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ABC/Lorenzo BevilaquaEmpire star Jussie Smollett recently toured to promote his debut solo album, Sum of My Music, and he admits his body goes through so many changes when he performs that he appears to be on drugs.
Speaking to Billboard, the singer/actor says his temperature fluctuates wildly from the time it takes for him to go backstage to when he starts performing.
“I get freezing cold right before I get onstage,” he says. “Like, freezing. It’s so weird. My fingertips get really cold and they’re like, ‘Yo, this n***a ‘bout to pass out.’”
Then, Smollett says, the second he hears the music, “I get really, really hot. I’m like a melting glacier.”
“I know people are like, ‘Yo, this fool is like a crackhead.’ I’m not…We just put a lot into it and give it our all every single night.”
The four-time NAACP Image Award winner is very close with his Empire co-star Gabourey Sidibe, and he says he’ll never forget her comment following his recent show in Los Angeles.
“She…hugged me backstage, giving me so much love,” he remembers. She said, ‘I don’t know how you do what you. But one note: Beyonce did all of Coachella without one sip of water.’ And I’m like damn. Now every time I take a sip, I hear her voice.”
Asked which album he’d choose to be the soundtrack to his life now, he names Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On.
“He took ownership of what he knew was important to him,” Smollett says of the classic album. “He didn’t try to make an album that was what the record company wanted him to make or what was out at the moment…He made an album that reflected his mind.”
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