{"id":2065,"date":"2021-03-10T11:25:29","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T19:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/604916ff4ce1b76954a6bce9"},"modified":"2021-03-10T11:25:29","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T19:25:29","slug":"jazmine-sullivan-on-shamelessness-heaux-tales-and-her-biggest-year-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/authoritydaily.com\/jazmine-sullivan-on-shamelessness-heaux-tales-and-her-biggest-year-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Jazmine Sullivan on Shamelessness, Heaux Tales, and Her Biggest Year Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When Jazmine Sullivan<\/a> decided she wanted to confess, she invited her closest friends to the pulpit and asked them to perform emotional exorcisms in the form of interludes. She told them they could retreat into a closet if they needed to, and then hit record. She wanted real-life testimonies about passion, regret, indecision, fantasy. Compressed into brief monologues, these admissions pepper Sullivan\u2019s fourth album Heaux Tales<\/em><\/a>, which valorizes the stories of misjudged women in her life who also exist everywhere. \u201cTo be honest,\u201d Precious says on \u201cPrecious\u2019 Tale,\u201d \u201cmoney makes me cum.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Sullivan\u2019s RCA Records reps suggested she make a concept album, she took a beat, nervous about having to build on the success of 2015\u2019s Reality Show<\/em><\/a>, a collection of towering anecdotes about neglected women, set around the framework of reality TV. She retreated home to Philadelphia and unraveled a new yarn of narratives, occasionally battling writer\u2019s block, then returned this past January with the eight songs and six interludes of Heaux Tales<\/em>. Debuting at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, the album focuses on mistakes made in darkness and then talked about privately. \u201cThese are conversations I\u2019ve had since I was in high school and now in my early 30s,\u201d Sullivan tells me over the phone. \u201cThere was nothing I put on the project that I hadn\u2019t experienced, and that\u2019s what I think is drawing people. We have all had these conversations in our own way with our own group of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has very loosely connected with<\/a> writer-actor-producer Issa Rae to bring Heaux Tales<\/em> to life visually, and she\u2019ll end the year with one of 2021\u2019s best albums, a space where women can hear other women cycle through entanglements with love, sex, and money without judgment. It\u2019s a project that welcomes contradictions as much as it does empathy, largely around the decisions Black women make while trying to undo someone else\u2019s damage, as well as their own. On the intro \u201cBodies,\u201d Sullivan sings about waking up dazed and trying to pep-talk her way out of spiraling after a night of drinking and hooking up; inevitably, she spirals. On the closing track \u201cGirl Like Me,\u201d sex is a way to recharge her desire after feeling \u201csqueezed out\u201d in a relationship. It\u2019s a reflexive choice that ends with what seems like an empowering move: \u201cA ho I\u2019ll be,\u201d she sings, sounding emphatic yet reluctant.<\/p>\n

Even with 12 Grammy nominations to her name, Sullivan is still too often quietly celebrated as one of R&B\u2019s greatest, most perceptive singer-songwriters, with a voice many would parkour off a cliff to possess. Mere months into the new year, she\u2019s gained the sort of visibility that commands a People<\/em> write-up<\/a> about how she\u2019s \u201ctaking 2021 by storm.\u201d At the Super Bowl in early February, she sang the National Anthem<\/a> firmly and beautifully, as she does, but as a duet with country singer Eric Church. Though appreciated among peers (Solange singled her out as \u201cone of the best songwriters and voices of our times\u201d), Sullivan is sensing a shift toward more fame. \u201cIs it a good thing? It is. In a way,\u201d she says, cautiously.<\/p>\n

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