The-Dream on Oscars Shortlist, Why He’d Give His Kidney to Beyoncé and How Losing His Mother Connected Him to ‘Color Purple’
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When hitmaking producer The-Dream got the call to write an original song for the remake of The Color Purple, he almost couldn’t do it. He was busy — busy with Beyoncé.
“We were working on the Renaissance film, and I got a call from [music executive] Larry Jackson. He was like, ‘Yo, man, I need a record and I don’t know if you could do this,’” The-Dream tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And I was like, ‘Ah, man, I’m in the middle of this Renaissance thing and I’m doing more.’ I think people have an idea of what they think I do and it just kind of stops there. Like, ‘Oh, he writes a song and he goes home.’ It’s like, ‘Nah, that’s not quite what I do.’”
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But much like Queen Bey, The-Dream is a skilled multitasker, and he recorded a song so compelling it’s landed him on the shortlist for best original song at the Academy Awards. “SUPERPOWER (I),” recorded by leading lady Fantasia, is one of 15 tunes to make the cut — and he’s joined by another Color Purple track, “Keep It Movin,” written by Beyoncé mentee Halle Bailey and Renaissance collaborators Nova Wav and Morten Ristorp.
“This is one of the sweetest things ever,” he responds. “To be sitting across from people I’ve had great success with is amazing. Hopefully we’ll both try to stick it out and not bite the dust on this one.”
The-Dream has been behind a number of hits, including Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” and “Break My Soul,” Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake’s “Holy Grail,” Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body” and Justin Bieber’s debut single “Baby,” among others. If he lands a bid when the Academy reveals its nominees on January 23, it will mark the eight-time Grammy winner’s first-ever Oscar nomination.
In an interview, the megaproducer talks about how losing his mother helped him connect to Celie’s story in The Color Purple, his friendship with Beyoncé and more.
This is a packed year for best original song, and heavyweights like Bruce Springsteen, Alan Menken, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Linda Perry, Jack Black and Justin Timberlake didn’t make the list. So what was it like when you got that news?
Man, it was actually gratefully surprising, one because this whole thing started out as [me] trying to make sure I lended my gift to the film in any way that I could do possible. I wasn’t thinking about any accolades. It was more [about] a song that was missing. We couldn’t cut it at first because of the strike. And so, it was getting down into those hours, man, where it was just like, “Are we going to do it? Are we going to make it?” And so it was more so about that and making sure that it actually identified with everybody that was going to see the film. [The song] touched so much on Celie’s story, and that’s a story I often know so well, even just being in the South and being around a lot of women growing up as a child and hearing their stories and everything. So I’m just happy that everybody came away with understanding the parallel of the two things. And so of course I was pleasantly surprised. Like wow, this is crazy.
What was it like to work with Fantasia?
Oh, man, just a beautiful soul. So easy. And it felt like I’d known her forever. And although I knew she was in North Carolina, she had no idea that I was born in Raleigh, in Rockingham, North Carolina at all. She was like, “What? Oh, my God.” I’m like, “Uh, yeah. I totally get it.” We were synced from the beginning.
She cut that record in half the time — with tears in her eyes. She said it reminded her of her grandmother so much. I explained to her that I had lost my mother when I was 15 and at this particular point in life, and for a while now, I’ve been an orphan. Just an adult one. I understood that hole that’s left behind, and so that particular space, I’m pretty much tapped into it all the time. It’s not something you can run from. It stays with you. It basically becomes a superpower.
Do you remember watching the original The Color Purple?
Oh, my God. Do I? And still do, by the way. Really for a while, it was kind of hard to get through. My mom, of course, loved that film. My grandfather, he was kind of the head of the family; even though he had five brothers, some older than him, he just ended up being that person in the family. I think we all have one, where that’s the house you eat at, that’s the house you go to, the house you call when you need an extra $20.
So I grew up in that house with that guy from Hawkinsville, Georgia. I know exactly what Color Purple is. So it wasn’t a hard thing for me to figure out, or to even see without even looking at the movie. I could sit in a car, you could say Color Purple, and I immediately think about the heat and the temperature that it had to be in the South at that particular point in time because I’ve already been there. It’s like, “Oh, I get it.” Whether it’s been me physically in the South, cleaning off ancestors’ graves at the church my great-grandfather built, or either it’s looking at these films and understanding exactly what that space is.
Because The Color Purple is such a classic film, were you nervous about adding something new to something so beloved?
You know better than most probably at this point, that’s kind of my job. So my job is to try not to wreck any of these great people’s careers and dreams. So I wake up on a swivel every day just thinking about how to improve these people I’ve been granted access to, musical and artistic lives. Bey is Bey, Rihanna is Rihanna. These are the greats of our time.
I try to make sure I remind myself that it’s super important, the job that I’ve been assigned. And so no, I welcome it. Anything that has something to do with history and it’s been great before, I’ll be the first one to try to take a shot at it.
When I look at your discography, it feels like an act of service to Black female creators, whether it’s Beyoncé, Rihanna or Mariah, though you don’t exclusively work with women. Have you ever thought about your career in that way?
Yeah, no, I get it, man. That has everything to do with my closeness with my mother and before she passed, man, that was my best friend. And every day, man, that I can think of it, it’s a void. But like I said before, it’s also my power and where that thing comes from, because purely, of course, I’m definitely my grandfather’s son. I am the same guy that was cutting grass every day and scaling fish in the backyard with him and building two sheds or whatever it is. And I’m also every bit of my mother when it comes to that part of understanding and listening. And I can never be a mom or be a female or be a Black female in that way, but I tried to do my best part of letting this thing out of me if it was my mom feeling a certain way about it.
And so to watch my mom, lose her, to watch that life go away, to succumb to cancer and be that person that was there after school making her food and watching her not keep it down and just being there that whole six months until she was gone, there’s an intelligence that I would have about that feeling of what she would talk about in those waning hours versus [it] just being a normal conversation with a woman.
And so that thing is an insight that I can never forget, and [it] always will be a part of everything that I do. So those great things about me that have anything to do with that is more a tribute to my mom than it is me.
You worked on the new song “My House” with Beyoncé for the Renaissance film — what was it like creating it?
It was beautiful. Me and that girl, man, we just clicked. It’s not even work anymore. It is, “Hey, well, what you doing? What you doing? Good morning, good morning, let’s do something. Let’s do it.” And then the song’s done.
So that was one of those things that happened pretty late. We were like, “Yo, we need something for this film.” And it’s October at that particular point. “Are you going to pick a record we already have?” And I think we thought about that at first, and then it was more so about, “Hey, let’s just do something from how we are feeling now. Man, let’s just have a good time.”
And then that record came about, and that’s kind of the end of the story. “How do we wrap Renaissance up in a way without also trying to compete with it or make something that’s light-Renaissance, because Renaissance is a special thing?”
Renaissance, the album, the tour and the film, has had such a profound impact. What’s it like to be a part of it?
It’s like everybody’s back outside and feeling some type of way. I always feel like this gift is definitely a duty. If you got it, you use it and you share it, of course. That album and place that Bey created gave everyone a green light to say, “Hey, man, let’s get out here and just go for it again. We know it’s crazy out here, let’s go for it again. Let’s try it.” And that’s what she did. And I’m super-proud of her.
I remember going to see your concert in 2012, where Beyoncé and Jay-Z showed up two months after Blue Ivy was born …
Yeah, I couldn’t believe she came either. Because Jay was going to come, and he was like, “Bey’s coming.” I was like, “Hold on. What? She can’t come. This baby’s fresh out the oven.” And I don’t even know if she knew at the time that I knew that, but man, it’s things like that that you know you’d give a kidney to that person. It’s the small things. ‘Cause she didn’t have to do it, and she did.
Have you been working on your own music?
Oh, man. I’m always working on my music, I probably have seven, eight albums, man. [But] then I get a call saying, “Dream, you ready to start?” It’s like, “Oh, shit. Actually, yeah, I am ready to start. I was going to shoot these nine videos, but never mind me, I’m fine.” Meanwhile, my fans want to literally probably murder me.
Has there ever been a point where you had a song that two artists wanted?
That’s like my every day, oh my goodness. I try to do my best job of not playing something for anybody that didn’t cut it beforehand, and to be blessed enough to have enough records to go around, man, because I get it. In my younger times, you make these records, you’re just trying to make sure you get that one off and give it to the artist that you feel like will give it the best breath of life.
And then these days, I’m blessed to not have to do that. I don’t have to write a record for Fantasia and feel like that’s a Bey record or vice versa, or something for Rih and feel like it’s a Fantasia thing. I am able to go into these different pockets and tell these people’s stories based on them and do my best as I can to create a hit out of that space. Because more than just being No. 1, is that people understand who you are and what you stand for, and that’s an individuality trait — an artist that actually propels them to a certain spot versus being just somebody who had a dope song. And yes, it’s super catchy, but nobody knows you after the shit comes off the board.
It’s the 15th anniversary of Mariah Carey’s Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel. What goes through our mind when you think about working on that album?
Man, pleasantry. I mean, it’s always the great ones, man, that get you, and just say, “Hey, man, do your thing. You do your thing, I’m going to do my thing and it’s going to sound great.” And you’re like, “Yeah.” It was just crazy, because you don’t remember that much about the times and people until they add up when it goes so good, when you’re in sync. The only times you usually remember when you think about it is when some shit went left. Like, “Yeah, I remember I went in the studio, it was all bad.” And those are the things we talk about. But with her, nothing but great vibes, man. I actually would love to do that again with her.
When you worked on “Single Ladies,” did you know it would become part of pop culture history?
Oh, absolutely. Immediately. I knew exactly what it was from the get-go. I didn’t know what it was when I was just talking shit about doing it right before that — because I was talking completely nuts and out of my mind, which is the thing I have to do to psych myself up at that time. You know how it is when you’re the young person and you’re just there? Like, “Yeah. I’m going to make …” In my mind though, I’m like, “What the hell am I going to make? What am I going to do today? You better do something. You just came here talking all that shit. You better write a record.”
And myself came through for myself, and I was like, “Oh, shit. This is a smash.” And back again, though, it was about her. Her story. Her things. And that’s my point. When you make something that describes the place and the feeling of a person and what they’re dealing with right now, you can wrap that into a song format, man, that’s the best thing an artist can do for anybody that’s investing in them as an artist.
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