You’ve talked on a variety of topics in your songs over the years, including love and relationships, but everyone likes to touch back to your song “Play.” Can you speak to the process of your rebranding and what initiated that?
First of all, and people laugh when I tell them this, “Play” was actually a very powerful song, I just didn’t articulate what I meant by it well enough. If you listen to “Play” it was a song where the man was telling the woman I want you to be happy. I want you to get yours, this is about you. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to touch you? This is strictly for you.
When [Mr.] Collipark gave me the concept of it, he was like Banner don’t scream because you’re so aggressive. He told me to say the stuff that women really want to hear. I have a song on my new album that’s called “Cleopatra Jones,” and it talks about a very conscious, smart woman who still loves to get her freak on, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I had so many women that said they love “Play” but they don’t listen to it [out]loud; it’s sort of like a guilty pleasure.
I think part of it is in the Black community anything very sexual gets a lot of backlash from people.
And these are the same folks that’ll be going to the bathroom at their jobs getting it on.
Right, and I think, when I heard “Play,” I wasn’t offended. I was younger so maybe that was part of it, but I’m looking at the lyrics now and you really don’t degrade a woman in terms of calling them out their name or anything; it’s really just more of a sexual song. Maybe if it was in the context of marriage it would’ve came off different, but even then…
That’s not what I wanted to say. That’s not the reality of where we live and what we’re doing right now. We have to research. One of the other things that happened to American society in the late 1800’s, they became enthralled with romance novels and we got into romanticism, and romanticism is not real. You’re not going to meet Fabio. He’s not going to be on top of the mountain and you’re not going to be on the mountain climbing and bump into Fabio. That shit is not realistic. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the reasons why we have so many divorces and have so many problems in relationships, it’s because we’re not real. We try to be romantic, and that’s not real life.
I’m not saying that your man shouldn’t be kind to you, that’s not saying that your woman should not do things for you, but most of the stuff that we want from people, you never got that in real life anyway. And if you did get it, you got from some motherfucker who barely had money, don’t work everyday or he a gigolo or that’s what he do for a living is to run women, most men or women don’t have time for that shit. And it doesn’t exist.