by Ronda Racha Penrice

Musiq Soulchild, along with contemporaries such as Jill Scott and The Roots, is proof positive that great music like the kind found in their native Philadelphia, home of the legendary music duo Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff and the incomparable Patti LaBelle, just to name three, isn’t a generational anomaly. And Musiq Soulchild, who is back with his fourth album Luvanmusiq, not to mention the “Soulchild” moniker he once dropped, is down to do his part. It’s been four years since his last album, Soulstar, but it didn’t take long for his lead single “b.u.d.d.y.” to heat up urban radio and the charts. In its first week of release, Luvanmusiq was easily on pace to exceed 100,000 copies.

After a long absence, a lot of artists like to make lofty statements during their return. According to Musiq, the only statement he wanted to make was “I’m still here.” For him, this album is important in the scheme of his long-term career, not just the here and now. “What I’m doing is not a mistake and I can do it again,” he says in total humility. Four years in the music industry is akin to dog years and could easily be the difference between a “still is” and a “has been.” Musiq knows this and promises that he is not taking any of it for granted.

“The fact that I can still do it and bring out a lot of people,” he explains, referencing his touring, which included a partnership with Courvoisier to launch his latest album. “I don’t like to take things like that for granted because they’re not a given in this business and it’s not easy to maintain a substantial career, a credible career. . . The fact that I can go to different cities and people still show out in great numbers, that’s a beautiful thing. This here is my fourth album and in my line of business, in my line of music particularly you don’t have a lot of people who can keep putting out albums. For whatever reason people just grow out of them [artists] or they look for something else, whatever that’s out there, that’s new. . . whatever the case may be. For me to be able to come out with a record in the midst of all this other stuff that’s going on that could easily overwhelm what I’m doing, for people to still support [my music] in the way that they’re supporting it, and be able to go to their cities and they show out and we have a good time, that’s beautiful.”
Unlike many artists and non-artists who’ve complained constantly about the current state of music, Musiq has a different take. “I’m doing my best to contribute to the change,” he vows. “It’s a lot of people saying a whole lot of things about the state of music, how they don’t like it, how they think it’s dying. I’m the kind of person instead of coming from the negative I’d rather come from the positive by contributing to the change, contributing to it being better, by filling whatever void there may be out there, filling in whatever gaps there may be out there or just what’s necessary.”

Business, however, dictated that he wait before he could actively check back into the game. “I started working on this album in February of 2005,” he explains. “I switched labels, from Def Jam over to Atlantic Records. . . [M]aking the switch takes a lot of time and paperwork. . .I also had to support myself so I had to do a lot of shows. That takes time away from recording. It’s a lot of things that went on behind the scenes. It’s not that I purposely waited but these series of events made the process a little longer than it could have been.”

So far being at a new label is business as usual with one key difference. “Def Jam is a label that hip-hop built whereas Atlantic Records is a house that R&B music built,” he observes. With that, the approach to the music is automatically different, meaning that his genre of music has a greater legacy at his current home but “b.u.d.d.y.” and “makeyouhappy” clearly demonstrate that hip-hop is still a good influence on Musiq’s sound.
Working with producers such as Raphael Saadiq and The Underdogs for the first time was gratifying but Musiq really connected with Warryn “Baby Dubb” Campbell, still one of the industry’s most underrated weapons. “He’s actually my new hero,” Musiq says of the producer who worked on a few songs, including “makeyouhappy” and “takeyouthere.” “He’s dope. He’s a songwriter, he’s a singer, he’s a musician, he’s a producer. He was an executive for a while so he has a very solid perspective on the music business and he’s an exceptional artist within himself,” Musiq raves.

Respecting the business side of the musical process is another positive change that’s occurred during his absence. “That’s one of things that I’ve learned within the last three years,” he admits, “learning how to make business decisions. When [you’re] making business decisions there’s really no room for being attached to certain things. It’s a healthy compromise at the end of the day because me as the artist and the label, we’re all working towards the same goal and that goal is to be successful and to make some progress. With progress, there’s a lot of sacrifices that you have to make. In order to be in this business, you have to understand that you don’t always have the answers. You don’t always know the right moves to make. It’s basically allowing people to take charge when they have more intelligence on the matter than you do.”
It hasn’t been as easy as it sounds, however. “As an artist it’s real easy to get emotionally attached to certain songs or to certain ideas and ways that you want to represent yourself but you’re only coming from your perspective and that’s just one way of looking it at things,” Musiq reveals. “It’s not easy. It’s very hard and sometimes it hurts because, as an artist, you want to represent yourself a certain way because of how you see things, but then you have a whole machine that’s behind you. At the end of the day, they need to make certain numbers, they need to reach certain quotas, in order for them to still perpetuate their business.”
One of those hard decisions has been whittling down 70 to 80 of the songs recorded to a mere 12 but a creative solution has emerged there too. “Some of them I’m incorporating them into the marketing process of this album. There are 12 songs on the album but depending where you get the album from, whether it’s Target or Best Buy, Circuit City or even iTunes, you might get an extra song or two. . . I’m trying not to let all of these songs go to waste.”

Musiq is not trying to waste anything, especially not his talent. Whereas executives like to point to awards and the more than respectable album sales that have been a part of Musiq’s career since he emerged in 2000 with Aijuswanaseng. Ultimately awards in particular don’t move Musiq but touching the people do. “As far as my contribution to music, me personally, I don’t need an accolade or an award to validate that,” he states with affecting sincerity. “My validation comes from when people tell me how much my music has affected them or what I do in music, how much it’s affected them in their lives and what it’s contributed to their lives. Hopefully, things like that is what people tend to take with them and use in their decision to support me.”