Last year, Japanese soul and R&B phenomenon Nao Yoshioka
broke several industry molds when the U.S. re-release of her 2016 album The
Truth (her third record in three prolific years) received overwhelmingly
positive reviews across the board, making her the first Japanese soul singer to
cause major waves in the birthplace of the genre. Rolling Stone had called the album
“impeccable neo-soul” and the lead single “I Love When” had jumped to #32 on
the Urban Adult Contemporary Billboard chart, signaling that American audiences
were eager for the earnest, soulful style she was bringing.
But the fact that Nao had not produced a new album in two
years at the time betrayed an underlying creative discontent with the already
substantial success she’d achieved up to that point, both in Japan and on the
international festival circuit. “All these amazing things had happened with my
music career in Japan” she reflects, “But between who I am and who I’m expected
to be, I had completely lost my way.”
That restless yearning for personal authenticity would serve
as the catalyst for Nao to take bold action and relocate herself to the U.S. in
2018 to make her name in the place where the soul and R&B that she’d been
singing her entire career had originated. The result is her much-anticipated
fourth album Undeniable (out 08/16/19 on SWEET SOUL RECORDS), a record that
celebrates that universal existential moment of coming back home to the core of
oneself, rediscovering one’s own intrinsic and undeniable true nature after
losing it somewhere along the way.
“The journey from my last album to here, it's like I was
kind of reborn in a sense, I needed to throw away everything that I had become
at that moment. I had to face myself, talk to my heart and ask myself who I
really am and what I really want. So that's why my new album is about those
undeniable feelings. Because I needed to know what I most desire, and what my
desire wants me to do.”
With this universally relatable concept of undeniable as the
starting point, Nao worked side-by-side with her long-time producer/manager and
SWEET SOUL RECORDS CEO, Naoki Yamanouchi, to break the larger message into
smaller constitutive themes around which the individual songs would be
composed. Each appropriately titled track represents a distinctive component of
that undeniable true self that Nao could no longer deny. For example,
“Boundaries” is an upbeat track encouraging us to transcend the social divides
that confine us and to surpass our own self-imposed limitations that keep us
from becoming who we want to be; “Liberation” a song about how fear compels us
to make mistakes in life, with a powerful message that we should not live
fearing our future, but rather, live like we have already achieved it in order
to liberate ourselves from fear; “Celebrate” a song about celebrating diversity
of love, and accepting one’s differences as strengths: and “Up and Away” an
empowering track about starting over fresh in a new place. Fourteen tracks,
each celebrating a unique avenue of self-rediscovery.
A dream-list of producers and musicians was curated to align
the perfect musical collaboration for each theme, paring Nao with producers and
musicians who resonated with the message behind each song. In addition to
bringing on key collaborators from her last album like Musicman Ty, producer of
“I Love When” and Khari Mateen (Jill Scott, The Roots) back at the engineering
helm, Undeniable adds King of Indie Soul, Eric Roberson, Lorenzo Johnson
(Ledisi, Maysa), Chris Dave and The Drumhedz keyboardist Daniel Crawford, and A
Touch of Jazz production team alumni and Grammy-winning producer Vidal Davis
(Ne-yo, Usher) to the lineup. The album also features young and upcoming
producers/artists like Devin Morrison and Kiah Victoria.
“I would always write down the concept first and break down
all the messages,” says Nao. “I’d come with some lyrics or some ideas and we
would listen to the demo tracks, then construct the melody and the lyrics
around that. That’s how “Invest in Me” and “Liberation” were done in
collaboration with Eric Roberson. Other times, like when working with Musicman
Ty, we’d just write it all from scratch. The workflow for each track was
entirely different depending on the artists or producers that I was working
with for that particular piece.”
The album’s lead single, “Got Me”, produced by Musicman Ty,
is what Nao refers to as a “grey-area love song of mixed feelings” that is a
departure from her typically positive outlook on love. The song describes a
doomed relationship plagued by codependence and the inability to leave someone,
even when deeply hurt, because one can’t find the courage to be alone.
“When I write love songs, I typically always talk about the
positive side, but I wanted to dig into my painful past because of the concept
that I have undeniable feelings. And it’s a reminder that undeniable feelings
are not only on the positive side. I think, when we struggle, we don't struggle
with a black and white, we always struggle with the in-between. And we often
cannot decide which feeling to go with."
Nao’s commitment to the philosophy of making this album
truer to that grey zone of organic human experience also translates to the
production element of Undeniable. While the previous album only used track
sound, this one needed to be a combination of live instrumentation and gritty,
cutting-edge digital beats. Nao felt the need for a live musical element for
its ability to “come straight to my heart and make me feel something when I
listened to it, but at the same time, I needed to have a strong, driving beat.”
As such, tracks were programmed by the talented pool of
producers, then vocal and instrumental elements were recorded live at the
legendary Philadelphia studio, MilkBoy the Studio, a site that is historically relevant as the epicenter of the
Neo-Soul movement of the early 2000’s, and was originally opened by SalSoul
cellist and Philly Soul legend Larry Gold. Several tracks were reconstructed
live in The Studio with members of Philly favorite duo Killiam Shakespeare and
some string arrangements composed by Larry Gold himself.
“Philadelphia is a very special place for me because it’s
the first city that I performed in when I came to the United States as a
professional artist. Since then, I always work with Philly musicians whenever I
perform in the United States, so I feel there is a strong connection. In
Philadelphia, I love the musicians. I love the sound. And recording at The Studio is one of the
things I've always wanted to do. And it's finally happened.”
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