In a new interview with Zane Lowe, Robin Thicke said that Jay-Z helped him finalize the tracklist for his upcoming album, On Earth, And In Heaven.
Thicke told Lowe that he was originally going to ask Andre Harrell to help him finalize the tracklist as he was finishing the album. However, after the music executive passed away late last year, Thicke reached out to Jay-Z to help him figure it out.
“Well, actually, because I didn’t have Andre to help me with the final track listing, I reached out to Jay. And I said, ‘Hey, I don’t have Andre. Would you mind stepping in this time to help me with the track listing?’ And Jay gave me the greatest A&R advice,” Thicke said. “Went through each track, sent me a little note about each track. And the good thing was, I didn’t even tell him because I was kind of sure I didn’t need two or three records, but I sent him all of them to see if he said the same thing. And he said the exact same thing. ‘You don’t need these three records.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I’m on to something.’ And so that kind of sealed it for me because I needed one other opinion that I respected that much, to give me that last sign that I knew I wasn’t crazy.”
In terms of the album’s title, Thicke said he was about to call it “Gorgeous,” but decided against it because it didn’t speak to the project’s content accurately enough.
“Well, I had a working title for a while and – Oh, it was just Gorgeous. The working title was Gorgeous. It was nice. And there’s a little intro on the album called ‘Gorgeous.’ Because it was about just appreciating the beauty in my son, my kids, my lady, my mom. That I have enough around me to enjoy this. But then my close circle was like, “We just think there’s something more powerful than what this album says. Gorgeous doesn’t speak for the album.”
Jay-Z has been making headlines as of late, after he was named one of the 2021 nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He also appears alongside Nipsey Hussle on the soundtrack for Judas and the Black Messiah, with the song “What It Feels Like.”
Watch Robin Thicke’s entire Apple interview with Zane Lowe here.
