Zinc is essential for helping heal wounds. Just as the trace mineral is vital for our well-being, Gallant’s third album, Zinc. (stylized with a period), was critical for him to create.
In one regard, it was cathartic. “I needed to make it to get to the next level of existence in order to get through a bunch of heavy emotional weights,” the 32-year-old tells Rated R&B over Zoom on a late summer afternoon, wearing a charcoal denim shirt and a pitch-black turtleneck.
Emotional burdens aside, which we’ll later discuss, Gallant was also driven by his desire to assemble a body of work that he could appreciate as a music fan. “I was, and still am, a kid who waits for the new release and listens to it top to bottom,” he states. “There are all these little ins and outs of what it means to get somebody’s album and listen to it. I wanted to be in service of that person that I am.”
Zinc. is Gallant’s first full-length album since 2019’s Sweet Insomnia, his final project under Warner Records. After exiting the major-label system, he returned with his Neptune EP via EMPIRE in 2021.
Before its release on Sept. 27 via Mom + Pop, Zinc. had been chilling on ice for over a year, signaling marking a change of pace in his creative method. “Zinc. is the project I’ve taken the most time between finishing and releasing. Usually, I finish and put it out right away,” he shares.
The Columbia, Maryland, native started working on Zinc. knowing that it would be some time before it was released. He was not bound by a label contract, allowing him the flexibility to create at his own pace and rate.
“After I finished Zinc. in the middle of 2023, I knew it wasn’t going to come out for a while,” says Gallant. “I had a lot of restless energy. I was just in a very weird place. My constant state was being on tour. My other constant state is working on a project and being in release mode to a really unhealthy degree. I don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not doing that.”
Listening to an episode of a podcast he loves helped recalibrate his thinking. “They helped me get into this mindset of creating from a place of sowing the seeds. In my experience, it’s always been like I’m driving the car and fixing it as I’m driving it. So I had to get into the zone of doing a bunch of side missions and planting seeds.”
While Gallant let Zinc. incubate, he ventured on a few creative quests. First, he flew to Alaska to work with producer Ralph Castelli on a new side project. (Castelli also produced “Crimes of Compassion.” from Zinc.)
While there, Gallant started discussions with LA-based musician/producer Terrace Martin about collaborating on music. “He brought up working on a couple of songs. Then we had an idea to just make a project,” states Gallant. The outcome of their collaboration was Sneek, a joint EP released in November 2023. “It helped me get into the zone of making something with no expectation. It was just focused on the music,” Gallant says of Sneek.
After completing Sneek, Gallant started another project with his longtime lab partner, Stint. Their creative chemistry traces back to Gallant’s Grammy-nominated debut album, Ology (2016), where the Canadian producer helmed most of the tracks, including “Weight in Gold.”
They also worked together on Sweet Insomnia and Neptune. “At this point, this was my third collaboration project since Zinc. was finished,” Gallant recounts. “We were just making this whole different concept of a record.”
One of the pieces constructed during those sessions was “Coldstar.,” a trancelike song that wistfully evokes the longing to revisit a memory. It ended up getting placed on Zinc. and released as the lead single.
“After I heard that song, I was like, ‘This kind of could fit perfectly,” he notes. “It somehow came back full circle.”
For Zinc., Gallant worked closely with producer Ariza, who produced 11 of the album’s 12 tracks, with additional input from Stint, Baiko, Ralph Castelli, and Lophiile.
Zinc. is a natural synthesis of DNA extracted from experimental R&B, alt-rock, breakcore, indie-pop, and the dimensions in between. Each song is a compound composed of different properties from a mélange of genres. “It’s really hard for me to categorize what it is in almost every song,” Gallant admits. “Some songs have more on the scale of one or two genres than others, but I think it is all very cohesive.”
Beyond Gallant’s majestic vocals, the album is a masterful display of his evocative songwriting skills. His sharp pen operates with complex simplicity, affording listeners the option to choose how deeply they want to be immersed in the stories.
Gallant previously shared a basic formula for the album. He wrote on X, “My new album Zinc. has: 3 songs to dance to, 3 songs to make love to, 3 songs contemplate life to, [and] 3 songs to fully dissociate to.”
Even though the album is profoundly introspective, Gallant was mindful of how much of himself he poured into it. “I was afraid of making an album that was so self-indulgent and so heady that it was just not enjoyable or there are no songs that you can just enjoy and sink into,” he divulges.
Zinc. opens with “In a Nutshell.,” which is like a prologue that sets the tone for an arduous journey ahead. Vignettes of isolation, longing, dissociation, and agony intertwine in the abyss. Ghostly harmonies keep him company as he prepares for a quest. “I’m searching for something to feel,” he asserts.
Vulnerability flows through the album’s every pore as Gallant wrestles with internal and external conflicts that have caused painful side effects. “Sticks + Stones” holds a mirror to self-destructive behavior that has left him secluded.
“Siberia.” sounds like it was made in the heart of the Arctic Circle, with frostbitten lyrics about being emotionally unavailable in a relationship. “If you need some cold comfort, I’ll be here all night with an icicle shoulder,” he sings.
A chilling sensation breezes through songs like “Centigrade.,” featuring Nao, which examines a love losing its heat — but it’s not completely frozen over. It underscores the cyclical nature of relationships, like changing seasons (“Can’t say it’s springtime forever.”)
“Fly On the Wall. (Osaka Version)” is deliberative and regretful. Guilt buzzes through Gallant’s mind after his venomous words inflict pain on a partner during a heated argument. “I really wanted a song like ‘Fly On the Wall.’ to exist because I love ‘Do You’ by Ne-Yo, where he’s just telling this whole story all the way through. There’s no bulls**t of songwriting. But then I love the jungle music from the PS2 [and] Sega Dreamcast era.”
In Gallant’s interview with Rated R&B, the Grammy-nominated singer discusses Zinc. in more in depth.
In January, you set sail on Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite Cruise. How was that experience for you?
It felt like a vacation, a reunion, and an extraordinary experience to be with so many people I look up to. Obviously, Maxwell is one of my biggest inspirations, falsetto-wise [and] song craft-wise. He couldn’t be a nicer person, honestly. Outside of hanging with Maxwell and doing the show, [I was] with my friends, having fun playing basketball on the courts. I brought my parents too. It was honestly awesome.
Did you preview any music from Zinc. on the cruise?
“Atoms.” I even played that at Maxwell’s show in Dallas that I opened for him. That song live is special to me.
You posted on X that Zinc. is your best album. What makes you feel that way?
I think it’s the best of the things I love about other bodies of work I’ve done. When I listen back to Ology, there’s things I wish I could fix. In some songs, my vocals sound weird, and I’m like, “I would’ve sung that differently.” I can just see the potential in it. I liked how specific and unpolished a lot of the stuff was.
Before that, I had an EP called Zebra. I liked how raw everything was. Everything sounded so messy that the sheen of filth gave it cohesiveness. My second album, Sweet Insomnia, [has] a lot of polished songwriting, even though some I feel were a bit too compromised. I could hear a bit of a major-label influence in some. Structurally, everything is really sound.
For Neptune, I focused on cohesion. I was like, “I’m going to think about one bucket I really like, find myself within the songs, and take some stuff, from a songwriting perspective, I learned from my second album and apply it.”
For Zinc., I really nailed the aspects of the songwriting. The writing is specific. Sometimes I’m like, “Why did I say that in the song?” which I like because it means I’m being as raw as possible. As a music listener, I love when people are baring their souls. This album has a lot of that. I’m happy I stopped and started something new. With this one, I said things that were hard for me to say. I put things together sonically that I really wanted to hear. I worked with Ariza on the production of the whole album. It’s hard for me to categorize what it is in almost every song. Some songs have more on the scale of one or two genres than others, but it is all cohesive.
You mentioned that Zinc. feels like “an even bigger personal triumph because I had to admit to myself I can’t do it all alone.” At what moment did you realize this, and how did you cultivate that support system?
It was slow and over time. If you’re grounded in a mission [to] make music that is enjoyable, that has an audience that can be found and isn’t so inaccessible that it’s impossible to enjoy yourself, then having people around you who have the right balance of art and commerce [is important]. Coming out of a major label system, which works well in a lot of respects, for me, it was a label that was going through a lot of changes rapidly. It was also a label I didn’t have the most connection with beforehand. I was with a label [Mind of a Genius Records] my friend owned that gave me a lot of genuine support but then got sold. So it was tough. Even though the people there are great, it’s not always a perfect fit.
Coming out of that and doing a project independently — I worked with EMPIRE on my EP Neptune. That was great; I just thought that I shouldn’t be in charge of budgets [and] all this stuff. It was realizing, “OK, this situation wasn’t the best fit for me. This other situation wasn’t the best fit for me for different reasons.” So, it was making sure I had people around me — everyone from my label to my agents [and] publicists — aligned to that emotional connection and focus on building a community that doesn’t look for what’s hot but what resonates with them. It was a slow process. It’s like going to an antique shop to decorate your crib. You don’t want to just go to Ikea and get everything. You want to take a year or two to find little pieces, and then all of a sudden, you have a space that’s unmistakably tailored to you.
What creative mindset were you in when making “Sticks + Stones.”?
That was one of the few songs that I produced myself, in a way — that and “Fly On the Wall.” I started those ideas and took them to my friends to help out with. I kept hearing that opening line in my head [and] slowly built around it. That song took the longest to put together. I kept coming back to it every couple of months.
Sonically, it represents how I wanted to forge my own identity with the record. I was getting outside of myself production-wise. That helped me lay the groundwork for how genreless I wanted everything to feel. Lyrically, it’s, “What can I say and get off my chest in a way that the delivery could be sexy? But also, I’m saying very vulnerable things in a not-very-bravado way.”
In “Centigrade.” featuring Nao, you sing, “Can’t say it’s springtime forever,” which reminds me of the line, “You know it’s winter somewhere but it’s springtime right here” in your 2018 track “Gentleman.” Were you thinking about that song when making “Centigrade.”?
I definitely was thinking about “Gentleman” a lot. I was thinking about the color palette of “Gentleman.” It’s obviously a very different formulation. “Centigrade.” was made the first day I met Ariza. I wanted to make something sexy and more rooted in R&B on the alternative side. [For] “Gentleman,” I pulled up a beat and was like, “I want to write this very straightforward sex jam, but I want to put bits of ambiance and experimentation around it.” For [“Centigrade.”], it was the inverse. I was like, “What’s something I could be talking about that kind of references the aftermath of ‘Gentleman’? What can exist in this same space [and] what can I do to give it a different twist that’s also more in the headspace I’m in?”
What sort of headspace were you in at the time?
[When] I met Ariza, I had been working on “Sticks + Stones.” on my own [and] “Crimes of Compassion.” with Ralph Castelli. There were bits coming together that were in a more alternative space. I was thinking about how to give everything more of this flavor because I’m like, “This is definitely part of the ingredients I want the whole record to have.” Ariza is a brilliant guitarist. He’s trained in jazz and plays a bunch of instruments. He can put things together in a way that’s so unexpected. The more he was putting together “Centigrade.,” the more it felt very cosmic [and] mystical.
I wanted to stay away from too many electronic things for this album. I embraced a lot of hard synths [before], but this time around, it didn’t connect to me as much as figuring out how to get these very plucked, almost Appalachian-feeling things working in a more experimental way. The more that filled out with “Centigrade.,” it was easy to see a landscape that was very cold. Lyrically, there was a level of coldness, but not completely irreconcilable. It just felt like a cold spell that you have to get through.
Earlier, you mentioned how much you love performing “Atoms.” Can you talk about what went into making this song?
I love music from the ‘80s, and it was hard to figure out how to work something with that flavor into the record. There were songs I had written that were in that same world. It didn’t feel as authentic as I wanted it to feel, but I liked the overall ideas. It was a lot of stuff about heartbreak, pleading for things to come back together but being unable to make it happen on your own. From a sonic perspective, I wanted to find a way to put those together in a more experimental way that matched the rest.
At this point, I had finished 70% of the album. “Atoms” was one of the later songs that I added. I felt like I had the freedom from an elemental aspect to be like, “These are the pieces I really want to try to make into something. Is it possible to do it?” I wanted to start with some driving beat that felt like something you can move to but also felt a little off. You don’t know where the beat is, but you can move to it still; that excited me. Then, you take the sounds [and] replace it with more Prince-y, slightly more authentically ‘80s sensibilities, and let the beat do whatever it does, even if it doesn’t make sense.
[Lyrically,] I’m just like, “What would I be saying in this zone feeling the way that I feel now, having gone through these other things on these other songs of the album?” “I’m splitting atoms for you” kept coming into my brain. That whole song took probably the least out of anything that I wrote because it just assembled itself in that way. It came together so quickly. It had all the emotional beats that I wanted. That’s why I love [performing] it live. Even thinking about it, I get these weird chills of excitement. I love how catastrophic it is. I love how exaggerated it is.
You conclude Zinc. with “Lucid.” What was your intention with rounding out the album with this track?
I needed to get a lot off my chest. There were other songs in that world that I wrote. I didn’t put them on the album because I don’t want this to be self-indulgent. I want it to be enjoyable to listen to. Even “Lucid.,” I shortened it a decent amount and reworked a lot. That’s one of the songs where I kind of did it a little more for me on the scale. It was a tough time writing this whole album, especially when you’re trying to find the people around you who can give you support. There’s always some little stupid voice in your head that’s like, “Maybe you’ll never find anybody that’s going to give you support. Maybe there’s something wrong with you.” It’s a lot of unnecessary negativity. Putting it at the end, I think, was another thing that was in service of me trying to cater to my own music fan. [I didn’t want] to force people to listen to this song in the middle of the record.
You shared how so much pain and passion went into making this album. Did you find any healing during the process of making Zinc. and is there anything you learned about yourself from that experience?
It was a painful process because I was scraping the bottom of the barrel, not in terms of quality, but my ability to keep being joyful, willing to be experimental, and taking risks with it. It would be more comfortable to coast in and do something that satisfies whatever checkbox. At the same time, I wanted to make sure I was making music, like my first album, where I needed to make it. I needed to make it to get through a bunch of very heavy emotional weights.
I would rather make it, put it into the world, and sing it to audiences that were able to derive some positivity from it rather than it just sits on the computer. I want to make something that other people can find as a gem and feel like, “This music gets me in a different way than other music does in a very specific way that I can’t find anywhere else.” It’s hard to detach from that vision. It was a very painful process to be doing that [and] being in a moment where I felt like I had no support at all. I didn’t have a label or anything. I knew I had to improve on certain aspects of my situation to get where I wanted to be.
When did you feel like the pain started to go away?
I finished the record first and then did a label deal, which was something I felt strongly about. I was like, “I really believe in this for myself. I know that if I can be real and authentic and make something that hits all of those marks, I know there’s still stuff that people can enjoy and resonate with.” To find the right label partners who loved the music, understood the vision, and slowly built the team around me from that point, I started to feel myself healing a little bit.
It was painful to go through that patch of uncertainty, especially when I can look back in the rearview and see all of these different situations that I was in. It was a series of very distracting emotions that it was difficult to silence and just focus on the work throughout. I was trying to remain passionate and authentic the whole way through. That was literally how it felt, just pain and passion. I think I’ve definitely healed a little bit by finding the right people around me. I feel like the real healing is going to come when [Zinc.] lives in the world and when I can tour it and meet people who connect with it. Or maybe it’ll never come. Maybe I’m chasing the dragon; who knows.
