“I didn’t have that click moment I literally fought through the process. Up until its release, Sullivan was wracked with uncertainty. I had never really gone through it to that degree,” she tells. I don’t know if I’m a better me!” It triggered an intense writer’s block lasting years. I felt like people were expecting a better me. I had an internal pressure to come back, and by that time it had already been three years. “I was feeling like I had to make something amazing. With six years since her last record, the critically acclaimed Reality Show, Sullivan felt apprehensive. “The fact that I got to include my friends and family in this – their experiences, knowledge and vulnerability – that’s what makes it so beautiful to me.”īut the process of making it was far from straightforward. “This project is really just about life as a woman and finding yourself, trying to love yourself and owning your power,” the 33-year-old explains. Losing your love in “Rashida’s Tale” leads into elegiacally selfish “Lost One” wanting a wealthy partner in “Precious’ Tale” becomes yearning “The Other Side” boy-crazed “Ari’s Tale” is followed by bouncy, self-sacrificial “Put It Down” and the sultry duet with Ari herself, “On It”.
Spoken tales introduce the characters studied in soaring tracks.
“I’ve been all of the girls,” says R&B musician Jazmine Sullivan, reflecting on her latest project, the 14-track conceptual EP Heaux Tales, which looks at love, sex, and relationships through different women’s lenses.