Weezer's Rivers Cuomo & Jermaine Dupri: The Billboard Cover Story & Video

Watch Rivers Cuomo and Jermaine Dupri behind the scenes at their Billboard cover shoot and read about how Cuomo redefined Weezer with Dupri's help on new album "Raditude."

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Part One: When Rivers Cuomo dons his Snuggie and writes songs for Weezer, he does it out of love for his fans. Really. Cuomo talks about Weezer songwriting and his collaboration with Jermaine Dupri. By Cortney Harding.

Contrary to what seems like popular opinion, Rivers Cuomo is not screwing with his fans. At first, it might be a little hard to believe. After all, Weezer tends to do things like play late-night shows in Snuggies emblazoned with the band's name and make music videos featuring a cast of YouTube stars in hopes of creating the ultimate viral clip.

But on Weezer's new album, "Raditude," Cuomo is nothing if not sincere in trying to appeal to listeners: It features a number of tracks that adhere to the band's tried-and-true pop rock formula as well as collaborations with Jermaine Dupri, Lil Wayne and songwriter Dr. Luke. Released Nov. 3, the set sold 66,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan.


"'Can't Stop Partying' is in contention [to be] another Weezer single," Cuomo said on camera during the Billboard cover shoot (see the full behind-the-scenes video above). "I love [the song] so much, it might be my favorite song on the album so I want to put it out there as a single... If we do, of course it's gonna have a dope video." "I heard that," Dupri chimed in. Video interview by Evie Nagy.

"My goal is to make music that I love and that my fans love," Cuomo says, sitting on a sofa at a hotel in midtown Manhattan. "The thing that bothers me most is people think I am intentionally trying to piss off the audience."

CUOMO/DUPRI COVER SHOOT PHOTOS | LISTEN TO FREE WEEZER ALBUMS| LISTEN TO FREE JERMAINE DUPRI ALBUMS

Cuomo adds, "It's been the case since our first album that people thought we were just being sarcastic and ironic. When I wrote 'The Sweater Song,' to me it was a very sad song about depression, and people heard it on the radio and thought it was hysterical. Then I wrote 'Beverly Hills,' a very sincere song about my cravings for notoriety and celebrity, and everyone thought I was making fun of the Beverly Hills lifestyle."

Cuomo says that one of the biggest inspirations for the collaborative nature of the new album came from Weezer fans themselves and their response to the Hootenanny tour, formally dubbed the Troublemaker tour, where fans were asked to come onstage and play songs with the band. "It was so fun I wanted to keep the collaborative process going, and I started calling other musicians up and asking them to jam," he says.

Butch Walker was one of those musicians, and he just so happened to live down the street from the Weezer frontman in Los Angeles. "I walked over to his house and we started talking about high school reunions," Walker says. "We looped the idea back and forth on the guitar for a few hours and came up with 'The Girl Got Hot.' "

Walker says that on another occasion he brought some old Meatloaf albums to Cuomo's house. "Rivers wasn't familiar with Meatloaf, and he loved the idea of coming up with something that had a crazy, long, parenthetical title," he says. "The end result of that was '(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To.' "

Dupri might not have lived as close to Cuomo, but he's been following Weezer's career since the '90s. "I wrote the song 'Can't Stop Partying' one night, and in my mind, I had always been a big Weezer fan, from the 'Buddy Holly' song they did with that video and 'Happy Days,' " he says. "The things Rivers was saying in that record caught me-'What's with these homies dissing my girl'-he was talking my type of language on a rock record. It was something that always stayed with me."

Dupri says Cuomo's ability to write across genres was what convinced him to work with Weezer. "One night I was messing around writing songs, and this idea came and I was like, 'It'll be perfect for Weezer because they talk that language, they speak like I do, but to a different crowd,' " he says. "It doesn't come off exactly the same but basically they are the same words. I immediately asked if someone can get the song to Weezer."

Until "Raditude," Cuomo had written all of Weezer's songs either by himself or with his bandmates. He usually didn't write while touring; instead he waited until he got off the road before working on new material.

"As a songwriter, I usually have to do a lot of revision to get the exact right tone," he says. "The first draft can sound too cliché or ironic or just be off, and I have to keep moving things around. I struggled with that on the first single, '(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To,' because the lyrics are very sweet, but I wanted to give it some edge."

Cuomo's songwriting process has changed throughout his career. "When I was starting out, I wrote more stuff in just one shot," Cuomo says. "Now I'm able to walk away for a week or two and then come back and pick it up and rework it."

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