Why He Thought New Album’s Title Would Cause Controversy – Billboard

Ahead of releasing his first album in additional than a decade, Smokey Robinson sat down with Billboard News to debate the artistic strategy of his newest effort, Gasms. 

The Grammy winner tells Billboard‘s executive director of R&B/Hip-Hop, Gail Mitchell, that Gasms was a laborious journey that took between five and six years to make. “‘Orgasm’ is the primary phrase I feel folks take into consideration. That’s most likely a very powerful one,” he quips. “I thought it would cause controversy, and people would say, ‘What is he talking about?’ and it did. People say, ‘What is it about?’ I say, ‘I want you to listen, and you tell me what it’s about. It’s about whatever you want it to be about. I left it like that.”

Spearheading Gasms have been Robinson’s two first singles, “If We Don’t Have Each Other” and “How You Make Me Feel.” The inception for the latter discovered him behind the piano, the place he whipped up the track’s melody. “I was tinkering around with the piano one day, and I just started to sing that to myself,” he remembers. “I wanted a modern-day sound to it.”

With a embellished profession spanning over 60 years, the revered singer-songwriter additionally spoke on the fiftieth anniversary of hip-hop. Having a fistful of songs sampled prior to now — most notably “Much Better Off” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for A$AP Rocky (“Jukebox Joints” ) and Kanye West (“Devil in a New Dress”) — Robinson expressed delight within the style’s progress. 

“I’m not surprised that hip-hop has lasted for 50 years because when we first started Motown, there were people saying this music is ridiculous and it would never work. There are always those people — skeptics. Those are normally people of a different age era.”

He later provides: “There are kids making some wonderful music and they always has been.”

Gasms is out now.