Ella Mai: "I do not know the last time an R & B artist has been recognized by the British" | The music

Ella Mai knows how to be a pop star, so much so that Boo 'u Up, the ubiquitous R & B of the singer from South London, has made her the first British artist since 1992 to rank ranked first in the US R & B rankings and earned him two Grammy nominations this year. However, she also knows what it feels like to be a fan. On tour, her booth offers lyrical booklets, designed so that the audience of the time of streaming can relive the endless hours she spent during her adolescence, devouring the incrustations provided with her favorite CDs. After the first night of her tour in the UK, Ella met some of her fans: girls mostly, rather young. One of their mothers took Ella by the side and said, "Thanks for taking the time, she had a difficult year."

Ella always thinks about it all the next morning while she is sitting cross-legged on her hotel bed in formal wear: blue hat, orange hoodie, big smile. "It gives me a lot of satisfaction knowing that girls can look at me in the same way as Lauryn Hill or Alicia Keys," she says. "It's a great feeling to know that I can have such an impact on someone."

The fact is that I'm starting – and I'm even surprised to see Captain Buzzkill appearing at the beginning of our interview – realistically, all these kids will never realize their dreams. They will not have several nominations for prizes, nor a billion times, nor albums selling gold, nor a tour with Bruno Mars. They could continue to have difficult years. "Well," Ella agrees, "it's the hardest thing, it's something I'm still trying to understand, to be honest."

If a theme defines the success of Ella Mai, it is to understand things as and when. At a time defined by the siren call of streaming service algorithms, many artists find that true creativity is hard work without reward; Added to this is the fact that the music industry is largely based on happy accidents, which were then considered deliberate master plans, and it is even more refreshing than Ella Mai makes no effort to present the Boo'd Up's success as remote premeditation.

The reality is that the song, which does not really look like 2010 at the R & B of the early 2000s, was doing a lot of demos for years. Ella badumes that other artists might have ignored this idea. its producer and label owner, DJ Mustard, shares an A & R with Rihanna. In any case, Mustard only erased the song when Ella and he put the finishing touches to the three albums. "Mustard just discovered it at random," recalls Ella. "He said," Do you like that? "I said," Yes. "

The recording of the song, which took place late at night, has no magic or drama, because that's when Ella works best, in the studio, in the presence of a sound engineer. "I know you want to hear an exciting story," laughs Ella. "It was just another session. I registered it and the EP was finished. Such a boring story. "

The truth, I suggest, is never boring. None of us seems particularly convinced. Anyway, Ella's third EP came out, and her slow-growing fanbase, built through support slots with bands such as Kehlani, did not spark any fervor. "We still had a lot of hope," Ella said today. "[Mustard] never told me, "I do not know if what we are doing is right." He is blocked by his first feeling towards me. Fortunately, it took us somewhere.

That's true. Ten months later, a clubber asked Boo's Up at the Bay Area's Big Von DJ, who spoke to Rolling Stone and summed up the crowd's response in the following manner: "I saw a fat guy doing a wheel, a solid wheel, he did not even fall down. Security comes to me: "What's that that mess?"

The song is widespread. Nicki Minaj and Quavo jumped on a remix. Rihanna, far from darkening Ella, listens on Instagram. By mid-2018, after more than a year, Ella's success at slow fire had become inevitable. Last year, during a photo shoot, Ella received a phone. On the other end of the line, there was someone who had just called to say that he liked Boo "d:" He started talking and I heard. I thought: 'Wait … & # 39; I do not know who I was waiting for, but I really did not expect Stevie Wonder. "

Last Christmas, Wonder presented Ella on stage at a charity event where they played superstition together saying, "She made me want to go home and do some things. And guess what? I did it. »Write a song? Defrost the freezer? Hard to say. Anyway: "Probably the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life," Ella shines today.

What would have seemed unlikely to Ella Mai to tackle the hotspots of south-west London, such as Mitcham, Merton and Wimbledon Chase in the early 2000s. Let's just say that tourists who will participate in future sightseeing tours of Ella Mai will not participate in the most exciting afternoon of their lives. (Ella's summary: "It's very residential and then … nothing.") She would play football on Saturday and Sunday, she would be at church with her grandmother, a pastor in a Pentecostal church. Ella's parents had separated when the children were young; Ella said that when it came to raising Ella and her older brother, Miles, "mom did all the work."

The names Ella and Miles give a glimpse into the intensity of their mother's pbadion for jazz greats and Ella's tastes have expanded with the arrival of her first iPod.

When Ella was nine, her mother found a job in the United States, which brought her to New York. She hated him there. "At age 13, you still try to find yourself," Ella said today, "but I felt so different, and I was the only one to have an English accent." Then here it is to new: "I learned not to think too much, and try to understand as and when. "

Finally, the family returned to the UK and Ella got a place at the music college. Somewhere in her mother's house is an old paperchase notebook containing Ella's first ideas. "I will probably look back and say," Oh my God, what was I doing? "" She laughs. "But at the time, I took it everywhere I went. It was like a piece of sacred equipment. These days, she writes song ideas on her phone.

In 2014, a university friend introduced Ella to a producer, who knew in turn a budding third singer. The producer suggested a group of girls. "Three or four girls, it looks like a headache," recalls Ella. "I thought," Good God, no. I will not be part of a group of girls. "

Cut to X Factor 2014 and Arize, three pieces London, performing a ballad of empowerment Little Mix. There were four yes at the first audition, but bootcamp was less nice, and that was all. This says more about The X Factor than Ella that the only success of the show in recent years involves a person who has not even been able to go to concerts.

I ask Ella what she thinks Simon Cowell meant when he said to Arize, "I think you're real." what he wanted to say, she laughs. "Probably that he was trying to give the impression that he really cared about me."

Ella is still in touch with one of her comrades from the Arize group; Fans of reading between the lines may be interested in noting that Ella says her main teaching of Arize was: "I have more patience than I thought."

While he was working in Topshop's flagship Oxford Street store ("It was like a zoo"), then at the House of Fraser's Aveda dealership ("A different type of customer – not as polite "), Ella encountered labels where everything they suggested ended up being too pop-based. "It's not me," she says. In any case, said Ella, she had always dreamed of signing with an American label. "My mother never understood why I said that, but the biggest example I use is Estelle. I loved her even when I was little and I always wondered why she had gone to America. Then I did my research and I started to see a model for R & B artists in the UK: there is a ceiling. You reach a certain point and either you pop or you disappear.

Finally, the right kind of interest came via an Instagram message from Mustard, who created his own label. Ella does not know if she was the only singer ever to be approached by Mustard, but between 2015 and 2016, she would fly to Los Angeles. There was no contract. "I could have been completely baded up," she agrees. "I would have simply been able to record demos for him to give to someone else. He would sit and watch.

There are lessons to be learned from Ella's success: the development of the artist is important, patience is paramount, a single song can totally change the career of an artist. Plus, sometimes the best way for a song to succeed is to bring it out. "Boo'd Up is a very innocent love song and we missed it for a long time, especially in the R & B world," says Ella. "It's a clean cut. No swear. People have chosen it somehow. you must give people what they want. "

Asked about her pbadions outside of music, Ella responded "just for the empowerment of women", which led her to mention her support for #MeToo's move, and then for R Kelly's recent documentary, and on the first wave of people trying to boycott the series. supplanted by "now that people are looking at the docuseries and going out and saying," You know what, we should not have waited so many years for these women to go out and be heard. "

It makes me wonder if she had any qualms about working with Chris Brown on the otherwise brilliant album track Whatchamacallit. Ella talks about the separation of art and the artist and explains that she does not share everything Brown has done. (This interview takes place before the series of Chris Brown titles that were published at the end of January.) She adds, "In situations where things have happened and people have paid their dues, that's a good thing. 39 is a bit different, if you compare to R Kelly's situation. "

We continue to talk about Ella's tattoos (one is a lion – unfortunately, not the chocolate bar); her French bulldog, Thierry (she supports Arsenal, the dog is currently following an obedience training because of his "wickedness"); and his favorite book, The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, who inspired Ella's 10,000-hour track. We agree that his label manager, Dijon McFarlane, takes his credit to qualify as Mustard.

In the immediate future of Ella, there are the British (she is nominated for the British breakthrough prize) and the Grammys, where Boo'd Up is nominated for the song of the year and for the song R & B of the year. "I do not know the last time an R & B artist was recognized by the British," Ella said cautiously, but we'll see. Hopefully the success of Boo's Up has shown the British industry that R & B is still alive and that there is plenty of room for that, but that it takes time. She is more optimistic about the success of the Grammys, or at least she says is. "I think I'll win both," she decides. "You have to talk about it, right?"

At the end of our time, I will say that it will be interesting to see how Ella's influence will spread in music over the next year. "Even if you say it's the weirdest thing to hear," she gasps. "It's like, my influence! It's crazy. It's exciting for R & B music, she adds. "It's important and it was needed, and I'm glad to have been part of it." As to whether the approval of the Rihannas and Stevies let Ella now feel as if she was part of the pop establishment that she only once knew as a foreigner she pauses for a moment.

"It's strange, it's surreal to think that they are now my peers, technically outside, I'm one of them, for me, I'm just Ella."

The eponymous album by Ella Mai has been released on 10 Summers / Interscope