[Music] as a parent as an artist as a partner and as a human to come to those realizations and have so much life to live yeah it's a blessing yes because now you get to share them not only with those closest to you but with us your fans through your music and that's where alicia comes into play yes um and yes come on lead it zayn well
you lit it truth without love is what ah truth without love is just a lie it's just the lie that line was like and you save it to the end and it's so brutal the way you just save it to the end like oh it's powerful that one it's a beautiful way to start the record you produced the whole album yourself but you collaborated with others
very much in your wheelhouse to do so yes i don't know half the people there's a bit of a guessing game going on as to who worked on what part of the record right and it feels like your husband might have had something to do with that one truth without love yeah you know that's uh 15 that's 1500 or nothing white okay okay and um
and myself in dream and actually the thing about swizzy that's so amazing about him is that he just creeps up in spots and just he's there at the moment that he's supposed to be there and in that particular song you know we were we were talking through this this energy of how much people want from you and try to sway the story you know to be in their
best interests and all of these things and he was much a part about a part of that conversation and so we were like having this conversation and he goes away and writing and dream is killing it because dream is such a special dude unbelievable like jesus yes seriously and we had never worked together before and he was like man
alicia this is like on my book like this is my bucket list right here i can't believe we never worked together and and so we were in there just creating this magic and we were stuck on the hook as soon as he comes back in and he's like he does this voice like him you don't think he's gonna start singing but this is what he does
and this is what makes his music so crazy because he literally creates every part of it yeah so he jumps out something hit him in the spirit and was like you know we grabbed on to it and it set us off in a whole nother place so even though he wasn't technically like the producer and this and that he has this way of like being a part of things i'll take it
because i just felt some of his dna in there and also you're different you are different when he's in the room i am that's true that's true it's like you have this this is part of you which is just like it's unlocked which is very raw and and you you've always been raw in your performance but it's different it's a different thing
i mean he's taught me so much about magic like he knows how to access the magic in a way that's so free like i know how to access the magic don't get it twisted but my axis of the magic is from a more cerebral place he teaches me about like this openness to try whatever whereas i'm quite mental i'm like i want to make sure this sounds great
let me make sure this is the right hook let me make sure my vocals are strong he's just like who cares who cares who cares this is what i feel that's what i think i don't care no apology bang you know so so that's what i think that's why i think you feel like that rawness and there is that difference it's almost like a safer i feel safer
somehow to just fail to like be off to be wrong well the words set things up so beautifully in that song and it really sets the tone for the whole record it is equal parts hopefully and understanding and wanting to show empathy but from a place of like i'm not gonna be taken for granted anymore right so all the things you know about me are
here but they are going to feel different now than they felt before because they're coming from a harder place from a place of like look don't take me empathy for weakness right don't take hopefulness for weakness don't take any of it for weakness is what the whole album is saying my gosh i love that so much because that
is so accurate and that is a place i've really had to have to come to have had to come to to be clear about my strength to be clear about my worth to be clear about what i bring to be clear that you really don't have anything that you can say to me except you know who you are and respect who i am i respect who you are and
like give that space you know so being able to be strong enough and clear enough about yourself to be on your bush is like a really important thing it's a good thing and i i'm liking it so it's right it's right in my zone right now so that really does reflect that i think whenever you take a step forward ultimately by by the very nature of human existence
will reflect the next step you take and if you think back to 2016 and here when i listened to here here was such an incredibly beautiful and poignant example of the black experience faith church family resistance all wrapped in love all wrapped up into this very very tight experience of you and a couple of people and it was
it was really a community experience listening to that record from the interludes right through the whole thing wow and i and i sort of feel like perhaps getting through that was an important step towards you feeling like you could focus more entirely on yourself because you'd given something meaningful back here is maybe my favorite album
it's so special to me it it carries with it such a magic such a portal it was the first time that i did something with out compromise none i didn't give a sh don't come in here talking to me about what's the radio single i don't want to hear it this is my whole everything poured out from me no hose bar completely free the way that the songs
came it was like it came down from a divine thing it was like boom and they would get written in 20 minutes and i never wrote like that before i told you so it was my opening it was definitely my opening and it did leave me to hear where i here there led me to hear alicia um because i started to understand like wow you know look at all these feelings that
you have look at all these thoughts that you have look at all these opinions you have look at all these ways that you're experiencing the world look how you can verbalize them look how you can put them into into something that means something and it was just the right combination of people and the timing and the space
and it it really did open something to me that i never accessed before and it taught me how to like go a hundred percent for what i saw my vision that was it was myself hera lily swiss who i never thought i was going to work with on the ever you know that's just not how we float he's so excited too because you can hear in the first beat he dropped
the swiss rhythm it's like he couldn't even wait he's like the first one let me just hit you with the realness it was so good so hard and and mark batson who is a genius genius musician and writer and and so that like core like that was just so cool to be able to lock in and connect with people on such a deep level and then the amount of people i was
letting in the studio at the time was like unprecedented for me i just never i never like a full studio so anyway it was definitely a special experience but i know that it opened a portal to alicia so that there could be this vast array of me that i wasn't afraid to and others and open opening yourself up to working with
others and being vulnerable enough to show your process to collaborate with a lot more people and a lot more producers and art and ideas with people that when you're as accomplished a musician as you are you could sit in a room and press record with one microphone over the piano and get it done in a day and you've done that so that makes the
experience of going out there and saying okay we've just met but i like the kind of records you make can we make something that's a big bridge to cross after the success you've had i can imagine it's always been tricky for me collaboration at the very beginning i hated it so much i was like so uncomfortable i just
didn't know how to even sit in a room with another being yeah i felt completely exposed there was just too much but over time i've definitely learned to enjoy that process and i do enjoy it because there's something so crazy about what i bring and then what you bring it's going to be completely different and there's something about
the merging of energy that's fascinating to me and i and now i feel like that's another alchemy that's created that i'm i love the process of um so yes that process of being open and and receiving what's meant to come from each person and creating something out of nothing is always is always incredible and actually recently
at the end of this project at the end of the leisure project i went uh back in just to just to check i was like do i have everything so i have everything i need on this because man it's it's been a journey it's been a journey and the world has changed so much and i really went in by myself and it was really cool to be back by myself
and i just stayed in there in that space and i was like i didn't have anybody else's thought or anybody else's thing and it brought me back to the remembrance of how important hearing myself is and so i was able to like finalize and finish up this this alicia record which is only appropriate because it's alicia it's you you know at your most
upfront there are themes on that that being one of them another one being time time keeps showing up what we do with our time not looking back and trying to revise history to accept the mistakes we've made in order to pave the way for a brighter future and you know i wonder what your relationship is like with time as you're starting to mature
as a human being yeah and watch your children grow and all those things that kind of put time into a different perspective than when you're a kid you know it's so fast it's so fat is it just me or is time one thousand percent speeding up i'm pretty sure it does that scientifically is speeding because this is crazy i mean it is it's
wild and and somehow i feel so much who i've always been that's the coolest part i don't feel like the time has changed me which i'm very grateful for because i think time could really change you and time could really affect you in a way that maybe you don't recognize yourself but me i really recognize my spirit
even from that same girl from hell's kitchen trying to find everything to the woman i am now i still feel that same spirit and i'm just happy that i can recognize of course i'm more mature i have more experiences i'm more confident all the things i've evolved but i can see in that spirit that pure space that i'm the same girl and i like that