Following the Billboard Awards, Miguel’s name has been synonymous with a number of hilarious memes immortalizing his leg drop powers, and mocking the accident that happened when he fell short of a jump while performing and injured a female bystander. But his latest cover story is sure to shift the paradigm.
The singer is the cover star for the July issue of Paper Magazine, and for the occasion, Miguel’s opening up about everything from relationships to record labels, and revealing why he decided to throw caution to the wind to save his career.
Check out some excerpts from the Paper interview below.
On his first time at the Met Gala this year:
“To be honest with you, the majority of the people there didn’t know who the fuck I was, so my look was perfectly like, ‘I belong here, but I’m not trying to shout it out.'”
On his newest music:
“I really wanted to stretch musically on this song, not only sonically but structurally, and just kind of remind people that R&B has no boundary. There’s no rulebook to how R&B is supposed to sound. What I’m trying to say with my music is, ‘You don’t have to pretend. Say what you mean.'”
On deciding his own style of music:
“If you look at art dealers historically, they were kind of in control of what was making an impact culturally. This was my own anti-establishment way of saying, ‘Fuck you, I am my own business. I decide what is good and what is not. I wanted to reconnect to my peers, the people that I hang out with, the ones that go to the same bars, listen to the same music, look at the same blogs, will be at that art gallery, will be at that show. Those people, the ones that I wasn’t touching before, I had their attention.”
On his relationship with girlfriend Nazanin Mandi:
“As comfortable as I am dealing with it in my music, it’s so much harder to do for real. I’m not even going to pretend.” Back in 2007 Mandi temporarily called off their relationship. “I was mad young, just wildin’ out, and she was smart enough to leave, like she should have.”
On working with Mariah Carey on “Beautiful:”
When she first walked into our session I was like, ‘I had such a crush on you, bitch!'” Asked if those were his exact words, he grins. “Nah, I had to keep it cool.”
Be sure to head over to Paper Magazine for the full interview.
