Ledisi - Turn Me Loose (2009)

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Ledisi - Turn Me Loose (2009)

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Ledisi wanted to make a few bold artistic changes this time out. But just before she started work on her sophomore Verve release, Turn Me Loose, she hit a wall. The singer-songwriter had a bad case of writer's block that stretched for six months. Ledisi was petrified as she tried to figure out how to follow up her 2007 Verve debut, Lost & Found. The album garnered strong reviews and two Grammy® nominations, including one for best new artist.
"It was the pressure of coming back after all the success with Lost & Found and trying to figure out, 'Who am I? Who is Ledisi now?'" says the New Orleans native. "Before, I wondered do people get me. Now it's like, 'Ok, we know you. What are you gonna do now?'" A friend gave Ledisi an album to check out, hoping the music would start the creative juices flowing again. It was Buddy Miles' 1970 soul-rock classic, Them Changes. "I had never heard it before," Ledisi says. "Once I heard it, I wanted to be able to be free on the new album. On my previous album, I was contained a little bit. But I said on my next project that I was going to be off the chain vocally. I promised to be more honest and talk about stuff that people don't like to talk about. I've always done that. But on this album, I went for everything." Inspired by the freewheeling music of Buddy Miles, Ledisi now had a direction. But she decided to push herself even further by reaching out to different collaborators, something she hadn't done before.
"Usually, I just come in, like 'I want this. Take that out,'" Ledisi says. "This time, I laid back a little more and that was new for me. I wanted to go for the ride. It was frustrating, because everybody had different energies and I had to adjust. They weren't crazy. I felt crazy," she says, laughing. "But I made myself go through the different changes." Acclaim from Lost & Found boosted Ledisi's profile in the industry. So she was able to secure some of urban music's most respected producers, including Grammy® winners Raphael Saadiq and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.