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Victoria WestfallTamia is celebrating the 20th anniversary of her 1998 self-titled debut album, and she’s enjoying the success of her new single, “Leave It Smokin’.” The Canadian singer reveals that Florida’s tropical weather inspired the sexy love song.
“I went to Miami to work with [producer] Salaam Remi,” Tamia tells ABC Radio. “We also worked together before on ‘Beautiful Surprise,’ a song I did a couple of albums ago. So we got back together, we’re in Miami, Miami weather is beautiful, and..you really just want to be outside, so we started writing. And ‘Leave It Smokin’’ was what we came up with that day.”
The six-time Grammy Award winner says she loved the original version of the song, but then Remi took it to another level.
“When I left, I thought, ‘That’s a great song,’ like, ‘It just feels good,’” Tamia recalls. “But Salaam takes the song, and he works on it for like however long he feels like he needs to work on it until he perfects it, and it sounds exactly how he wants it to sound, and so when he sent it back, I was like, ‘Yesss.’”
“Leave It Smokin’” is the first single from Tamia’s upcoming album, Passion Like Fire, which will be released September 7. She’ll kick off her 23-city Passion Like Fire tour September 18 in Cleveland.
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inspired leave Miami’s smokin' song steamy Tamia’s tropical weather
