ABC/Ida Mae AstuteThanks to her latest album, Let Love Rule, Ledisi received three Grammy nominations in November — Best R&B Performance, Best Traditional R&B Performance and Best R&B Album.
But, the R&B-jazz recording artist tells ABC Radio that she wasn’t particularly motivated to record the disc’s hit title track — and the first song she recorded for the album overall — “Let Love Rule,” explaining, “I wasn’t wanting to record. I didn’t want to work with new people.”
“But I was there [in the recording studio]. It’s like your body’s there, but your mind isn’t there.”
She continues, “When “Let Love Rule” came about I was thinking, ‘I just love Bob Marley. I’m about to go to Jamaica. I’ve been studying him for a year and a half now on top of learning all this music. I want that feeling.’
I was like, ‘I want this vibe. This energy. I’m tired and I really don’t want to be here, but I’m here.'”
But once she recorded the song’s hook, Ledisi says the track “felt beautiful.” “It felt like water,” she adds.
Even though “Let Love Rule” was cut from the list of songs to include on the studio project, it was eventually included back on the tracklist and also inspired the title of her album.
“I said [to my producer], ‘Can we just call the album Let Love Rule? since it’s the first song I ever wrote for this project?'”
“The first song I cut, the first song I write, the first song I let go of and the first song I bring back,” she adds.
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