Jessie Reyez, a Toronto-based singer and songwriter who has had a record deal with Island Records since 2016, made a brutally and, in some ways, frighteningly honest confession during a recent radio interview on Ebro In The Morning on Hot 97 in New York. They were discussing her track "Gatekeeper," which comes off of her Kiddo EP. The lyrics fire shots at music executives who have long preyed on young female artists to fulfill their sexual desires, promising fame and fortune by their deft touch in exchange. Little did anyone know exactly how true those words that Reyez sings are - according to her, she considered answering that call at one point in her music career.
"It f**ked me up because I thought about it," she explained. "I thought about doing it. It's not like it was a solid no. I thought about doing it. I got in the car, I was like, 'S**t, am I f**king up right now? How bad do I really want this dream? Why am I not down if all of these girls are supposed to do it and this girl's telling me that this is what girls do to get into the industry? Am I really that ambitious? Is that really what I want? Am I made up for this? Should I quit? Should I switch professions?" That kind of crisis of conscience didn't get the better of her, but it's clear that there's an importance in the message she wanted to communicate. As for the response to the song, Reyez said she couldn't have anticipated the comments she's received.
"[It] was an experience," she said. "The same way if I broke my finger today, I'd sing about breaking my finger tomorrow. It's just crazy, crazy the response. I didn't know what kind of response I was going to get. It was just crazy to have that.... and people responded, like, 'I've been through that.' Dudes who were like, 'I've been around that.'...It's 2017, how is this s**t still happening? How are men that have daughters, and men that have sisters, and men that have mothers move that way?" It's a question that certainly remains unanswerable, but hopefully honestly from those like Jessie Reyez can help bring us closer to a solution to the problem.
Check out the full interview below.