Former 'America's Got Talent' host lets us in on what he has in the works musically & chats about his latest single, "Hold On."
You have a new single out. Is this leading up to an album?
With the music business today, it's not about a project. You're going to put out music. It's about the experience. It's about being engaged with the artist with streaming and with whatever platforms I feel I can release my music on. You don't have to go through an album cycle. For me, as somebody who is such a diverse artist… I put out an R&B mixtape last year, but then my EP is called College Spring Break Summer Fall Back. It's real fun, more party, radio type music. In between that I'm dropping a mixtape called Model Music that's more introspective, but still has a club/dance vibe, but almost emo. My album ultimately is called W.O.R.D.S. It's an acronym. It's spoken word mixed with hip-hop and everything. I'm putting all these projects together so by the time I get to the album, it's a culmination of everything that you've heard from me over the past year or year and a half.
So in a year or so you're doing an album, an EP and a mixtape?
A couple of mixtapes. I remember Future dropped something like two albums in two weeks one time. You can do things now where you just have a body of work. That's how I see things. You know what will be the big tent poles. The EP is gonna be something we focus on, but in between I’m always going to want to deliver music to certain types of fans and through several platforms, and obviously once the EP has a certain amount of attention, you start thinking about, OK, when are we going to drop the next major project? It's truly a journey. Like in the game of Monopoly, you've got houses and you've got hotels. I think of the mixtapes kind of like the houses and the bigger projects like the hotels. We're going to cover the whole board. We're going to take over, and I'm going to collect my $200 when I pass go.
Are you going to experiment with not just digital stores and the typical streaming services, but try other things as well?
Yeah. Content in general is interesting. I've been really intrigued by digital marketing. I just did a deal with YouTube where I sold them a feature film called King of the Dancehall, which is a music movie that we will be releasing music through as well.
[I’m interested in] Spotify, Apple Music, to even me being the CCO at RadioShack. Trying to put the radio back into RadioShack. Not even put it back, because I don't think it ever really left. It's more about projecting it out there and actually turning it up because those days of Tower Records and Sam Goody are no longer. That was the place where you could actually engage with your artist by doing in-store experiences and hear about new music. We have 2,000 locations in all of the neighborhoods across America. We are your neighborhood electronic and media store when you think about it. We sell everything that you can play music on from my Ncredible headphones to cellphones to speakers to CD players. You have your Apple stores and even your Best Buys, but we have that community vibe where we can connect the artist to the consumer and bring music into the experience. Whether it's streaming or in person, I've been developing a lot of things in that, using my radio background and tapping into some key relationships to bring something big across in 2017.