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GRAMMY-winning R&B singer Marsha Ambrosius joined Audacy’s Mike Street at the Hard Rock Hotel New York to talk about using her powers for good now that her monster, Dr. Dre-helmed album, CASABLANCO, has officially arrived.
LISTEN NOW: Marsha Ambrosius talks with Mike Street at the Hard Rock Hotel New York
The name of her new release, Marsha tells us, came from the feeling of creating this music with Dr Dre – “Very much red carpets, white table cloth settings, and the lights and the moon and the stars -- a spoiled experience,” she admits. “It set the mood and tone for what we were going to create. Once we decided to make a jazz album, ‘Casablanca’ felt like the place to go and listen to it.”
“So, it was ‘Casablanca,’ because it felt very vintage Hollywood. But you know, it's Dre and Marsh and it was Hip-Hop,” she adds. At Dre's suggestion, they changed the a to an o and called it CASABLANCO, “Like Griselda Blanco… Gangsta. Musically, those things kind of connected and made that feel how it felt.”
Marsha Ambrosius – CASABLANCO tracklisting:
Smoke
Tunisian Nights
One Night Stand
Cloudy With A Chance Of ... Real
Greedy
Self Care / Wrong Right
Wet
Thrill Her
The Greatest
Best I Could Find
Music of My Mind
Listening to the album, Mike says he got a “Cotton Club, intimate jazz club,” vibe, “and the next thing you know, it flips to 1990 Hip-Hop club mid-track, but it's all woven together so tightly and seamlessly. It's like 1,000,000 count sheets,” he adds.
“Pretty much, give or take a few 1000 counts,” Marsha agrees. “It was very riche,” she laughs. “Creating it very much ‘Harlem Nights,’ Cotton Club, but then that Nas beat will drop or that KRS-One will drop and something will happen that just kind of keeps your head nodding, and you're walking to an upright bass in the symphony all at the same time… it's literal audible orgasm.”
All of the tracks were written “on the spot, just as we're sitting here,” Marsha says. “Just imagine a mixing board and a microphone in the room and it's all of us -- It's myself, Dre, the ICU. It's Trev, it's Bluetooth, it's Focus…, it's Dem Joints -- and we're building ground up all of these moments, just taking the slow climb, but making this moment just in the moment.”
“It's almost like the songs were writing themselves all at the same time… It was happening while it was happening,” she adds.
“The beauty of this album,” Marsha believes, is that she feels no need to try to replicate or upstage this unique effort. “We can build off of what that feels like,” she says, “but to outdo it is just to live it now because that music, there's so many moments within it, I feel like the nostalgia of it, just like your throwback playlist, that's what ‘CASABLANCO’ feels like now. We've created a timeless effort into giving all of these respectful nods to music that we love in one space.”
Don't miss Mike Street’s full interview with Marsha Ambrosius above, and stay tuned for more conversations with your favorite artists right here on Audacy.