Jessie Reyez stopped by the Billboard office to chat about her forthcoming EP, the intimacy she feels when singing in Spanish and her VMA-nominated song “Gatekeeper.”
Speaking of future music plans, Reyez told Billboard, “I’m gonna be releasing songs every few weeks, so that’s something I’ve never done. I’m excited to do that.”
“For my upcoming EP, you can expect truth,” she shared. “You can expect human. You can expect flaws. You can expect just being human. There’s a collab coming with some very beautiful, strong women.”
Reyez also discussed singing in Spanish, revealing that to her, it feels more intimate. “To communicate through music in Spanish, it’s cool,” she said. “I learned English when I went to school, so up until when I was four, five, Spanish was it. To me, salsa sounded beautiful in the house, and cumbia sounded beautiful and bachata sounded beautiful, and merengue sounded beautiful.”
“And then I started to take pride in it,” she continued. “Pride in the difference, pride in the fact that I still have my native tongue, pride in the fact that my skin is brown, pride in the fact that what salsa is to me, what cumbia is to me, what it does to my heart.”
The singer also opened up about her song “Gatekeeper,” which was recently nominated for a VMA under the video with a message category. The track tackles the sexism and misogyny she faced in the music industry and, as confirmed by Reyez in May of this year, was inspired by producer Noel “Detail” Fisher.
“It felt so real to me to see something that was such a negative thing in my life, such a negative experience turn into a positive, turn into something that’s like sparking a discussion, I felt honored,” she said of the recognition the song has received. “Obviously, I think there’s a lot more to do. There’s a long ways to go, a lot more things that people could do to push the movement forward.”
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Watch the full interview above.