Jussie Smollett marked a breakthrough in 2015 when the TV series Empire debuted, launching his career after working in the industry for years, earning Emmy and Grammy nominations, and even getting a record deal with Columbia Records.
The anticipation had built around Smollett and his fame, with feverish fans constantly wondering when he would release music apart from his Jamal Lyon persona.
But the songs never came, and Smollett said he had to break away from the Sony label to finally have his voice heard.
“I was sitting in a room full of old straight white men, playing them the stuff that I’d put my heart and soul and my pain and my joy in and they’re telling me what piece of that should be heard by the people that it actually was created for. I’m like, ‘Well that doesn’t feel like freedom’,” Smollett recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.
“And it was in that meeting that I literally was like, ‘I gotta go, I gotta go’.”
Early March, Smollett finally put out his debut album, Sum Of My Music, releasing the 10-track set independently on his own label, Music of Sound.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” the 34-year-old said, sipping tea with honey comfortably propped on a bed at a hotel in New York City. “There’s no huge company behind me. … Every single cent that’s going into this is mine.”
Jussie Smollett with guest star Mariah Carey on an episode of Empire. Photo: Filepic
The album opens with the personal song Insecurities – what was it like writing and recording that?
It kind of talks about the good things I hear people say about me, and the bad things I hear people say about me. And it’s just how you let that affect you.
I just always go back to first season (of Empire). I remember hearing that the network had a meeting with my reps on how to handle my sexuality. And I’m just like, “What the (heck)? Like, why the (heck) y’all meeting about that (nonsense) and I’m not on that call?” And furthermore, “Why do we have to have a meeting about that?”
Jussie Smollett’s debut album Sum Of My Music comprises 10 tracks. Photo: AP
How do you feel like you’ve grown since Empire premiered?
I want to say that I believe in myself a little bit more. I think that after the first season, if I’m being honest, my self-esteem kind of did a dive. … I had been myself my whole life but I wasn’t used to … the scrutiny that came with fame and that came with being a part of a phenomenon like Empire, but also being a part of a phenomenon that is Jamal Lyon.
He’s a groundbreaking character and I was kind of thrust out there. And everybody just wanted to talk about my life, and everybody wanted to know what I was doing. And everybody had these expectations of what I should be, how I should be, who I should be seen with, what I should be doing, who was I dating, who was I (sleeping with).
And I just wasn’t used to that. … I know that I believe in myself much more now. I’m much more certain of what I want, and how I want it.
You starred in 1992’s The Mighty Ducks – what goes through your head when you think about that moment in your life?
That was four months in the freezing cold in Minneapolis. One thing that sticks in my mind specifically is I remember going to Prince’s nightclub that he had, and performing there when I was nine years old.
At night?
Yeah. (With) my siblings and Brandon Adams, who played my older brother. Don’t ask me why or how, I don’t even remember how. I’d have to ask my mother.
Was Prince there?
I don’t think so.
Well, you never know with him.
You never know. I think that, I remember someone say, “Oh he’s up in the balcony.”
I remember it being freezing cold. And then honestly I remember over the last years how, whenever Mighty Ducks would show on the television, I knew that … six weeks later I was about to get a US$400 cheque, my residuals.
And I’d be calling up SAG (Screen Actors Guild) telling them: “Uh, run that cheque, run that cheque!”
Those were the days when I had US$17 in my account and I had to find US$3 to deposit, so I could take a US$20 out. – AP
