Gray's Day - Macy Gray - Interview

From childhood pip-squeak to singer whose label dumped her to extraordinary pop phenomenon, Macy Gray is living the real rise of Little Voice.

By now the story of Macy Gray's swift climb from clubland's first lady of neo-soul to international phenomenon has shot across all media, all musical lines: a career on speed-dial. After a false start, when she was signed to Atlantic Records but subsequently dropped, the former USC film school student and divorced mother of three from Canton, Ohio, arrived on the scene in July of last year with a debut album and much positive word of mouth. By the millennium's turn, that record, On How Life Is (Epic), had proved the buzz to be pure bedrock. A funky slice of Sly Stone fused with Prince's libido and the underground's coolest beats, the record has broken an artist who ought to have defied easy marketing, especially in a year dominated by the twin towers of teen and Latin pop. This January, when she was nominated for two Grammys, one for Best New Artist and the other for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, it might have been merely the capper. But Gray's story is one that seems to need hourly updates as the chapters continue to unfold in this extraordinary work in progress. Her voice has been compared to the animated squeak of Minnie Mouse, but her life is more like that of Mighty Mouse. We spoke to Gray the week after her Grammy nominations were announced.

ALISON POWELL: How is the news of your Grammy nominations settling in?

MACY GRAY: It's crazy. A lot of things have been changing since then. At first I was just happy. I was honored and it was a trip because I didn't expect it. Now a lot of new stuff is coming up because I got that nomination, so it's pretty wild.

AP: What kind of stuff is coming up?

MG: Well, my record sales, for one. And people calling me up wanting to give me clothes and shoes and more and more stuff.

AP: Isn't that funny? When you are doing well and you don't need the free stuff, it always comes. You appeared this year in a Calvin Klein ad. Have you always been into fashion?

MG: Yeah, I always liked off-the-wall stuff. Stuff people wouldn't expect you to wear. I love real colorful stuff, like outlandish wild prints and furs. Shit nobody else wears.

AP: What do you think people would expect Macy Gray to wear?

MG: I don't know what the public perception of me is right now. Originally, I was just this underground girl and kids who bought bootlegs and went to shows at the clubs or bought tapes off the Internet knew about me.

AP: You've had a really amazing year. How did it look twelve months ago?

MG: Well, it started with a crazy huge fight with the producer of my record. We were in New York mastering, and we had this real bad fight over the sequence of the album. That was my first big event of 1999.

AP: Then what happened?

MG: Then I spent the whole year getting used to being on a label and traveling and just working again. And getting used to all the new people in my life. You put a record out and you get a whole new clique of people that hang around you. I think I sort of settled into it now. I'm just trying to figure out if I want to be a celebrity or if I want to be a good underground star or just a really talented and gifted artist.

AP: Do you feel like you have much control over that?

MG: I think you do. I have discovered that a lot of people who become celebrities, or notorious, or really famous, do it on purpose. That doesn't happen by accident. But I think you do have to make your mind up about what you want to be.

AP: In your Grammy nominated song "Do Something," you say, "I'm the latest craze." Is that how you feel?

MG: Well, "Do Something" is about a dream. And in it I am the latest craze. I am a superstar. I wrote that song way back when I wasn't even signed yet.

AP: So you did want to be a star.

MG: Yeah, back in the day.

AP: But your story Indicates that your career was accidental.

MG: It was kind of accidental in the way that I started singing. I just met this guy who asked me to be in his band. And then after that I wasn't really grown-up enough to be consistent, to just get up and work at it every day like you have to if you really want to make it. I also stopped and had a family and I wanted to make movies. I was distracted a lot.

AP: You studied screenwriting. Are movies still a passion of yours?

MG: Yeah, I am working on a script as much as I can.

AP: What is it about?

MG: It's a love story. It's good.

AP: Is that your favorite kind of movie?

MG: I really like movies that are about being human. And I love crime stories. Shoot 'em ups, like mob flicks.

AP: Now that the buzz on you has turned into a roar, how would you say that you lived through the buzzy stage of your career? Was it hard to be the next big thing?

MG: No, the whole time that this all was going on, we've been on the road, so I haven't had time to look in the mirror and realize how fascinating and talented I am. [laughs]

AP: The singularly childlike quality of your voice is one of the main features people mention when they talk about you. In this era of polished, studio-perfect divas, do you think the climate was right for a Macy Gray?

MG: Yeah, I definitely think music needs me right now.

AP: Besides your singing voice, your songwriting voice is also distinctive. Your music is very sexy, even graphic.

MG: Sex is a part of your everyday. I don't think it's really appropriate to be afraid of it because you are a woman. As a girl, you are conditioned that you are supposed to be the emotional one, and you don't talk about sex. You sit down and cross your legs. But in real life you wake up everyday and you want and need affection. That's such a part of you. I think if we didn't have a taboo and all these reservations about women and sex, maybe women wouldn't be so confused about their place in relationships.

AP: Your music borrows a lot from blues and soul, but you also really like rock music.

MG: Love it.

AP: How did you get Into it?

MG: When I was a kid, rock music was considered white people's music. Where I went to school, no one listened to it. It wasn't cool, you know? And then I went to boarding school where it was just the opposite. It was all white kids, racist white kids.

AP: How did you end up there?

MG: I took a test and I qualified to go. I think there were twelve black kids in the whole school. At all the little dances, we'd have just rock and roll or pop music. This was in the '80s, so everybody listened to a lot of Stevie Nicks.

AP: What do you mean the school was full of racist kids?

MG: Most of the kids had never been around people from other cultures. So they would say or do things that weren't always respectful. I don't think they realized it was offensive because they were never exposed to anything other than their own kind of society.

AP: Why did you leave the school?

MG: I got kicked out. I got the boot.

AP: What did you do?

MG: Well, I wasn't that good a student. I would cut class a lot, but I was real smart so I could always pass. I used to be in detention all the time and one day I was sitting there with my dean just talking and joking around, and he put his hand on my leg, like trying to feel me up. I told on him, and then a couple months later I was told that my grades weren't good enough. My grades were fine, but that's the excuse they gave me.

AP: Did anyone do anything?

MG: My mom went up there and everything, but it was a weird place. Boarding school is a weird, weird spot. You've got all these old teachers in there just hanging around, they have all this access to young kids and the parents are far, far away. Anything can happen. It ain't really the place to be. I tell everybody that.

AP: Was it important for you to get out of Ohio?

MG: Yeah. I was really curious as a kid and I have always been sort of unable to sit still. Canton is a real laidback town. There is not a lot going on and there is not much to do. So I definitely wanted to get out of there.

AP: Do you feel more pressure now that things are going well than you did before you had as much to lose?

MG: It's not pressure. I am just curious to see where all of this is going to take me. Maybe we'll see what kind of person I am going to turn into and I want to watch my kids grow up. That will be fun. Maybe I'll meet the man of my dreams; I am just wondering who it is. Stuff like that. I am still just blown away. Everything is not all tied into my career.

AP: Life is like a screenplay. How does the story turn out?

MG: Exactly. I am just curious. What's next?

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