MACY GRAY

Singer and songwriter

You know the record I'm so ready to get? The new D'Angelo record. I heard most of it. It's so dope. People are going to say it's not commercial. But it's so phat. I loved his first record, but that one had hits on it. On this one I heard maybe one. But artistically it's just awesome.

I heard the new Fiona Apple. It's hot. It's real different, real artsy. She's not so obviously going for hits. She has some piano and vocal songs, stuff like that. She has this one song where the tempo changes right in the middle of the song. It's a real arty record. It's like she just wanted to make music.

I think that's what's happening now. A lot of artists are going to start doing that. A lot of stuff that you wouldn't hear on the radio today you're going to start hearing in the next couple years. The way-out stuff is working. That's kind of the only way to go. The hip-hop/r-and-b thing has been done and everybody's tired of it. R Kelly's been done a million times, and everybody did Nirvana over and over again for 10 years.

Like, for the first time the Roots are commercial. If you listen to the album, it's still just the Roots doing their thing, but this time they finally got a little break on the radio.

Even people like Puffy are saying they just want to make music, even though he's still going to be Puffy, no matter how hard he tries. But that's where everybody's heading. They're all trying to do something different.

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