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Robin Thicke and friend

CR: So I've got some questions for you.

RT: Excellent.

CR: How do you feel about answering some of those questions?

RT: I'm good. Hey, you know, it's nice to get the attention.

CR: Good. Well, it's interesting you say that, because I've got a press kit here and was reading through it, and I'm pretty shocked to find out how involved you've been behind the scenes for a while now. And I feel like a lot of people are probably going to be in the same state that I'm in, as your name gets bigger and bigger. But before we get into all that, I was hoping maybe you could just kind of tell our readers a little bit of who you are.

RT: Well, my name is Robin Thicke. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and I've been making music professionally since I was 16. And I've written for a lot of different artists, and I put an album out a couple of years ago called A Beautiful World, and my new album comes out on Valentine's Day, and it's called The Evolution of Robin Thicke, and it's the best music I've ever made, and you got to buy it! There's my pitch.

CR: That's a good sales line. You mentioned producing for quite a few people. I know you've written as well. You produced for people like Mya and Marc Anthony.

RT: Yes.

CR: How did you first get involved in the production world?

RT: Well, I was a singer first and foremost, and when I was 7, 8, 9 years old, I was always singing and performing and imitating, you know, the great singers. And once I was 12 and 13 I started playing piano, and then I started writing my own songs. And by the time I was 16, I had a record deal and I was working on my own album for Interscope Records. I ended up writing a lot of songs for other people, because I was meeting producers working on my own projects.

CR: This is when you were 16.

RT: Yeah, when I was 16. So I had a great run there for a couple of years, and then my album, Jimmy Iovine felt, when I was like 17, he felt, "Ah, it's a B-plus album, you know, we'll put it out." And I was like, "No, no, no, let me go back to work. Let me try again." So years later I ended up just kind of ditching my own artistry because I think I was just afraid of the consequences of people not liking it. And then I woke up out of that shell years later and came and started just making my own album. And then I went back to Jimmy, he signed me again, and put out that album. And then when Pharrell was moving Star Trak Records up to Interscope, he asked Jimmy Iovine what's going on with Robin Thicke, because he was a fan of my music. And Jimmy said, "He's working on his new album. You guys should hook up." And now I'm on Star Trak Records.

CR: So you have a long relationship with Interscope.

RT: Yes. Interscope is a 12...Jimmy Ivene is a 12-year father figure, developer, you know, hero of mine.

CR: Right. Wow, that's pretty amazing actually. In your press kit there was something a little confusing to me...I have a copy of A Beautiful World here with me, but a lot of the press actually states that you have another album.

RT: No, no, they called it Cherry Blue Skies.

CR: Why is that?

RT: Because when we first did our press, the album was called Cherry Blue Skies, and then the album didn't actually hit the stores until eight to nine months later. And when it did hit stores I had written some new songs, about where I was at in my life, and what I felt the whole album represented was "A Beautiful World" as opposed to just "Cherry Blue Skies," which was one song.

CR: Interscope must have a lot of love for you to let you, to kind of shelve a release date and add some new tracks, and whatever.

RT: No, I didn't move the release date. They moved the release date because we were hoping to get more exposure before the album dropped. And then we never really got any higher than the medium-level exposure we were getting, and then by the time we dropped the album we didn't have much exposure at all. And you know, not to blame anything on the label, everybody did everything they could, and there was no saboteur, you know, it just didn't line up, and the music didn't connect enough. And it's my job to get back to the drawing board and try to make better product.

CR: Do you find it difficult to move away from behind the mixing console and bring yourself out to the forefront?

RT: You mean like performing?

CR: I suppose, performance and psychologically as well.

RT: It was for the first album because I didn't have the confidence in myself as a physical entity that I did as a musical one. You know. So I think when my first album came out there was a lot of judging and insecurities that came up. But it ended up being great material for the new album. And you know, that's what some of my songs are about, about appreciating the hard times and the breakdowns and realizing that sometimes that's where you get to clear up your goals and focus on what you really want.

CR: Do you perform live?

RT: Yes, I do.

CR: Will you be touring for this upcoming album?

RT: I will be touring, yeah. We're going to be doing a promo tour end of January and February, and then we're going to hope to join a big tour, or at least do a House of Blues tour in March. We're just going to try to go for it and get out there, and we feel like the more people that really see what I do live...because live...it's different than the album sounds.

CR: It's interesting that you've paired up with Pharrell Williams. There are, at least from my perspective, a lot of similarities in your backstory.

RT: Yeah, a little bit.

CR: Did you feel that connection when the two of you began...

RT: Oh, immediately. I mean we immediately had a lot of things in common. We're both artists, we're both producers, we're both songwriters, and he plays, he writes songs on the piano and keyboard and guitar, and so do I. You know, so there was a lot of camaraderie and an immediate understanding for each other's creative process, and, you know, he gives me space to create the music that I want to create, and when he was helping me I gave him space to be the genius he is. You don't walk in the room with Pharrell and tell him how to do his job.

CR: Did you feel that your appreciation for his music wore off on you stylistically, or did you feel like you really brought your own when you were working together?

RT: Oh, no, my music has always been very pure, and my goal has always been to look further inside and not at what other people are doing. And my goal for this album, my only goal for this album was to pretend that there were no other artists, there were no other musicians, and what would I write and what would I do if it just poured out of my heart, if I just opened my mouth and sang, what would happen. You know, as opposed to, "Oh, I got to be different," or, "This other guy just did that kind of a song." And if I just said, "F*** all that. Let me just see what comes out of my heart," you know? And it ended up being the most pure music I've made.

CR: One your new album, one song features Pharrell; the other features Faith Evans.

RT: Yes.

CR: Who else can we look forward to hearing you team up with?

RT: I did a record with Lil Wayne for the album, which I'm really excited about, since it's an up-tempo dance record. And him and I had a blast. We knocked it out in like three hours. It was just kind of an organic, meant-to-happen kind of thing. It was great.

CR: We actually interviewed him recently.

RT: Oh, great.

CR: Are you referring to the track on his album that you did?

RT: No, that one was on my first album, and he took that off of my first album and put it on his new album and rapped over it.

CR: That was "She's Gangsta" right?

RT: No, it's called "Oh Shooter."

CR: Oh, that's right. I'm sorry, "Oh, Shooter."

RT: No problem.

CR: It was the first track on the album.

RT: Yeah. No, I'm glad you even know "She's Gangsta," [that] you've even heard of it. I'm totally appreciative about everything nowadays. You know. My first album, I was always worried, what if people don't like it--what if this, what if that. Now I'm like, I only have a few months--you know, if it's going to fail--I only have a few months to enjoy it.

CR: Well, it's funny, because I'm actually...I am not that big of a LilWayne fan myself, but the person who interviewed him is, and...that track really stuck out for me, and I didn't know that you had produced it.

RT: Yeah. No, that was the first track on my first album.

CR: And you use "Mass Appeal. I mean, it's the Gang Starr sample...

RT: Yeah, I mean, we replayed it and changed chords. We took that feel, yeah. We took that feel.

CR: It's a really great song. I mean, it's a standout on his album as well.

RT: Yeah, that's what people have been saying. Thank you.

CR: And I hope they're smart enough to pump it as a single.

RT: Well, they're thinking about it. Him and I have been talking about performing together in the new year in a couple of places to help promote that song.

CR: How did you get so involved in the commercial rap industry or in the hip-hop community specifically?

RT: People tend to think that I'm just R&B or that I'm pop, or something like this, but you know, I grew up in the hip-hop generation, and hip-hoppers know that my music has hip-hop all the way through it, you know what I mean?

CR: Yeah, it's difficult to escape it, I think.

RT: Yeah, because it's part of my system.

CR: And the title of the album, The Evolution of Robin Thicke--can you give us a little insight, what that means to you?

RT: It really just has to do with the growth of a person who's learning from their mistakes with love and loss and drugs and sex and temptation and, and you know, you're trying to overcome the obstacles that life presents and trying to just be a better person, and that's what the evolution of my life is about and what all of our lives in the end, end up being about.

CR: Do you think a lot of those temptations were amplified by your upbringing in Hollywood?

RT: I don't know about that. I know that just about any rock star from just about any upbringing is hit with the same temptations, and there's a lot of fun and a lot of demons in those.

CR: I think you're right, we all sort of suffer from the same fundamental fall from grace.

RT: It doesn't matter where you came from.

CR: But you know, I'm just curious about being in Hollywood, and you having unlimited access to certain things that would destroy a lesser man.

RT: Yeah, but I was actually more of a studio rat. I mean, I threw some house parties, but I was just like a studio rat. I never went to the clubs, I never went out, I never went to social events. I was trying--I was working on my music all the time.

CR: And it seems to have benefited you.

RT: Yeah, and just like anything that anybody does, everybody thinks that these people should come out of nowhere. Trust me, they've all been doing it for 10 years, you know what I mean?

CR: It's true.

RT: That's [the way] it always is.

CR: That's what I was trying to say, especially at the beginning of our conversation. It's like when you really open the hood, and you're beginning to find out exactly how involved someone is, it can be a bit shocking.

RT: Yes.

CR: When their name is just beginning to surface.

RT: Totally.

CR: You mentioned earlier growing up in the hip-hop era, and I was reading through a lot of your press, and of course, a lot of people were sort of pigeonholing you as a blue-eyed soul. But I'm interested in how you really see your sound.

RT: I think anyone who says that it's like blue-eyed soul music isn't listening. Because that's not who I am, and that's not the kind of music that I listen to all day. I listen to rock and roll, I listen to Margin Gaye, and I listen to Jay-Z all the time. I think that the real music fans and the people in the music business like Little Wayne or Mary J. Blige, or Usher, when they hear my music and they're calling me, they're like, we know that you're doing something that's different. I don't mind blue-eyed soul, because it's the truth, I have blue eyes and I got soul, so what am I going to say? It's a compliment and I see it as a compliment, but I also see that people that are really listening would know that I'm trying to give them more than one type of music. You know what I mean?

CR: I do. I do, indeed. And I also think that what you're saying is especially true in our time, post jazz, and with the influence of reggae and R&B and blues, and especially after the sort of crescendo of hip-hop. At this point it's all music.

RT: And, well, not even that. But if I'm blue-eyed soul then so is Eminem . You know what I mean? He's got soul. I mean, the guy gets it, the guy knows the streets and what the word of the people is, and that's--and so did John Lennon, you know, and he was soulful, you know. And so was Kurt Cobain, and to me that's what soul is, is having a connection to the people and to the struggle, and the pain that people feel every day, you know.

CR: Despite your sort of disinterest in racial categorization, how do you feel when you receive any flack, say, for writing what a lot of people would consider to be black music?

RT: Oh, I don't, no I don't catch any flack. I mean, and if I do, you know I've never seen it or heard it. I think that, you know, the thing you have to remember is if you sell a million records, 250 million people didn't buy it. It's like, people tend to forget that…I just appreciate that the music that I make gives me hope, it gives me joy, it makes me feel good inside, it makes me feel like I've left something behind, that I've accomplished something. Now I would love for all 250 million people to hear it, but the reality is, 1 million might be the only amount that hears it. And I have to be willing to be happy with that, knowing that it just brings me peace and joy.

CR: Hmm. That's a beautiful sentiment.

RT: Thank you.

CR: Do you, well, where do you see this going for yourself?

RT: Oh, I see myself being fat and rich and powerful and lazy, and having a hot girl by my side and all that great stuff. And you know, and obviously doing what my music proposes to do, which is try to spread love and healing and hope and joy and righteousness and let people know that we're all dealing with the bulls*** and the demons and the hard times. But it is still a beautiful world out there, you know.

CR: It is in fact a beautiful world.

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