Ryan Leslie knows that his self-titled album seems to have just hit store shelves. And, in a way, it did. It was less than a year ago that Ryan Leslie was released to critical acclaim and plenty of buzz. But when inspiration finds you, you are almost driven to create — and inspiration found Leslie.
“It took a year to convince the company that there was a demand for what I had to offer as an artist,” Leslie says of his first release. “I was going to just continue to promote that album, but it was during my rehearsals that I met someone who inspired the beginning of this album.”
That “someone” moved Leslie to the point that he pursued her for months and began writing music about his affections for her.
“I spent the whole summer chasing her all over the world and writing this new collection of songs,” he says. “That’s the story of why this album is coming so quickly on the heels of [the] self-titled album.”
Leslie allows his inspiration to be his driving force, and while he understands the commercial mind-set of the industry, he is more focused on using his creativity and finding his muse before creating music.
“There are any number of motivators for people to write the songs that they write,” he acknowledges. “A lot of the motivation comes from the success of other [similar] songs that have hit it big with similar subject matter. I understand those motivations — those just don’t happen to be my motivations.”
His motivation and inspiration took on an entirely different format this time around, and Leslie stretched his creativity and tried his hand at filmmaking.
“This is actually the first time … that I’ve written an album inspired all by one person. The story and the context of all the music was so compelling that I actually enlisted a director by the name of Tajh Stansbury and I pitched him a concept to actually shoot a documentary style film,” he explains. “I’m really into the visual medium and I’m not sure how films are going to be affected by this online technology, but I just want to be at the forefront of it.”
–todd williams
