This article previously appeared on Audiomack World.
Babyface has given the world twenty-plus No. 1 hits as a producer, songwriter, and singer. He is one of the key R&B artists of our lifetime, reimagining the love song and establishing himself as the special sauce for R&B greatness.
Despite his legendary status, Babyface approaches creativity with grace and a checked ego. To him, with close to five decades in music, the greatest blessing is still being in-demand. With that, his latest effort Girls Night Out is a mission statement, showing off the newest generation of women in R&B. It’s his “Waiting to Exhale 2.0.”
“Rather than just writing the songs, I collaborated with other producers and the artists themselves in terms of writing,” Babyface tells Audiomack World a few weeks ahead of the album release. “It gave it a different experience and flavor, which allowed each artist to have their own thing. Girls Night Out is really more about them than it is about me. They’re very independent and have a good idea of who they are, and what they should say. It made it easier than having to tell someone who they should be, or how they should be. The biggest thing I could say, as a producer and writer, you have to leave your ego out of the room. If I’m pushing myself onto it, I don’t get them at all.”
Girls Night Out is a beacon of light, with songs featuring Kehlani and Ella Mai, and others, their phenomenal tones driving R&B towards an expansive future. “R&B is so far from dead,” he says. “The fingers of R&B are stretching out to so many places. R&B is changed. It means something different, but the actual feeling of it, that whole beat and groove, it’s alive in so many different people and artists.”
On the real measure of a hit song… If you base a hit song on numbers, there’s a lot of songs that wouldn’t be hits. But if you go to a concert and hear everyone singing every word to a song that wasn’t a single, but was just a track or a B-side, who’s to say that’s not a hit song? Not everybody necessarily knows it, but your fanbase knows.
No matter how big a song is, everybody in the world won’t know it. If you want to base hits off of numbers, you can, but the biggest thing is when you go to a concert and you see thousands of people singing every word. That’s a hit song.
On feeling out a hit record… I can love how something feels, and hope everyone else loves how it feels as well. To this day, I can’t say, “Oh, I heard this and knew it was the one.” You can have songs with the biggest stars, and it still won’t work.
Nothing is ever automatic, and it’s timing. When people are ready to feel and hear something that feels right, it’s hard to know when that is. You can’t guess it. If you could, some artists would never go away. That’s not the case.
On TikTok’s influence… That 10 seconds they poured their heart into, that snippet, made people listen to the whole song. TikTok has made certain things go viral and the best example is, I just talked with students at USC and Patrice Rushen is the professor there. She’s a great jazz and R&B artist, and had a record out years ago called “Forget Me Nots.”
A piece of that hook went viral. From that, now Patrice is going back out on tour next summer because it reminded people of her as an artist. I would argue social media can do good things, and there’s good and bad, but it does connect people to music they would’ve never connected to.
On compromise with collaborators… It’s a hard line to walk, but I think that part of it today is, I’m not completely aware of what [new artists] should say and how they should say it. I was able to learn new things about how people say things, melodically and lyrically. Learning the flow of R&B today. The biggest thing is letting people go for what they wanna go for, then if it doesn’t work, you can show them another idea.
On staying open when collaborating… Collaborating with younger producers, and with these younger artists, and hearing their voices and being a musician instead of being a teacher [helps me] keep my mind open. Feeling what feels good. I’m not taking a position of, “If it’s not how I do it, it’s not right.” That’s not the approach.
On staying inspired… I love working with artists and collaborating. Life, whether it’s good or not, music is one thing you can always go to. It’s healing. For me, the art of being able to still do music today and not be put in a bubble where I can’t work on certain things because of how long I’ve been here… Doors have been opened for me to work with younger artists who still wanna work with me, that’s my blessing.
On keeping a level head… My greatest teacher? Staying cool when there are problems, and be forgiving so you don’t hold negativity inside you. We all go through things, and for the most part, whenever things happen, rather than get all mad, you gotta keep rolling. That puts you in a place where negativity doesn’t seep into your creativity.