Earlier this month (August 2012), PJ Morton made his Young Money debut in New York City, where he performed several songs from his catalog, in addition to several covers. With support from his Young Money/Cash Money family, including Birdman, Slim, Mack Maine, Busta Rhymes, Shanell and Jay Sean, the R&B crooner and Maroon 5 member gave fans a blissful performance at the Canal Room. Following the showdown, Singersroom chopped it up with PJ as he opened up about signing with Young Money, doing soulful pop music, joining Maroon 5 and more.
Check out some excerpts below:
Signing With Young Money… A mutual friend of ours, who we all went to high school with, was a big fan of my music and was always following me and he started to work for Mack Maine and kind of just re-connected us. Mack Maine is a real music fan, he loves real music and live music and instrumentation. I just seemed like a perfect time to work together.
No changing… I’ve worked hard for years as an independent artist and got myself to a point that I’m really proud of. Moving forward, I just felt like I needed some type of machine to put steroids on all that hard working that I’ve been putting out and I think that’s what Young Money is for me. There’s no desire to change who I am or to change what I do creatively.
Taking a Soul Cover… I’ve always ran from the soul thing, I’ve always wanted it to be the music thing. The reason why I called my music soulful pop music was because…it’s no genre specific. Something soulful to me can be a country song, can be a pop song, could be a rock song, can be an R&B song, as long as you feel it, it’s soulful. I always wanna be pop, in a sense that it’s popular and it can reach different types of people, ethnicities, ages, whatever.
Joining Maroon 5… A mutual friend came in as a music director couple years ago, they were looking for an extra keyboard player to tour with them, he recommended me, I went out to LA and we just clicked really easily and really quickly…I love those guys just for the way they’ve taken me in and treated me and being so unselfish with everything. They support my solo thing just as much as me being with them and rocking with them, so it’s been amazing.
Morton is currently promoting the lead single, “Lover,” from his forthcoming Young Money debut, which features Lil Wayne.
Founder and Creator of Singersroom.com and IncredibleWork.com. Follow me on Instagram at @gary.gentles.
