Interview: Lloyd Talks Making His Most Intimate Music Yet, Going Independent & The Murder Inc. Days

The ATL singer is back with some of the most sincere music he's ever made.

Lloyd press shot
Publicist

Lloyd press shot

Lloyd press shot

If you’re not plugged directly into the R&B scene, you might not have thought about Lloyd Polite Jr. for a little while. He’s an artist that’s always been on the periphery of breaking through into the mainstream consciousness like an Usher or a T-Pain – but never quite made the full transition to becoming a part of even your parents' pop culture lexicon. Lloyd’s best shot was with the Andre 3000 featuring and Lil’ Wayne narrated 'Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)', a 2011 song that climbed the charts in at least 14 different countries, even managing to hit number three in Australia – a country notorious at the time for being less engaged with R&B music, particularly when EDM-influenced tracks completely dominated the charts.

But in May of 2016, Lloyd dropped his first single in five years titled 'Tru', which would subsequently be followed up by an EP of the same name in December of that year. Upon his return as a totally independent artist free of the label backing that he'd been used to, there was something different about the New Orleans-born and Atlanta raised singer; a brutal honesty, openness and sincerity that he’d never revealed to us before. For those who forgot about Lloyd, 2017 is the year to scramble back onto the bandwagon.

The singer's brand new plan was, that if he was going to release music with less money, people and resources, he had to give fans a single song with the strength of ten. “The only way I knew how to do that, was to just really make it about myself. To make it about life in general, and all the realities; the beautiful realities in life, in my life,” Lloyd says. Delving deep into his own psyche, he came back with a song that addressed his absence from the game, how he was making ends meet for his family, and even opened up about losing a child to an abortion. But letting it all out, and unveiling what he calls his “perfect imperfections” was therapeutic: “I think it started to redefine what music was for me. The satisfaction it gave me, it started to redefine what I wanted to be in the eyes of the people I love the most,” he says.

It’s a cue that he took from the artists that have continually inspired him. “It seems like most of the people who I enjoy or have enjoyed are taking a more introspective approach to their music now,” he says. “I don't know if that's just me or something, but I just feel like people are saying ‘this is my most intimate work to date’ now. This is a personal record of mine, that I'm sharing with my fans, ” Lloyd adds. It’s an astute observation for an artist that’s been around the game since 1997 – many artists that came up at the same time as Lloyd are still making the same hollow music they were making in the early 2000s. Or even worse, they’ve embraced the turnt up trap vibes of the new generation and are hamfistedly aping a genre that many are already growing weary of.

Having avoided that route altogether, Lloyd sees what he’s doing as a throwback to singers and songwriters that gave all of themselves to their fans – including more recently, Bob Dylan, an artist he says depicted the human experience better than anyone else. “All of my favourites growing up did something that was about them, but it was bigger than them,” he says. Back then, artists connected with their audience by making them feel like we were all going through it – something that rappers and singers today may have lost sight of. “It affected so many others. It shows that they cared. And that's what my approach was with making 'Tru',” Lloyd says.  

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

The singer is acutely aware that keeping a disconnect from your fans can be one of the biggest mistakes an artist can make. Lloyd knows the feeling of going from being surrounded by people you’re sharing the experience of fame with, to being completely isolated from everyone. “You get to a place where you can afford the gated community, you can afford the guards and the security, you can afford the agents and managers to be a buffer between you and the things that make you uncomfortable,” he says. But he recognises that the majority of people that are listening to this music don't have those luxuries. “They have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable a lot of times. And I think that that's really what artists are kind of searching for as well; is to be in that with the people, with their people.”

Taking that leap, and baring his soul wasn’t an easy process though. “I was hesitant, and I was anxious because I didn't know where 'Tru' was going to survive on the radio,” he says. But in the age of streaming, there was a whole new challenge on the horizon that he wasn’t sure he was prepared for – on top of the stress of laying his soul bare. Even so, with a quick look at his Spotify streams, you’ll see that his biggest single ‘Dedication To My Ex’, a worldwide radio smash, sits at just over 20 million plays.

And yet ‘Tru’, a song he released independently, clocks in at almost 22 million. It makes a case that an artist can take risks and still have things pay off if they can engage their core audience in exactly the right way. “It makes you want to do more like that, it makes you want to give more of yourself, it makes you want to represent something that is not so selfish in nature,” Lloyd reflects. “It showed me that when you put feeling into things, people will respond. They will identify, and they will champion it, they will respect you more for it, and they'll feel like you respect them in return.”

 

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Lloyd believes that it might just come down to timing as well. “I think [‘Tru’ is] so reflective of the human experience in this day and age right now more so than it was when ‘Dedication’ was released because not only am I going through shit, but we all going through shit out here,” he says. “Fuckin' political shit, social shit, economic shit. It's like it's all building up, building up, building up and it's like, how do we release this in a positive, constructive way?” For Lloyd, that way is making music, and for many of his fans, it’s listening to it.

And with songs like ‘Tru’, he’s making a reach for something much longer lasting than he ever has before. “Even when the ‘Get It Shawtys’ might not wanna do those dance moves anymore, or they ‘Dedicated It To Their Ex’ two years ago, but now they're in love, they're married, they’re happy; they don't even exist in that space anymore,” he says laughing. “‘Tru’ is somewhere where we can always go to, because I think that it's always around every corner. To work on yourself, go through some shit, and have to kind of evolve with the times.”


Part of Lloyd’s own evolution was his journey from a member of pre-teen boy band N-Toon to his killer run as part of Irv Gotti’s The Inc. Records. Staying with the Murder Inc. gang from his initial signing in 2003 until his departure in 2009, the six year period ended up providing lessons on lessons.  “I think that what I've learned so far is that relationships matter. That the music business is made up of people. And they matter. People matter. Every person matters,” he says. And while there was some bitterness at the end of his dealings with The Inc. that seems to have now resolved into mutual respect, Lloyd is still very thankful for what the label were able to give him during his formative years as a recording artist.

“It was freedom. It was also school in a lot of ways. It was like college,” he says. “They let me write my own songs, they let me pick my own songs, they let me produce with my friends from home, they didn't try to remodel me, they didn't try to dress me up a certain kind of way, they didn't give me songs to sing and lines to recite,” Lloyd explains. “They didn't give me extra teeth for my extra fake smile that they wanted me to wear; it was just like just ‘do your thing and we’re gonna put the money behind you’,” he adds. The Inc. allowed Lloyd to be all the way himself from the beginning, and that’s perhaps the reason that he’s so easily been able to transition into being such an authentic voice in R&B.  

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

And while it seems like a lot of Lloyd’s next pursuits will fall into the realm of keeping it all the way real, he still maintains that there’ll always be a place for turning up and tuning out. “Sometimes human beings don't want to dwell on the shit that drives them crazy. Sometimes we want, escapism right? We wanna be able to go out, get drunk, smoke some weed and forget about the bullshit,” he says.

The idea of leaving everything all behind for at least one night is all too relatable – in fact, most people call it the weekend. But Lloyd is firm on the fact that music exists in a constant state of duality: “The next morning we have to come back to reality. That’s the only way we can really become successful. Otherwise, we become dependent on things that are not good for us,” he says. And while his new focus is connection, honesty, sincerity, and reality, he says there’ll always be a place for that escapism too. “You move to it, to get through it. You gotta go in it, to get around it almost - it's weird how that works,” he says. “I think that'll always have a place, and especially as long as people are still oppressed, as long as they feel misunderstood or underheard, undervalued, absolutely. Absolutely.”

Lloyd will be performing at the Men of R&B Tour in July. You can get more info here and dates are below.

Thursday 27 July – Trak Lounge, Melbourne

Friday 28 July – Metro Theatre, Sydney

Saturday 29 July – Max Watts, Brisbane

Sunday 30 July – The Gov, Adelaide


 

Latest in Music