Ledisi wanted to make a few bold artistic changes this time out. But
just before she started work on her sophomore Verve release, Turn Me
Loose, she hit a wall. The singer-songwriter had a bad case of writer's
block that stretched for six months. Ledisi was petrified as she tried
to figure out how to follow up her 2007 Verve debut, Lost & Found.
The album garnered strong reviews and two Grammy® nominations,
including one for best new artist. "It was the pressure of coming back
after all the success with Lost & Found and trying to figure out,
'Who am I? Who is Ledisi now?'" says the New Orleans native. "Before, I
wondered do people get me. Now it's like, 'Ok, we know you. What are
you gonna do now?'" A friend gave Ledisi an album to check out, hoping
the music would start the creative juices flowing again. It was Buddy
Miles' 1970 soul-rock classic, Them Changes. "I had never heard it
before," Ledisi says. "Once I heard it, I wanted to be able to be free
on the new album. On my previous album, I was contained a little bit.
But I said on my next project that I was going to be off the chain
vocally. I promised to be more honest and talk about stuff that people
don't like to talk about. I've always done that. But on this album, I
went for everything. "Inspired by the freewheeling music of Buddy
Miles, Ledisi now had a direction. But she decided to push herself even
further by reaching out to different collaborators, something she
hadn't done before.
"Usually, I just come in, like 'I want this. Take that out,'" Ledisi
says. "This time, I laid back a little more and that was new for me. I
wanted to go for the ride. It was frustrating, because everybody had
different energies and I had to adjust. They weren't crazy. I felt
crazy," she says, laughing. "But I made myself go through the different
changes." Acclaim from Lost & Found boosted Ledisi's profile in the
industry. So she was able to secure some of urban music's most
respected producers, including Grammy® winners Raphael Saadiq and Jimmy
Jam and Terry Lewis.
