As Jazmine Sullivan prepares to perform across the nation for the Heaux Tales Tour, she collects another gold plaque from the RIAA.
“Girl Like Me,” the fan-favorite duet featuring H.E.R., has earned sales of more than 500,000 equivalent units. It’s the second song from this era besides “Pick Up Your Feelings” to achieve RIAA success.
Released days before Heaux Tales last January, the Bongo ByTheWay-produced cut garnered warm reviews.
It tackled, as Rated R&B worded, “self-disdain and desolation” from bad boys influencing them to be unselective in their decisions with future men.
In Rated R&B’s interview with Bongo ByTheWay, he discussed how the limited production served as the key ingredient to their collaboration.
“That record, to me, is the definition of less is more. I didn’t even attempt to put drums on the song because it was so good. I didn’t want to overproduce. I didn’t want anything to take away from what they were saying,” he explained in Rated R&B’s Board + Pen series.
“This is an amazing song that people needed to hear, the same way people needed to hear [Cardi B. and Megan Thee Stallion’s] ‘WAP.’ I say people needed to hear that because we need to hear things that push the envelope. ‘Girl Like Me’ is the antithesis of ‘WAP.’ It’s the other side of the coin and those girls needed to be heard, too.”
“Girl Like Me,” Sullivan’s top-played song on Spotify, is one of many wonderful tracks from her Grammy-nominated Heaux Tales project.
She recently expanded the work with ten new songs. One of the best deluxe tracks is “Hurt Me So Good,” helmed by DZL, Akeel Henry and Luca Mauti.
On Valentine’s Day, Sullivan will kick off her Heaux Tales Tour in Vancouver, British Columbia, with special guest Tiana Major9.
Heaux Tales has helped Sullivan gain nominations at the following award ceremonies happening this year: NAACP Image Awards (four nominations), iHeartRadio Music Awards (two nominations) and Grammy Awards (three nominations).
Revisit Jazmine Sullivan and H.E.R.’s NPR Tiny Desk (Home) Concert performance below.
