Fantasia’s press run continues to get more interesting.
Last week, she told Hope King and Brad Smith of Cheddar that her highly-anticipated song with Brandy and Jazmine Sullivan will no longer appear on her upcoming album, Sketchbook.
This week, the vocal powerhouse visited Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club for a candid interview. The interview opened with Fantasia expressing her excitement about releasing her new album independently.
Co-host Angela Yee then proceeded to ask Fantasia how she was able to leave RCA Records. Fantasia responded by reflecting on her last album, The Definition Of…, which debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200.
“When we did that last album, I don’t think nobody was invested — not me and not them either — because it was garbage,” she said. “The fans knew, too. It was just like, ‘This is not the Fantasia we know.'”
DJ Envy followed-up by asking what made the album garbage.
“They just started throwing records at me and it just didn’t make no sense,” said Fantasia. “It wasn’t anything that I could relate to. I knew the people weren’t going to relate to it. That’s when I knew then, ‘Okay, it’s coming to an end.'”
Envy then asked Fantasia why she recorded the songs if she wasn’t feeling them, especially since she had been in the industry for a while.
“When you’re on contract, what else you gonna do when that’s the only way you can eat and make your money? You got to deliver and I didn’t want to be blackballed. I played Chess, not Checkers. I did what they asked me to do.”
In Rated R&B’s 2016 interview with Fantasia, she hinted at her label not really investing in the album.
“The most challenging thing is when you hear a sound and you want something so bad and you need certain things for it. Thank God for the relationships because there were a lot of times when we needed certain things or we wanted to bring in a live band,” she said. “When you call the label and you tell them that, it’s like, ‘We don’t have the money for this…we don’t have the money for that.'” That bothers you when you’re in the studio and somebody tells you, ‘we don’t have the budget for it’ or ‘we don’t believe in it.’ That can be frustrating.”
Even though the label didn’t invest much into the album, Fantasia told Rated R&B the album “represents real music.”
Fantasia’s new album, Sketchbook, will arrive on October 11 via Rock Soul, Inc. It will include her previously released tracks “Enough” and “PTSD” featuring T-Pain.
On October 17, Fantasia will kick off The Sketchbook Tour. Her R&B colleagues Robin Thicke, Tank and The Bonfyre will join her as supporting acts.
Watch Fantasia’s full interview with The Breakfast Club above.
