Veteran R&B singer Brian McKnight released his tenth studio album, ‘Just Me,’ earlier this summer as a double-disc effort. Ten of the twenty-two songs were unreleased songs from his extensive catalog, while the rest was a live disc of his solo performance recorded in Los Angeles.
“There are ten new songs and I like them too but it’s great to revisit songs the way I wrote them as opposed to the way that I produced them,” McKnight told TaleTela. “Most of the time it’s just me and a guitar at the piano playing and that’s what that live CD is about.”
On one of the new songs, “Fall 5.0,” fans criticized the soul man for using the popular auto-tune, dubbing him as a sell-out and a gimmick. However, McKnight feels indifferent about the backlash and stands behind his decision to use the special effect.
“The problem is everybody has an opinion and usually they have an opinion without actually taking a step back and saying ‘let me just listen to this without being prejudice,'” he explained. “Auto-tune is an effect, no different from reverb, chorus or whatever else you may use. The problem is that it is called auto-tune â if it were called Cadillac it would just be an effect.”
He continued: “People know that everybody else can use it to make them sing in tune, if somebody who actually sings uses it they say that it’s because they want to sell out â for me it’s a just a cool effect, if you use it properly.”
“I don’t need auto-tune, I know that everybody knows that but the tracks sound futuristic for Brian McKnight and so I wanted to add a little something and start the controversy. If I hadn’t done it nobody would be talking about it⦠so they can think what they want, just spell my name right,” McKnight joked.
Aside from using more technology in his music, the “Back At One” singer also talked about his opinion on the popular social network, Twitter, and how “weird” he finds it to be. “It’s the most intrusive, ridiculous thing that they have ever invented and it is completely and utterly addictive because you can talk to your people anytime of the day,” he said.
He even reflected back to an incident a few years ago when he got into a Twitter war with porn star, Alana Evans, over false accusations of rape. Evans claimed that she was raped when she was hanging out with McKnight’s sons and their friends while McKnight was out of town.
“So I saw her at an electronics store and she was apologizing to me and then went on Twitter and was saying that I was trying to apologize to her for the whole thing, completely changing the story so I had this whole back and forth thing with her online,” McKnight reflected.
“But that Twitter is out of control! She and her husband were trying to get to me that day and I wasn’t having it because she’s a liar. She slept with my son’s fat friend, Chubz and then tried to tell everyone that he raped her â and I was like why are you hanging out with teenagers at my house? She’s 32â¦is she not having enough fun? But anyway hey, what are you gonna do?”
