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Myesha Evon GardnerJazmine Sullivan left not one crumb on the floor with the release of her new album, Heaux Tales.
The idea for Sullivan to follow up her 2015 album, Reality Show, with a concept album came from her label, RCA Records, four years ago.
“I’m like a Disney kid,” Sullivan tells Vulture. “When I was growing up, my mom was a playwright. When I write, I see it almost in pictures, like a full production. I went home and brainstormed, and Heaux Tales came up.”
The R&B powerhouse said she imagined her fourth album as full of intimate confessions and “conversations I have with my girlfriends, my mom, different people like that.”
In doing so, Sullivan added monologues from six women in her life, including longtime friend Amanda Henderson. Each “tale” offers a different women’s take about their insecurities, sex, femininity and relationships, among other topics.
After releasing the first trailer for the album in December, Sullivan said she couldn’t sleep thinking about how fans would receive the video. “I was up like, ‘Please don’t let anybody say anything bad to my friends. [Be]cause I don’t want to cuss them out, but I will,” she recalls.
The 33-year-old said she’s unsure why she had such a hard time writing Heaux Tales. “I’m not gonna lie. I had a hard time even singing,” Sullivan explains. “Creatively, things didn’t come as natural this time. It’s natural that artists will have droughts sometimes as writers, but I don’t know. I just know it was not as easy this time.”
Fans will no doubt argue it was definitely worth the five-year wait. Watch Jazmine Sullivan perform some of her Heaux Tales tonight on The Tonight Show Starringn Jimmy Fallon at 11:35 p.m. ET on NBC.
By Rachel George
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'Heaux Album Behind concept Jazmine shares sullivan Tales Vision
