After another long hiatus, the venerated R&B singer returns with her riskiest album yet.
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It was so heart-wrenching, she remembers.
It just hit me.
Her request is selfish, but it feels real.
The thing that came to mind was losing somebody you loved.
Shes also a writer.
Can I keep my camera off?
she asks when I call her up on a December morning.
Shes still wearing a robe and getting ready for a COVID-safe rehearsal downstairs.
(I cant explain it, she says of working with Ocean, except that its a beautiful mess.
Shes watched her motherbattlebreast cancer.
And shes been writingHeaux Tales,her first concept album.
Sullivan is chatty but precise, especially when she talks about how methodically she approached the new work.
Sullivan was intrigued: Im like a Disney kid.
When I was growing up, my mom was a playwright.
When I write, I see it almost in pictures, like a full production.
I went home and brainstormed, andHeaux Talescame up.
I thought about the conversations I have with my girlfriends, my mom, different people like that.
She wanted to hear things the women in her life feel deeply but wouldnt necessarily say.
Like, Yes, Daddy.
Okay, Lennox deadpans.
That dick spoke life into me invigoration, blessings, soul.Turmoil, Lennox concludes.
When Sullivan heard it, she couldnt help but laugh.
Another is Amandas Tale, narrated by her friend Amanda Henderson.
I was up like,Pleeeease dont let anybody say anything bad to my friends, she recalls.
Cause I dont want to cuss them out, but I will.
One recording is pulled from a conversation among black women.
They got together and started talking, Sullivan says.
The tales are the protein.
When Sullivan talks about the music on the album, its almost as an afterthought.
I wanted to write it as if Im actively in the moment, thinking,Oh my God.
Im so ashamed.But also,This is normal for me.Like,I do this all the time.
She was in an abusive relationship at the time, she says, and extremely lonely.
It made her growing success feel like an afterthought.
Some ofHeaux Tales,she adds, might have been what she needed at that time.
I never want to be that girl again, and I dont want anybody to experience that.
Heaux Taleswas harder to make than the albums that preceded it.
Sullivans not quite sure why.
Im not gonna lie.
I had a hard time even singing, she says.
Creatively, things didnt come as natural this time.
Its natural that artists will have droughts sometimes as writers, but I dont know.
I just know it was not as easy this time.
Shes also butting up against some fans expectations.
I dont know who this woman is, she says.
And I was just like,Okay, its not for her.
Thats cool.But some other people will be able to relate to it.
Everybody wont get it.
Many R&B listeners arent likely to be disappointed.
I wonder aloud if this album was trickier because shes in love now.
Her early music, including and especially her breakout single, Bust Your Windows, made heartache her signature.
Is it harder to write to that expectation when youre happy?
Sullivans boyfriend is a musician-writer-producer.
We moved fast, she says of the relationship.
But we were probably just on the same page.
We dont mind talking things out.
We know we dont know everything, and thats where a good relationship starts.
Youre open to learning.
But make no mistake.
