Kelly Price Speaks On Body Shaming In The Music Industry, Grief, Growth, New Album 'GRACE' + More

wake that ass up in the morning the breakfast club morning everybody it's dj mv angela yee charlamine the guy we are the breakfast club we got a special guest in the building that's right kelly price welcome thank you how you feeling you know what great happy to be alive now you were just saying that you were you drove you were driving into new york city and it looked so strange and crazy to you yeah it's hard to see so many empty retail buildings and you know i guess it just speaks to like being hit with finally a visual of how hard this city was hit i've watched every day from home watched the mayor watch the governor talk like literally i was locked into new york even though i'm not here anymore watching what the city was going through and ah get a little tickle in my throat kind of yeah as a new yorker you're not used to that we're used to the streets being crowded always all times of the day and night yeah yeah and it's been really different let the record show when ms price walked in the room immediately smelled better what are you wearing um it's organza by javanchi that smells incredible thank you thank you you know what i a lot of their stuff yes got you guys of stuff now in general yeah whatever you like you can wear yeah yeah but it's my favorite yeah i didn't know you're from queens new york yeah rockaway yeah inside of jamaica yeah how the hell's been probably out of far rockaway queen we got put out we were homeless okay yeah and you know kind of rolling around and landed but my grandfather's church was on the south side of jamaica so like those were my stomping grounds i was between far rockaway um and south side of jamaica and so yeah all day long i'm yeah your family yeah yeah we were homeless a lot really yeah people like music really really young far rockaway queens and south side were the worst areas in queens growing up yeah people have no idea rockaway is right by it's we called it the cheap land because it was right by the airport so you always heard the planes going of course as a kid when we used to go there drop mixtapes off we never stopped the car we would just go slow throw the mixtapes out and keep it moving because you get shot you get robbed it was that bad and then south side jamaica queens was just as bad so the fact that you came from that area and and came out and was successful is it's a lot yeah somebody was praying for me when did you find stability or when did your family find stability um it was it was kind of in and out a lot growing up like seriously um i was homeless probably for the last time right before i turned 18. wow and so um you know it was a thing where and back then it was like hush you don't say anything so there was there were a lot of times we were either sleeping in a car going from friend's house to friend's house um until my mother could try to find another place to live and so um yeah it's not something that i get a chance to talk about often i like to i like to talk about it now and i'm feeling okay about talking about it now because as kids they tell you what happens in this house stays in this house even if you ain't got a house that you're staying in you didn't talk about that and then i don't know if they're still doing it but back then if you didn't have a physical address at school they automatically had to report to child support services so i would be going back and forth to school not knowing where i was going to be going when the school day was over that happened that happened a lot it happened a lot but um times were they were crazy my dad um he passed when i was nine right before my 10th birthday but he had a substance abuse problem and so you know there was that um and so my mother trying to raise three girls in this city and on welfare and you know all of it waiting in line for cheese and and butter and rice and and that we like i really really really have seen days like that which makes me super grateful for any level of anything like for me anything outside of what life was like growing up as a kid was a win as far as i was concerned um but yeah cold nights cold nights in the car did you grow up in the church also i did i did i did uh my grandmother would holler at me right now with this gum in my mouth i'm sorry that's so rude i would say normally yeah i'll do that like i literally just said to myself are you serious little girl i feel like usher taking my own goal um yeah grew up in the church my grandfather um was my first pastor um and my mother was they call him ministers of music now that's a fancy title when she was coming up you were just the choir director but you did take care of all the music in the church and so we i feel like i was in church nine days a week like god made two extra days just for our family because i i did church home school church homeschool that was my life that was the triangle of my life growing up when did they realize you could sing um you know what very early everybody in my family is musical everybody plays instruments everybody writes starter shout out to my grandma who will not hear this because she's not going to listen my grandmother is 95 she'll be 96. she beat covet last year it took my grandfather actually and she beat it um and uh she's she's the musical mother of our family everybody gets their stuff from her and so they knew early on that i i want to say the first stories that i heard i knew i didn't know that i was necessarily doing something that was different because everybody around me did it i didn't realize that what i was doing was abnormal especially at the age that i was until i started going to school and i realized that other kids didn't do it like everybody that was around me at home at church so i didn't think it was special i just thought it was language how did the world hear your voice because you uh sing on so many songs we could go fantasy we can go more money more problems we can go uh feel so good whitney houston how did the world hear your voice and you started to sing you know for all these different artists oh well i was kind of the underground senior friends who's trying to be a producer demo girl had no aspirations whatsoever in my mind i was gonna finish school um get a degree i really wanted to be a lawyer that's what i really wanted to do chuckle it that god um and i taught i thought i would be in the city one of the girls with the briefcases and the sneakers and you know i thought that was cool you see them riding into the city on the lirr and just you know working office in the city um kind of got into that mix because when my friends were trying to become producers they would be like can you roll through the studio and drop this vocal for me i'm trying to put a demo together for whatever whatever trying to sell music um that went into me doing more and more sessions and eventually some of them started kind of moving into the arena where even if they didn't pop people were aware of what they did so honestly how i got like it's a weird road i had a friend who was doing demos i was doing demos for him um he was called to put together a group of singers for a sony event then for a wedding of someone who was connected to luther vandross so he was inside that sony system then when george michael came here in 92 january of 92 he was asked to contract a group of singers to sing with george michael at the garden he called me um same day it was like he called it like 12. i was like what you want he was like you're available i'm like what you got a session he was like no it's a live gig and i need you in the city by three and we're all black and i'm like okay did you know george michael songs at the time um i knew who he was i know a lot of his music i loved his music um but i didn't know that that was the gig i'm like okay where am i going he's like the garden come to the surface so i'm like the garden that's big so yeah yeah we um it was the group of us we went in got there at three o'clock rehearsed from like three to six and we hit with george michael that night wow that translated into mariah carey needing a group of singers in february for the grammys they called my friend back and so my life changed forever after that was that good is that good money at the time like um it was good money for me i was broke and pregnant 18. for damn i feel like we jumped a lot like when you when you're homeless right what gives you the audacity the hope the audacity the dream i'm going to tell you something um and it sounds crazy but i say this of that time just like i say of going through 2020 how it hit my family um it was my faith it was it was this belief that um as long as i do my part um and i'm respectful about it um god has to make it happen for me you know people whether whether you put it out like some people say what goes around comes around if you call it the universe whatever it is there are laws and principles in life period that if followed they have to service you back so that was the audacity to hope um i i just i remember being six years old and walking through the projects in edgemere and walking to school with my head down saying i live here but i don't belong here i was saying that at six years old and so kind of trying to teach myself something in that moment like i really believe that where you start is not where you have to end and you do make that decision you really do it might be harder for you because of how you started because you don't have as many advantages but it's not impossible you just do the extra work and i think you know it gets lost on a lot of people because they get hung up on the unfairness of it nothing is going to be fair ever ever the world is not set up that way it's so easy to be bitter in a situation like that yeah no no i i just wanted a better day and then turning up pregnant at 18 years old coming from this real sanctified family um i was like okay so now what you're gonna do because you're getting ready to have a baby and um at this point i'm sleeping in the downstairs level of my grandparents house i don't want to tell them that i'm pregnant so all of this is happening and um the mariah carey gig happened like early in my pregnancy did the family push you away did they push you away because they so into the church so about values did they say you know what we don't want you here no no i have to honestly say that um as strict as that upbringing was and i'm so grateful about this because actually the church organization that we belong to they were very hard on that they really really were um you get silenced you got to sit down you can't participate in the choir you can't be on the usher board anymore and um the thing that always tripped me up about it is that if you got a guy and you got a girl and the girl gets pregnant she didn't get pregnant by herself but because she's carrying the evidence of it it was very very the life goes on as usual yeah very imbalanced in the way that it was handled and so as a young girl coming up and seeing it happen to people i'm like well what about the guy that got her pregnant right is he no longer allowed to participate in activities and that kind of thing and so but i have to say my grandparents um they weren't happy about it but they embraced me they didn't make me feel like i was dirty which is what i really thought would happen and so they they were transformative for me and that they were the catalyst to having me think another way about what i've been hearing in church my whole life and i don't even know if they know that they did that just in the way they communicated with me loved me pushed me and cur like i i did a lot of things differently starting with that than they ever would have expected um when i started traveling with mariah and doing it like they were like okay so what are you doing you're not gonna be singing in the church no i'm like i'll be you know when i'll be in church on sunday i can sing in georgia on sunday um so it it it literally it was what forced my thinking forward outside of this box um and i'm glad that it did because it made me kind of do my own homework and do my own research there was a lot of you know well you can't say that you're a christian if you're blah blah and if you're going to do this kind of music you're not using your gift for god now no i am i am and i literally would just tell and i had this conversation with my grandfather long before he passed um the stage is my pulpit i get a chance to speak to people through amazing music and give them messages of love and hope and faith and all of that and it's not from a pulpit and i'm not holding a huge bible or wearing a 20-pound cross but they're willing to hear what i'm saying because i'm relatable right and so that that actually makes me the best missionary or evangelist because how do you preach if nobody's listening that's right your grandparents gave you something that um that you named your new album after grace yeah grace yeah and then i always say you know like i was going to ask you when is the time that you needed grace but you yeah you answered it yeah i've needed grace a lot in my life and we all do every time i've talked about this project when people ask me um i say i think the problem is is that we as humans we really can do better about extending grace to other people yes ma'am most of the time we don't realize how important grace is until we need it for ourselves and we find ourselves in the hot seat or people judging our actions or what we've said or what they think about us or what they heard um that's when we want people to understand and listen hey so you know i have a it's so so funny um i have a u-verse reading plan that's coming out i think in about two weeks on the subject of grace and i broke the word down into an acronym um grace is a gift it's the gift of giving responsibility gift responsibility accountability of yourself and to expect accountability of other people but with compassion and empathy i love that that's real grace um you you are responsible it's and it should be given as freely as you're willing to receive grace you should give it that freely so that's why i call it a gift you have the responsibility to be responsible you should expect others to be responsible too we should be accountable you should hold other people accountable for their actions too but the difference between just that and and a true act of grace is to do it in compassion and with empathy because at some point when you need it that's right that's what you're gonna want why doesn't this error give more grace you know cancel culture is the is the polar opposite of grace yes everybody scream and cancel cancel cancel but you're not gonna want to hear cancel when it's time to cancel you that's right so you know since we're talking about all of that by the way happy belated birthday thank you i saw your birthday just passed yes so did you watch versus because i know obviously izzy brothers played a really important role in your career so what did you think of the verses so i haven't seen it all the way through because i literally went to bed early last night yeah i went to bed early last night so i started watching some of it downstairs um and i want to see the rest of it so everybody was like you got to pick one you got to pick one i'm like but i love them both having to pick one of course i'm going to say yeah yeah and they're like i'm super biased you can't ask like the dude literally when everybody was telling me i was too fat too black and too loud to make a record he was like you could be 1200 pounds in blue who wouldn't buy that voice i was like tell that to everybody else in the business like i'm the chick they hiding in the room with a microphone yeah that's so hard because you were talking and you've spoken on this before how when you were about to get a record deal they had an issue with your weight yeah they said you had to actually actually sat you down and told you you had to lose weight in order for them to be able to sign you was that the death jam no it was um jive drive yes a bunch of jive-ass turkeys over there i didn't wait till signing day we hadn't been negotiating for months and i came into the city to sign that day and they told me to stop by the offices before i went to my attorneys that was your first work that was the first deal yeah and so um it i was choked up but i was like you did not cry sitting in this i was sitting with the head of every department in the conference room and the i said i just have one question um who gets to say when it's enough so what did they say like in the meeting they would say hey we're gonna sign this deal but uh so we had been in negotiations the copy the execution copy was in my attorney's office at that time i got a call from my lawyer saying go buy the jive offices before you come to sign they say they need to meet with you about something best call i could have ever received because had i signed the paperwork first i would have been locked into something and possibly sat on a shelf that's not the right place to be no not at all oh you turned the deal down yeah i did oh wow i walked away that's real faith right there yeah that was that after more money more problems after all [Music] how do they say that to you in a room with everybody at like one of those cold conference rooms long there's probably about 10 of us in there the head of each department um i walk in i sit down and there's awkward silence and so you know i'm like hey hi everybody it's supposed to be a great day i'm signing yeah i'm all excited i'm like the yeah team the to talk about you know yeah then we want to know who you want to work with and uh okay um and then awkward silence and so uh jeff fenster is his name jeff finch names i remember that name listen i'm 48 and i've been doing this for 30 years right yeah i've earned the right to call it that's right um uh says you know why don't we just go ahead and say it it's you know let's just say it and i'm like say what he says listen we're going to need you to lose a significant amount of weight before we put this record out so my eyes i'm like a deer in headlights in this moment and so i say okay take a minute and i said well i said like how much weight like do you want me whitney houston thin do you want me because like i i come from a family where the women women are you know whether they're bigger or smaller they're still they're fake um who gets to decide how much is enough like what if i feel like it's enough and you still feel like i need to lose more and um there was just kind of like a i said no like ballpark like just and no one knew and nobody knew and i said okay well then the question is if i get to a place where i'm feeling okay about it and you don't what happens to the record and the answer was we don't know wow wow well you see what happened to jeff instead so what well he went over to another label allegedly he was let go because of sexual misconduct with a former employee wow but you know it felt like you know when i was doing mixtapes everybody knew your name right because you had vocals you were singing over everything but it felt like the world was hiding you didn't want to see you even him no more money more problems videos like the little screen you see my head but i was the first bible how did that feel because it you knew you could sing you knew you could out sing most of the people that were out there but it felt like everybody didn't want to show you you know it was interesting i mean i look back at that time now um i was just grateful i was asked to be in the video because other people weren't putting me in the video you know i i i've been martha washed like and when i say that i mean having written for people and then i would go demo the record um the artist is supposed to go in and sing their own music i can remember riding down the street and hearing the song start and i'm like oh it's out but i'm hearing me and i'm like wow you said martha washed was as as in like they sometimes the labels would leave my vocals on but it was their artist and they wouldn't show is that a is that somebody that that happened to marfootwash yeah mother she was the one uh that sued was it black box or i think they didn't seem to do victory yeah because they they uh like someone that was like strike it up it would strike it up everybody dance now that was her voice yeah and so she it was a big thing and she was awarded a sum of money she sued them for it and she was awarded a sum of money for it because in the video they had like this thin model girl you know lip syncing and she didn't understand why that was happening and she wasn't like unless you knew i don't know if it was a credit issue like i don't even know i think maybe she wasn't even credited mm-hmm so now what happened with you you're driving down you're hearing the song on the radio and then all of a sudden you're like yo this is my voice yeah i was shocked i was shocked because i mean i know i wrote the record and i know that i you know sometimes they would come back and say well we want to keep your background vocals that was common i was doing that for everybody but to hear the record and to hear that in the verses i'm hearing my voice laced in between like and i can hear the punches my ear is fine-tuned and you know what i mean when i say i can hear where they punched the engineer punched me in and then popped her back in right and i'm and it's like a weave together vocal and i'm like this is crazy what did that happen with uh tasha holiday okay is one artist that it happened with um just and she wouldn't have known that that was what was happening that's a call that was over her head she had just gotten signed somebody at the label said we don't like it fix it up god bless i have no idea who that is yeah i mean she was signed to mca um hank shockley i think sandra okay now during this time i know this is happening were you married already i i got married very early i ended up marrying uh my baby's dad okay that was that now that was the thing that i should have probably tried to escape but you know growing up the way we did like for me you know back then it was like you got pregnant you get married just to the mic was it was it good at first um it was what i was supposed to do thank you it was what i was supposed to do it was what i was expected to do um if i'm to in retrospect no it was never good it was just what was supposed to be done right and i think that that's a mistake like i don't think you tell somebody if you're in this position you need to get married because y'all might not need to be together right you feel like that was the godly thing to do that's what the church taught they literally tell you it's better to marry than to burn if you feel like you can't maintain then you need to go ahead and get married but what if you married and burned charles manson and yeah yeah what if the and and for a lot of people that's what happened because that's you had a lot of people my generation generations before me beca if that's what their faith was and if that's what they were taught that's what they did but they didn't let us date either so you don't know how you don't know what you like you don't know who you like you don't know what compatibility means you're just told if you feel like you like him enough to have sex with him then you need to marry him lord have mercy yeah how did you get the strength to finally leave that marriage because that took a while it took a long time and it took a lot of it it was it was like 25 years yeah wow yeah a long time a lot of hurt a lot of mistrust a lot of misdealings a lot of outside kids oh damn um and he was your manager yeah wow jesus so you was intertwined personally and professionally personally and professionally like leaving i had to rebuild my life and when you're married to someone that long um you don't know what life is part of your life it is a part of your life well the other thing is i was going straight to the finances were you married that long yeah um yeah because before you even let him know you got to kind of plan things out so you know how you can set yourself up so that you're like i have to be prepared before i can't even come forward and be like i want to get divorced you want to make sure everything is lined up yeah what was the last straw what was the thing that was like i can't do this anymore i had a dream and i saw the way my life would play out if i didn't leave that's the honest to god let's talk about that you want me to put i don't wanna you know what yeah we can we i got yeah crap everywhere yeah there you go extra bottles of sanitizer and mask and stuff all in there not again let's talk yeah i had i had a dream i had a dream um and i saw everything around me burning and being destroyed um and then i saw myself and i looked really sickly um and then i saw like the end of my life wow and this was literally i want to say a year after my baby sister died that was a rough year for me what happened with your baby um my baby sister um had a drug issue um it's weird it runs in the family it she she had been battling it since she was in her teens and her body was just over it one by one her organs started to shut down and so um she passed on easter sunday in 2014. um and between it's your birthday yeah yeah and my grandfather passed on easter sunday last year so this year for me it was important to refocus and try to reposition this time of the year in my life personally um between that time from the time that she died and that time where i had this dream pretty much um i packed on probably about 75 80 pounds i was drinking very heavily every day um going and doing my shows knocking them out getting back to the hotel and drinking until i passed out i woke up some mornings in a pool of vomit in the bed um and my husband was there too and your husband was there no no like and the crazy thing is i hadn't left him yet but he wasn't he wasn't traveling with me anymore um it was a it was a crazy year like a crazy year and i looked at myself in the mirror on my way to do a show in chicago and i broke down crying i looked at myself i was like like what happened to you what happened to you um and i said okay god if you give me the strength to get myself together to pull my life back together like i'll do it i'll i'll really really do it i love my sister i miss my sister and i want to see her again but i'm not trying to see her tomorrow right is what i said like literally and um i said you got to get it together and that's when the plan went into effect it was like a mission for me like strategizing and trying to find places to hide stuff where it can't be found and you know safe deposit boxes and whatnot because i i was like okay and i had no idea where i was going to go like it wasn't that far out planned but um the kids were grown though the kids were grown yeah and that that was the biggest relief for me i only had to worry about there were times over and over and over again um i didn't want to blow their life up because with my life being a life that was lived mostly on the road it's crazy but i wore the i took on the weight and the responsibility of if i tear if i make a move to tear the family apart they're going to be the ones most affected by it because i'm still out here on the road you think that's a mistake to people who stay together for the kids yeah yeah i think it's worse for kids to see toxic parents did they ever talk to you about that like have you ever had conversations about growing you know how it was for them growing up and witnessing their parents in an unhappy relationship they i i thought i was shielding them from it and what i didn't learn until they became adults and came back and had conversations with me about it is that i mean they they saw things um but they were kind of like sat in the middle of things i called myself trying to shield it from them their father had a very different approach he um with the understanding that they were getting older and probably were figuring the stuff out anyway um became more manipulative about it um you know one of the kids said to me that their father told them you know if you tell your mother she's going to have a nervous breakdown she can't handle it wow you can't say anything to her about this so he kind of dumped the weight of that on them right and literally i didn't know this until again they were grown they were out of the house um and they felt comfortable enough to come and say something to me about it because they probably were processing their own traumas yeah and how that how that impacted them when it was kids yeah that that anger that angered me it angered me so much and so to to what you're saying no there's no such thing as staying together for the kids you the way to keep it together is if you're not working separate because what that becomes is what they see as normal it's a trauma bond trauma bonds cause trauma to everybody who sees them now did you i know your husband didn't just let you go easily i know he was like probably furious he was he was i'm sorry um he was but it wasn't his choice right you know he had the opportunity to hire you know whoever he needed to hire to try to do whatever he needed to do and you know i was prepared for it because again you can't be married that long um and and not expect you know i was the breadwinner in the family so i was gripping myself for what was to happen you know if it was devastating financially or whatever um did not he did not that was a miracle i actually was gearing up for a fight i was gearing up for a fight and and had sat down spoke with some other attorneys and whatnot but greg mathis honestly who was a really good friend um tony greg yeah yeah yeah but you know he's my favorite jacket yeah yeah um i actually called him on the personal tip like hey so this is what i'm getting ready to do this is blah blah blah and he was like yeah kelly i just got to tell you if i was presiding over this case just based on the number of years you all have been married you'll be paying out for a minimum of 10 years but he also has outside children and things like that doesn't matter nope nope that's irreconcilable differences though yeah wow no no the the courts don't care about that so you've been paying out no no she said a miracle he didn't fight him so cause he didn't fight okay maybe he knew he up and he did things wrong and was like you know what well no it's probably money better spent on child support than a lawyer yeah you know i want to go back to your meeting with jive right like psychologically what happens to you when somebody tells you that you're too big like what how what was your mind state moving forward after that meeting um well first of all i didn't i did cry but not there um i got onto the long island railroad and headed myself back towards the house called the lawyer and told him i wasn't coming in he could tear the paperwork up you didn't tell him that in the room in that moment you had a process um no i was in the drive offices so i never went to my attorney's office he was waiting on me to come there from jive i got on the long island railroad and headed back you're like i got to hold it together and yeah leave these people's office yeah and yeah and so i called them and told them you can tear the paperwork up i'm not going to sign it and just it messed with my head it messed with my i mean i i had heard it said like i'd heard whispers of it um i'd even i'd true story um at daddy's house working on a record for a group that was signed in motown what was their name um group that was signed to motown puff was producing the record i was there um as the vocal producer and i was there cutting the song on the guys and so i wanted to make a change lyrically to something so i told them y'all take a break um i went and sat in a corner like behind one of those folding things inside of the the room where the microphone was sat on the floor with my pen and pad and had my ears in and i hear the guys walking in the hallway outside the room then they come into the room and they're having a whole conversation and just out of nowhere the conversation turns to um yo did you get a look at her yo she she looks like a fat a nell carter oh god and so but i'm and i'm in the corner and so i'm like dang these so they walk out the room they're in the hallway they're in the hallway and i'm sitting them i don't want to have that awkward moment of walking out of the room and going past them um but they won't leave and i'm like okay you got you on the clock you got to get the session going so i pulled it together walked out the door and walked past them and they're looking like i went back into the control room they came into the control room um miss kelly can we have a word with you i said no we have work to do we should just go ahead and finish the record wow that group that ever pop nope i did get an apology from one of the i swear to god i was walking through an airport and this guy was trying to stop me and he was like remember me i'm like no i don't just tell me where i know you from and he told me he said well remember when you did that song for the group and blah blah he said we were idiots we were blah blah and i'm like what you got going on right now he's like no we're still trying to figure it out and i'm but i'm you know this is years later and i'm like okay god bless you god bless you what was your next deal at after that because you do the job yeah okay true story he did put an offer on the table and i said no because so there was a bit of a bidding war that did happen it ended up being between uh mca um did he had paperwork on the table and then uh it wasn't def jam it ended up being ronald eisley who i met because of puff i i was in the studio working on the track that he was doing for leah finished it um i'm on my way out he was on his way in he was like where you going i'm like home i'm done he's like no i need you to stay i got something popping i'm like okay what you got he said isley brothers i'm like dope he was like okay so i need you to write it i'm like yeah i can do that i said well when does it need to be done he said like right now right now he said he's here he's leaving his hotel on his way to the studio right now well you have to be kidding me you have to be he was like no that's what did he talk to you yeah so big ups to new york traffic because it took him about 45 minutes to get to the hotel to the to the studio from the hotel um which was enough time for me to depend somewhere floating on your love their first one back wow yeah wow so what deal did you take at that time because you diddy gave you off of the deal you had ron eisley offered the deal that already said he doesn't care what you weigh what you look like your voice is amazing and where did you decide to go from there um i ended up being with ronald i was i went to his he had it's crazy he had the least amount of money on the table i know puff was mad at you yeah he wasn't too happy the guy that i introduced you to you signed with he found he felt a way about it he but i and i said to him i said i need you to understand i'm i'm thinking like from business at this point i told them i said faith and i are not the same but we are too similar one of us is not going to make it here and she's already here so i wouldn't assume that i would be the priority not to mention puff probably wanted all your publishing that too yeah you said you've said that you're a writer first right i am yeah and you so you feel that way still now to this i do i do i do anything that i've ever wanted to say i could say it you know even as a kid in a poem in a song um in a letter it's been the way that i express myself more even than singing how is it when other people sing your words to you because it's so personal but then sometimes what if it's not like how you would have done it or interpreted it does it matter that's what made me want to be an artist because it got to a point where i was like yeah i definitely didn't hear that like that they're killing my babies like i got to sing my own yeah i wanted that that's what made me decide to like push against the grain and against the like literally i was being told you don't look like aaliyah you don't look like tamiya you don't look like debra cox you don't look like this and i'm like no i look like me that's crazy i look like me and you know the crazy thing is i'm good enough to write for all of these people but so um it kind of made me there's there's that far rock strong thing that kind of swells up in you and it's like yeah i don't think so and so it made the ronald eisley decision obvious for me because i was very clear that he just loved what i did musically and that's all he he literally he said kelly again if you were blue and 1200 pounds who wouldn't buy that voice do for yourself what you've done for r kelly for this one for that one for what you did for me like do that for you and you're undeniable um and you know i mean when you're hearing the other thing that's what you've been bombarded with even you know from a little kid we were poor i was a little chubby kid we didn't have a whole lot so i was already a little whatever no a whole lot or whatever um and then to come into an industry that i believed i didn't know um it's the music industry i thought music was celebrated and i got in it and found out that you know there's a whole lot more that that is more important than the actual music so question when you when you did lose weight what what were the reasons i wanted to do it for me there was there always going to be pressure from the outside always always always but i wanted to do it for me i'm you know at this point i'm like okay first record is in the can you are moving out of new york moving down south you just bought a patch of land you're building a house you know better you do better you're not eating government cheese sandwiches three times a day anymore you're not some days there's a dinner you know some days there's not you know better do better and my thing is if you have this great life um be here to live it be here to experience it and i had young children running around with them i'm winded and they're like mommy and i'm like nah i'm good i it was all of that it was all of that it's like okay so god blessed you to come out of poverty and homelessness and all of this kind of stuff what you gonna do with it the people are happy though they weren't i remember them saying you were too thin and you lost too much weight and the label never felt that way i was now sorry kevin i got i got to tell this story uh kevin um at a shoot for god something i literally what is the name of the song marry your girl we're shooting the video billy woodruff is my director um and somebody calls like a cut stop in the middle of a take and so i felt like there was some tension it wasn't a it wasn't billy's call to cut the cut was called because and i had actually lost a significant amount of weight at this point the question was asked to my stylist is there a way you could put like maybe two more foundation garments on her to make her look like it another size or two smaller than what she is those are waist trainers yeah okay yeah the original ones like the court of course yeah harriet harriet what what's her name harriet oldman whatever her name is from little house on the prairie like she was the original whatever um and nobody wanted to say it so some my stylist came over and he said they want me to put more undergarments on you i said more he said yeah they said they want you to look about two sizes smaller on the camera now at this point i'm like 100 pounds down there's that how much is too much or how much is going to be enough thing and so that messed with my head so from that point on it was like okay you really got to make sure that you're doing this for you um and for me it's about being a size that i'm comfortable with that i feel i look good in my clothing if i can run up a flight of stairs and not feel like i'm gonna have a heart attack when i get to the top of the landing i'm good everybody else has to deal with it that that's the this is my body that's the take back my power like why are people who are sitting in a room somewhere else having discussions about what they think my body should look like and you and you know you spoke about being relatable that is relatable to so many women and that's the other thing now that is the other thing that conversation was had with both ronald eisley and hiram hicks he said you got to get that thing out he's like you got to wear this like own it you got to own it if you don't own it people are going to see that you're not owning it he's like there are more women in the world that look like you then don't and who's going to be their cover girl that's right so i mean there are a lot of nights i went home and cried because i could still hear stuff going around to these industry mixers and that kind of thing but when i walked in the room i walked in the room like i can take yo man yo man yo man because they told me if you don't if you give them anything if they smell blood in the water the sharks are coming that's right so i had to wear that face and so i was proud because i did get so much feedback from women like yo yo i never thought yeah and so that did something for me that did something for me and then moving to atlanta and seeing like big girls rule the world cornbread listen i'll be in the grocery store in a in a hat and some timbs and a you know like a yankee hoodie or whatever i'm still from new york but yeah but what the girls down there walk around like fully made up and in heels in the groceries i'm like who's putting on six inch parts to pick up some milk they were environment doesn't matter because you know i'm from south carolina so it's just like that's what i see i see the cornbread fairgrounds when i see the girl that's skinny i'm like what's wrong with her she's sick or something yeah yeah yeah but you also can't shame skinny people either because you don't know what's going on and with them yeah right what do you think about the music industry now you think things have changed um i think it's a slow walk i think it's a slow walk i think i mean this was what 25 years ago that's why lizzo's important right yeah she's oh my god she's super important when p they ask me p they people ask me about her all the time um like i love that she loves herself in the skin that she's in because i wasn't there when i was her age like i wasn't i wasn't there when i was younger and i was forced to do it for what it was that i was doing because again i had to wear the face like i had to sell it um i wish i had that level of confidence i would have made a lot of different decisions i probably would have left a lot so you know what i mean like there were so many things that played into decisions that i made in my life um not just for the stage or or for the record but in my personal life too all of that played into it you feel that that was a reason because i just remember everybody thinking that you were going to be the next mariah the next whitney the next huge artist and it never really happened yeah i didn't do you feel like that was the reason why because people couldn't understand you for you and not look past everything else or maybe i think the people got me i you know would have been the record companies would have needed to decide that they were going to put everything into you know this and we showed that it can work we showed that it can work um and i literally was just about the music i didn't i was like listen if i got to be at the mixer i'll be at the mixer but i'm not really a party girl like that's not my thing i got kids at home like if i need to be there i'll be there other than that you know i'll catch y'all on the next one um so i'm sure that had a lot to do with it too like i wasn't with all of the extra stuff that was going on i just went i did my job and i went home i wanted to see my little shorties as often as i could before it was time to get on the plane again um so that was part of it um and just making the decision you know perhaps if i was single and didn't have kids it would have played out differently right um but i was very much so a wife and a mother in between all of it or what at the same time as all of it and going through a lot of things personally personally absolutely absolutely i want to talk to you about 2020 because you did deal with a lot in 2020 you know you lost your your mom my mother my grandfather for that by the way thank you i appreciate it i'm sure you're still in the process of healing what does that process look like to you uh the grace project yeah it ultimately was the thing that kept me i feel like from probably going over the edge at the end of the year um school friends church friends to the tune of about 15 or more people lost in my life last year um and got to the end of the year and i was like okay if we can just get out of 2020 and um right at the end of the year got a call and i lit oh do you know how many phones i broke last year getting and i'm like why do y'all call like in the middle of the night or early and then when the phone rings at a certain time you know it's no good so you got kids i broke so many phones last year like getting these middle of the night calls these early morning calls um and just like dropping the phone and the last dropped the phone call was my mother at the end of the year so yeah 2020 was a doozy um i decided to jump in the studio because again i with going on lockdown and all that kind of stuff i didn't go into the studio i didn't get any music done for this particular project um everybody at motown and and capital were getting ready to go on break you know for december and so when i called to speak with them after getting back from my mother's funeral they were thinking that i was calling to push the project back further i said no i need to get it done was it always a gospel project with this venture with them okay was definitely meant to be that because and it started off really because i wanted to have original music to present while doing this sunday best judge job um so in the first season that i became a judge there when the finale happened i picked a clark sister song to do because i didn't have new original inspirational music so i did a song that would have been used for the finale and the one song out of the need to have music for that um ej gaines i made a throwback post from the last time i did an inspirational project and he was like yo check your dm is your number the same i'm like you know my number's not the same just whatever um he's like if you're serious about doing a gospel project you know you know i'm over here at motown gospel right now i think this would be a great place for you to land like it'd be a great home for you and he said are you serious i said i think i am this was before everything shut down um so the timing was crazy about a week later i was in nashville in their offices had a great conversation and uh it just kicked off from there the paperwork goes into effect that's february march they shut down atlanta on march 16th i'll never forget um and shut the season down of of sunday best and in april grandpa was gone and then it was person after person after person after person after person after person and so um just steady push back push back push back i'm not going in the studio i'm not doing anything i don't trust being in the studio i don't know any of that tried to build a studio in the house um literally a week after i had somebody in this is the only time anybody has been in my house throughout the pandemic to take the measurements he called me to say hey i just found out i'm covet positive so i'm like okay so i'm shutting the house for like two weeks every night like just looking to make sure checking my temperature every few hours um thank god you know i didn't get it but at that point i was like okay so we just gonna wait and see what happens but in december i had to go in like for my sanity's sake i spent the month of december in the studio did you even get to see your mom last year wow in the casket wow wow when you um when you recorded the album was you know they always say sometimes when you're trying to stay busy it's a response to trauma you're not dealing with if you actually want to work or was it a trauma response um a little of both but necessary necessary because i had been in the house all year literally in the house um asking my google whatever what day is this what day is that how many days has it been since march 16th because that was my official day of all right you're on lockdown um it was necessary it was necessary but yes it was a trauma response but that has always been my go-to when i was a young kid i can remember just like finding a pad and a pencil and just doodling whatever was coming out of my head whatever was going on well i love the ep and you redid i want to thank you heavenly father it's so funny because that song like is the cookout song growing up but i never thought of it as a it's such a gospel song but i never categorized it that way to me it really isn't but i as a kid i just remembered that the song that i heard at all the cookouts all the block parties um the picnics whatever um she's saying i want to thank you heavenly father but they dance into it so it's a celebration of love it's a song that celebrates love and so is it a gospel song does it belong on a gospel album i like to call my projects inspirational yeah um if if god is love why can't we celebrate it you know there i think there are just so many so many stigmas that are in place and i really i i really really hope that i am a cataclysmic part of breaking down what those stereotypes look like because i know that my family probably didn't expect to see me doing anything other than like gospel music on the order of like the clark sisters or something which would have been amazing in my mind as a kid but these doors started opening up i would have been a fool not to walk through them right and i think you have to call the fact that the doors opened up they're a god thing too i i think everyone has a choice on how they want to walk through those doors and how they want to walk out their path and so my grandparents major concern is that if i'm entering into this world of entertainment you know they go back to their generation and they think about all of the musicians who came out of church and how they ended up you know this way that way and i'm like grandpa you have doctors that end up you know being junkies you got teachers that are junkies you got preachers this where are we going with this like i get to decide who i am and you got to trust that what you taught me is in there is gospel music more freeing than secular music depends on who's listening sometime i put up for the artist when you're performing it writing it whatever i'm singing in the moment is what's coming out of my soul and that's what frees me because yeah i guess for everybody it would be different there's not one that's more freeing than another um singing singing friend of mine was free freeing um singing i want to thank you heavenly father is freeing like i i have i i am water in music like i just just be the water just be the water yeah music is the place where i get to be the water and first for myself and then i get to be a river that just kind of feeds you know other places along the way so they can get some water yeah dance party's a nice celebratory song too intentional intentional i i got it i said i'm tired of crying i can only imagine you know the world has to be tired of crying people are ready to live again um and there are people who have survivors of remorse who you know have all kinds of guilt we have to know that it's okay to want to live yeah i love the vine order too i think about the you know the role faith played in your life yes and then at the time you needed god the most you're pouring yourself into this grace project which is a gospel project that's divine yeah yeah and it is definitely divinely ordered exactly divinely because i have literally been working on new r b music in between television projects for the last three years originally this was not the plan and so from a post to a text to a phone call to a flight a great meeting a joint venture the world shuts down um and my need to express this part of myself is greater now more than ever have you given yourself time to grieve not enough not enough because following death are things that have to be done things that need to be you know put in place if they're not already in place if there's not a directive left then you you know the family's kind of stuck trying to put things together um and so i absolutely have not had enough time to and i feel that sometimes when i feel that day coming on i allow myself to have that moment um yeah i don't the blows from last year i think god will teach me how to live with them i don't i have to honestly say being filled with faith i don't know that those are things that you ever get over right but you learn how to continue to live with them and process them and eventually you get to a place where the thought of it doesn't make you cry you can smile and go dang i miss them no please protect your mental health that's what i would tell you oh absolutely i believe in god but i got a therapist too i do too i do too i listen i promise you i think that god gave us doctors for a reason he gave us doctors for a reason and so i do i do yeah i actually got a referral very recently to go to somebody so exactly i remember when you first um when you first got divorced you were saying how difficult it is dating because you had never really dated no so how is it now it's been some years jesus i don't like dating life in the 21st century it's whack and mental groupies too they might give you kelly price i don't know who wants you for you or just because you kelly price yeah i i yeah i didn't like it i'm off the market thank you jesus yeah um and happily so happily off the market a lot of them yeah right i think i saw that somewhere yeah yeah yeah it was dating was icky dating was it it was a whole different animal like i the very first date that i went on i laugh at it now but i was traumatized after that date i thought the date went well i got home i went out to dinner had great conversation had a great glass of wine i'm like okay it's cool i drove my own car i didn't want to get picked up i don't need you know where i live in case you're crazy um and like two hours after i got home thing i look in the phone and i'm like whoa really he's in a penis picture oh yes girl oh yes i was like that must have been great i was like wait a second no context no nothing no did you respond or say anything i was like i was like what the heck what did y'all talk about that are you trying to blame her no i thought we had really good grown intelligent conversation now did you reply at all what the hell but that could be taken out of context though like that could be like what the hell is the biggest thing i've ever seen like it could have been taken out of context once they were blocked though like i'm just you know who does that that's right no that's crazy is it somebody we know or just no you wouldn't know man was it from the up angle or underneath that's been about six years hey give him some grace the grace the grace was he didn't catch a tongue lashing i'm talking about it um yeah that was the grace like he didn't get the call right with all my encyclopedia they got you yeah so can you finish your thought on on why this area doesn't give grace earlier you got cut off a little bit you know i think that we are living in a time where everything is so right now right now right now right now right now and if you can't get it then this person can and if this person can't then that one can um and i think it's beyond microwave mentality for for i think the 2000s early 2000s 90s whatever that was microwave mentality this is something else this is like astro rocket juice what like every the attention when you're talking about 15 second videos and that's the height of somebody's day like we want quick thrills we have less of an attention span we're becoming harder to please we want more and more and more and more and more dumbed down um and i think it has everything to do with that i think it has everything to do with people not learning that process is necessary and so in all fairness to them god help them they don't they don't extend grace to others but they really don't know how to extend grace to themselves that's when you find when you look at people who have that kind of a mentality there's also a lot of self-destructiveness there too so you know god help them like i said because they're not giving grace to others but the problem really is is they don't know how to give grace to themselves and i realized that about myself i can forgive somebody else i had a hard time forgiving myself when i really sat down and thought about you could have did this differently you could have did that differently like your kids are grown now but you're listening to them tell you how this affected them and why this and why that and why you could have stopped that so i had to that was a huge thing for me to feel like in doing what i thought was the best for them it wasn't no and and sits like literally at the center of the places where they question themselves question relationships um have trust you know issues i'm like you could have you could have did something about that so um it's as important grace forgiveness this is important for us to know how to be that to ourselves because you can't really do it for somebody else if you haven't practiced it and um people do tend to be hard on themselves now i'm not talking about narcissist and you know that kind of thing we're really really hard on ourselves but we also live in a society where the beauty that we see being put in front of us doesn't even exist it's it's a it's a filter it's uh you know it's it's something that you buy to enhance what like you know when we looked at beauty growing up you know we looked and we saw images of beautiful black women all different shades beautiful latina women all different shades it didn't matter somebody had kinky hair somebody had curly hair somebody else's hair was more refined and straight it we looked at the shades of us at the textures of us and we understood it to be beautiful and to allow um culture counter culture to allow our culture to be infiltrated and then dictated to what our beauty is supposed to be to watch our people deconstruct their bodies the bodies that god gave them to only go back and build it back up to be a not authentic version of what you were already given we let people get in our heads and tell us your lips are too thick your noses are too wide you know your booty is too big this is too that and we drank the kool-aid we drank the kool-aid and now we're watching just now yeah that you could write no there's so many balls because it's like you're right we're creating this unattainable bar of perfection you can't even get to that it's impossible but you got to get you and when you make mistakes we're not giving nobody any grace so it's just like how do you grow and evolve like my whole life i was taught about growth and evolution and people i gravitated towards whether it's malcolm x maya angelou whoever it was yes because they evolved and they grew and we saw it now it's like nope you're not allowed to make any mistakes i'm like how do you live like that yeah that's not human we're bound to we're bound to we're all born into this thing there is no road map because no two people are alike i can't be my mother i can't be my sister she can't be me i can't be my grandmother i have all of that particles of that in me but i got to figure out how to walk life out inside kelly's show i got to figure out how to walk life out on the road that i've been set on on the path that i've been set on and it's hard enough to do that already but then when you um that's why you got to filter out the noise and at some point just silence everything that's coming from outside of you like you learning how to be still and center yourself is one of the best things that anybody can do for themselves and i and i'm not even saying this to try to be funny listen to all the voices in your head and figure out which one is telling you the right thing absolutely go ahead caleb kelly price well let's let's get into a record right now what record you want i want to play i want to thank you i love it we appreciate you for joining us thank you one last question all the features you did jay-z diddy lox mariah what was your favorite out of all i really can't pick one because i love them all equally for different reasons working with big monumental yes um working with whitney monumental traveling for years with mariah carey i learned all my studio savvy from working with her okay then we're surprised we tell you whatever mariah came up here no she had a light person right and she had her own lights and she shined the lights on her like these bright lights on her and then uh we were turning these lights off and charlemagne was like well you know um you won't be able to see us she was like exactly darling very good only light was on no no all the way all the way you're gonna get the right angle i'm not mad at it no and and the reason behind that is because once it goes out there like and i did learn that from her too i just like you know i'm like hell i brought y'all all of this like i want i want this it's all it is it's what it is um yeah i'm here to represent for um this i want to thank you kelly thank you thank you so much thank you very much thank you for having me because we definitely need more grace in this world so thank you for coming and sharing your story and i know somebody's gonna be inspired by your testimony i hope so well it's kelly price it's the breakfast club good morning [Music] you

Channel: Breakfast Club Power 105.1 FM

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Keywords: the breakfast club, breakfast club, power1051, celebrity news, radio, video, interview, angela yee, charlamagne tha god, dj envy

Id: I2gDhfXz7zw

Length: 66min 40sec (4000 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021