On the Tuesday March 28th edition of “Tamron Hall,” Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter turned author Amerie joined the show to discuss her new children’s book “You Will Do Great Things.” Amerie opened up to Tamron about returning to her childhood dream of becoming a writer, her career, what it was like to be a strong, opinionated woman in the music industry and her new song with Rick Ross and Consequence. Plus Amerie revealed to Tamron she did not know about “Amerie Season” until recently.
Amerie on “Amerie Season” and her experience as a strong female in the music industry
“I found out about it [Amerie Season] later, you know. But I think that’s really cool and I think it was just like the perfect timing of the video, maybe with the concept of the video and the song itself.” Tamron stepped in to clarify, “When your friend called you [to tell you about ‘Amerie Season’] what did she say?” Amerie responded, “I think it was just like, ‘Do you know that there’s this thing? Amerie season?’ and I’m like, ‘Wait, what?’ And then it was explained. And then of course, with social media and the hashtags, I was like ‘Ohhhhhh!” It’s nice. It’s nice to feel like you connect and that something that you’ve done connects with people.” Tamron then asked about being a woman in the music industry who stood up for themselves and Amerie said, “You have so many female artists and you will see a lot of female artists for instance, in lots of advertisements and they’ll be on certain magazines and so they have a certain thing that men don’t have. But a lot of people who make a lot of the decisions in the industry are men and that’s not necessarily a bad thing always, but when people come in with what they expect of women, it’s very much like ‘Sing it like I told you to, do it like I told you to.’ You know what I mean? And so when you write your own music and you have your own vision, I think it can be a little jarring for some people. And for me, I never went into it to just do the magazine stuff. Actually, that was the stuff I just was like you have to do this in order to create. I wanted to create.”
Amerie on her new track with Rick Ross and rapper Consequence
“It was great! I’ve worked with Rick before. I didn’t see him when we did the record. I was just with Cons [Consequence]. We did it kind of like on the fly. He called me up and was like, ‘Hey, I got this record’ and we go back a long way. So I was just like, if he calls I’m like, ‘Absolutely I’ll be there.’ Great presence, great artist… It felt really good [to record]. I mean I have been recording because I record myself a lot. So I always record, sometimes I’m writing and then I’ll jump up to like, lay down an idea real quick and then come back to it. So I’m always doing that but to be in the studio with someone, that felt good because you don’t have that as much these days, especially with technology. Everyone just does it in their own area. So to be together and kind of have that fun vibe. And we were really being silly, you know.”
