Normani’s new single “Wild Side” featuring Cardi B definitely taps into her grown & sexy side — which would explain why the singer says she was initially afraid to play it for her dad.
via People:
Speaking to Apple Music’s Ebro Darden, Normani, 25, opened up about what she wanted to showcase to her fans with her new single and why she was nervous to play the sexually-tinged song for father Derrick Hamilton.
“I was so terrified to play this song for my dad… terrified… oh my goodness….avoiding it, he kept asking to hear the record because everyone else heard it but he didn’t hear it,” she said.
“And my dad is my biggest fan… he works nightshifts. He hustles for his family and so to get through the night sometimes he listens to all my records and he was dying to listen to this one and I was just like ‘Dad, um, I’ll play it for you later.'”
Normani added that her mom Andrea Hamilton — who recently celebrated having her final set of radiation after battling breast cancer — played him the track.
“He was like ‘That s—t is hard,’ he’s like ‘that s— is fire’ and he told me all the time, every single day, I kid you not: he’s like ‘Are you ready to take over the world? Are you ready to take over the world?'” she said. “He loves the song, he loves the record.”
The singer explains that she always felt that “I never had room to make mistakes” because she has consistently been compared to top-notch artists.
“[It’s] beautiful and I’m very honored by that, but at the same time, it’s scary,” she said. “But that is an extra pressure on me that I felt like I couldn’t make any mistake that any new artist would be allowed to make, which is why I end up being a perfectionist and in a way, it robbed me from being able to enjoy the recording process of making my first album.”
As for what she wanted people to take from the record, she said she wanted to show a completely different side to her artistry.
“It was very important for me to lead with this record, specifically because representation is key, and me coming from a multi-cultural group, a very mainstream pop group, I wanted my fans to see this other layer of me,” she said, referring to her past in Fifth Harmony. “Not just artistically but like, this is who I am as a person. I’m a Black female who can do the pop s— but I can also be on a record with Cardi, and I could do features with 6LACK. I’m all of those things.”
“I feel like people are so quick to put me in a box and create barriers but I’ve always been expressive of the fact that I want to be genre-less, I can do it all,” she added.
If her dad’s out here working the night shift, we’re sure he’s heard nastier records than “Wild Side.”
Coming up at 4:30 ET, I’m speaking to the young icon @Normani about her mad new hit single “Wild Side” with @iamcardib.
Open @AppleMusic and tap Radio to lock in: https://t.co/RwqJBvn5Cd pic.twitter.com/8Et1upU3Df
— the Old Man Ebro (@oldmanebro) August 3, 2021
