He says, “Lucky, I have the ear for notes and am able to decipher notes. Self-taught on the piano, Gemaine, a fan of the drums as well, credits his fast-tracked learning of the intimidating instrument to repetition. Like many great superstars, Gemaine, at a young age, also had church as a common origin to feed his hunger for music. You feel it,” he says, referencing R&B artists who were first ingrained in his mind as a child. “I have a thing for music that you feel, and that is the core of R&B. In the interim, he stayed in touch with that creative side of himself through his admiration for the vocal stylings of Motown titans Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye as well as hit songs by Usher and Robin Thicke. “It was so different and not as common for somebody wanting to sing from Compton, or at least I didn’t see it as much unless it was somebody in the choir or school plays,” says Gemaine, who didn’t get a foothold into performing arts until high school. Gangsta rap had a near-constant, crippling presence in Compton, his hometown, where he kept his head low away from the temptations of the troubled streets. His controversial environment drove his misleading impression, mainly because he didn’t see pursuing a career in singing and arts as the standard. I just wanted to sing.”īefore “Freaky” gradually formed a foundation for Gemaine and his promising music career, the 26-year-old talent didn’t initially foresee the star quality he’s attained thus far.
“I was just a kid, catching the Gardena 2 bus to South Bay with no worries, no expectations, just having fun and just doing what I love. “I remember waking up, like, ‘I wanna just make a video,’” he recalls. He remembers living under no constraints. Beyond his style choices and his youthful voice, he noticed far more about that time in his life through that quick clip. Supported by the viral smash, the 10-track release featured other favorites, including the closed-off “Let Me In.”Ī few weeks before this interview, Gemaine came across the Vine for “Freaky” on YouTube while searching for one of his most recent videos. Since its release eight years ago, the earnest slow jam has amassed more than 17 million plays on SoundCloud and 6.7 million streams on Spotify.Īs his star rose, Gemaine offered up his first project, Curious, in November 2015. In particular, his break came courtesy of a six-second Vine, the predecessor of TikTok, that would later become known as “Freaky,” his debut single released in 2014.
Ironically, Gemaine broke into the music industry as a viral sensation. I want people to be excited about the music I put out.” I don’t want to be a social media influencer. I enjoy it as a consumer, but I hate that it is pushed like a job to do. It’s something you should utilize when it makes sense for you. It should be a tool, but not something that’s a part of you. “The pressure I’ve been seeing every artist go through is the one thing I don’t like about it. “I don’t like the way artists are getting pushed to do TikTok and make it a part of our career like you have to be on this thing consistently and giving this time and attention on a consistent basis,” Gemaine tells Rated R&B over a video call.
Gemaine, an emerging singer/songwriter from Compton, California, is one of them. (The teacher/pupil scenario of Teach U a Lesson is decidedly creepy.) Coupled with the slower jams' anonymity and the bossa nova nightmare that is Everything I Can't Have, further evolution would not go amiss.Not every artist is a fan of touting their new music releases on TikTok, the booming app where countless, specially-made short videos can spontaneously cultivate instant viral success. Thicke's problems, though, are twofold: his smooth falsetto calls to mind a mature Justin Timberlake and, like him, Thicke has a tendency towards ill-advised metaphors. Elsewhere, Thicke is most palatable when refining his natural yuppie-soul sound: the delicate Got 2 Be Down, a duet with Faith Evans, and the gorgeously decadent Cocaine - the kind of song one can imagine Patrick Bateman from American Psycho listening to. Shooter is a terrific blast of horns and lazily swaggering drums. Pharrell and Lil' Wayne are both roped in to help Thicke indulge his hip-hop fantasies - the latter more successfully than the former. R obin Thicke is a curious case: a musically conservative blue-eyed soul singer who would fit snugly on to the Radio 2 playlist, but who isn't averse to singing about bank robberies and drugs.
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