as when I started. I notice how a lot of people change after they're successful. Fam really twists them, and I think it's because I didn't feel famous 'till lately that it didn't do that to me.
That's probably one of the things that your fans love about you — that you have kept your feel steady on the ground…
I think maybe they feel that and unhesitant that. When I meet fans, we talk like we're talking now — unless somebody's crying, because if somebody's crying, it makes me cry. I think they can sense that because the real fans know that I care about them and appreciate them.
On Charmbracelet, you've used some real retro beats. Was that purposely planned or did it just fall into place?
It just feel into place. I've done that before — a lot of things I've done are more like remixes. Take “Heartbreaker” which was Snoop Dogg's “Ain't No Fun” — the one with Missy and Da Brat. That, I think, was a template for a lot of different things. Using “Ain't No Fun” is not like using an old, old record but it really worked for the clubs because people would mix “Ain't No Fun” into it — so I gotta give credit to DJ Clue for that idea. As for this album, it was like using some new school things like “Boy (I Need You),” the new Just Blaze track, and “You Got Me” — which is the one with Freeway and Jay-Z. It sounds like a loop, but it's a track that was created totally from scratch.
Last time you came over to the UK — four years ago — the tickets were sold out in hours. Looking forward to coming back?
Definitely. I'm back in October, and can't wait to perform like there again.