When Teedra Moses dropped her debut album Complex Simplicity (2004), who was to know that we would have to wait a whole 11 years for her follow-up album. Complex Simplicity was so good as a debut that it is in many respects a classic debut with tracks that remain sublimely good think Be Your Girl.
While it has been some years since that debut, Teedra has put out an amazing amount of mix-tapes in that time.
‘I was putting out mix-tapes that could have been albums’ she asserts but that long awaited sophomore remained an on and off aspiration.
In 2015 Teedra finally dropped her follow-up Cognac and Conversations with no promotion and no marketing-it reached number 7 on the Billboard Charts!
Over here in the UK performing at the Jazz Café for the umpteenth time, Flavour had a talk with the rather beautiful Teedra on what made that second album an actuality.
Well it’s finally here Teedra, that album.
It was a long time coming and it was a blessing to finally put out an album so I am just so happy. I was just grateful really it was not even ‘at last’ I was just thankful that I could at last put the project out. I realised through the whole process that the only thing really stopping me from putting this album out was actually me. After I realised that I became really powerful and now I feel like some kind of super hero.
So what were the stumbling blocks when trying to put it out?
I think it was just that I wanted to do it on a grander level. Like I was putting out mix-tapes that could have been albums but I was putting them out as mix-tapes because I did not feel there was enough promotion behind them and I did not have certain funding. So I was looking at all that I did not have instead of looking at what I did have which is a fan base.
And what a fan base.
Look in 2015 I put out an album with no promotion and no marketing strategy but I did have fans and they made it go to something like 6 or 7 on the Billboard Charts. Some people came out at the same time on major labels and did not even chart and so I realised that you have to focus on what you have and not on what you don’t have-I have the fans.
Some might ask how did Teedra not know how many people love her music?
When God anoints you with a talent you just want the whole world to see that. I mean I still want to be out there on some major level not because I want to be famous but so a wider audience can hear me. It’s not that I did not know that I had fans it’s that I wanted to do it in such a way that we all went somewhere but I realised that you have to just keep going and embrace what you have.
That first album Complex Simplicity did it make it hard in some ways?
I feel it was a hard act to follow because you have to understand that the first song I wrote, arranged and recorded was on that album. I had never done a show before I recorded that album I was just unnaturally talented person but I was a baby as an artist. People like Lauryn Hill people were introduced after she had been on Apollo. All her life was singing, then she was with the Fugees-I never had all that experience. It did scare me a little and the first time I got on stage and I came off and someone was crying I was confused and thinking ‘what?’
Your writing prowess stands out explain that creative process?
I think that I am honest with myself and my emotions and it looks this way to me with some of the artists that I love the most like Mary J Blige. Pain pushes out beauty and pain is something that everyone can relate to. Early on learnt how to write out what I felt. Some people have the gift of performing songs I think I have the gift of writing songs really well. It’s funny I can sit here and try to have an argument or debate with somebody and get very flustered but in songs it comes out really easily for me.
So Cognac and Conversations-expand.
First and foremost I wanted people to know that I am grown. I did not want it to be some soft material-if you pick up a Sade album you know what you getting. I wanted people to know that it’s partly about my maturity but in a cool way. I wanted to push across every woman that I am; a strong woman, a soft woman, the broken woman, the healed woman, the victorious woman, the punch you in the mouth because I can’t stand you- I wanted all that to come across.
Lastly what’s coming?
I am doing some projects this year I want to do a live album but I am working on the next album as we speak. I would love to put out my album on my mother’s birthday but for sure the next project is a live project.
