Rob Markman: We ain't come here to play.
H.E.R.: We came here to eat.
Rob Markman: Yeah.
Coming to Woodside, Queens, we're in this restaurant, Kabayan.
H.E.R.: Kabayan, yeah.
Rob Markman: Yeah.
Rob Markman: I think you need to get your own dish on the menu when we're done.
H.E.R.: Right.
Rob Markman: We talk about blackness in a monolithic way, as if it's one experience
and it's not, even myself being mixed.
Rob Markman: Where did you learn to find yourself and be comfortable with yourself, embrace
your blackness clearly and embrace being Filipino.
H.E.R.: I was always sure of myself, pretty confident, but there were always those moments
where I felt like, "Okay, I'm too Filipino for the black kids.
I'm too black for the Filipino kids."
I got all these different perspectives of life and I kind of formed my own and there's
a bunch of women who need somebody to look up to that is not a certain mold, that believes
that there is no mold for what a woman should be, or what an artist should be, or what a
black woman should be, or a black artist should be.
Rob Markman: What was your experience like growing up in the Bay?
H.E.R.: I love the Berry.
I love where I'm from, the authenticity of it and there's a sense of community there.
I always felt like I had a good foundation, a good support system.
Rob Markman: What music was playing in the house?
H.E.R.: Oh my gosh.
Everything.
A lot of old school.
My mom loves ballads, Filipinos love ballads.
They love Whitney Houston.
They love Mariah Carey.
They love Alicia Keys.
H.E.R.: I feel like I did feel something from Whitney singing.
I was inspired to sing because of Whitney and I was inspired to perform a certain way
because she paved the way.
H.E.R.: My dad, he listened to a lot of Prince.
He was everything.
He was rock, he was blues, he was pop, he was R&B.
It's just magic to me.
Rob Markman: I feel like we letting this food go to waste.
It's getting a little bit cold.
H.E.R.: It's time to dig in.
Rob Markman: We could definitely just eat and talk, because I think you said it's tradition
to bond over food.
H.E.R.: I want finger food, lumpia, you got to try that.
Boom.
Cheers.
Rob Markman: And what's this called again?
H.E.R.: Lumpia
It's the best.
Rob Markman: Where have you been all my life?
H.E.R.: It's the best spring roll you've ever had in your life.
Does your mom make this in the crib?
H.E.R.: All the time.
Actually that's how my parents met.
My dad would come home from work and she would offer to cook for him when they lived across
the hall from each other in an apartment complex.
Rob Markman: You got me.
To me, that's love at first...
H.E.R.: At first bite.
Rob Markman: Yeah, love at first bite.
There you go.
H.E.R.: We've got crispy pata, which is pork, tilapia, tocino.
Rob Markman: I love this food.
I want to know how to cook some of it.
Can we go back with Chef Joe and he's going to show us how to make some of these dishes.
You probably already know, but I need the education.
H.E.R.: I need it to, to be honest with you.
Let's do it.
Rob Markman: Chef Joe, thanks for having us.
Chef Joe: All right.
H.E.R.: Let's do this. Mmm
Rob Markman: When your mom and your grandmother used to cook was it special occasions, like
holidays, was it Sundays?
H.E.R.: It was every other day.
Rob Markman: Every other day.
H.E.R.: They was cooking a lot.
Yeah.
Rob Markman: Just come in here and be like, just order to H.E.R.
That's it.
H.E.R.: Right.
Rob Markman: They really putting us to work, man.
H.E.R.: Facts.
Rob Markman: I watching you at the Grammys perform Sometimes and it felt like, okay,
there's another chain, but there's something else that we've been missing.
H.E.R.: Yeah.
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob Markman: What was the inspiration for that one?
H.E.R.: It was crazy, with Kobe's passing on the day of the Grammys, how fitting the
message was.
You can't always plan life.
You just got to be positive and just go with it sometimes, and that's what the song is
about, is just it's really hard, but I know I have to trust.
Rob Markman: When you come off from the piano, pull out the guitar, you put your leg up and
just start going and strumming on the guitar, it really made me think about the young black
girls and boys that you may inspire that may not know Prince, but may know H.E.R. and may
know that Grammy moment, the influence that you might have on a younger generation, does
is that ever daunting?
H.E.R.: I was just making what was honest to me.
I just knew what I loved.
I released my project to Volume 1 in 2016 and people started to say like, "Wow, she's
speaking my life.
I've felt this before.", and at first I was surprised.
Like really?
Eventually it was just like, wow, okay, I am a voice for young women, or for anybody
who has felt this way.
It's still kind of surreal and I still have those moments of like, wow.
What other artists did for me, I'm doing for people and to be a young black woman who is
able to unleash that power and to be able to impact other young black women, especially
to pick up a guitar, I just feel grateful and blessed to be that kind of influence.
Rob Markman: What type of audience do you attract when you're out there on tour?
H.E.R.: Oh my gosh.
Can I tell you a story?
It's very mixed.
I just did this festival in Las Vegas.
There's two days and on the first day it was a lot more black artists, and I was on the
second day, and at first I was kind of like, "Oh, why wasn't I on the day with the more
R&B folks."
H.E.R.: I did the show and I was like, wait a minute, these people know the words to my
songs and they loved my music.
At that moment, I realized I put myself in that box, like why did you think that you
were not prepared for this second day when my goal was to be a Prince who appeals to
everybody and it was one of the best shows I ever had.
H.E.R.: How are we doing Chef Joe?
You doing well.
Rob Markman: What I doing?
Chef Joe: Mix it up.
Rob Markman: Just mix it up?
Chef Joe: Yeah.
Rob Markman: Okay.
I want to go into the birth of H.E.R.
Sitting here with you, you're an open book with your feelings and your emotions, and
especially in your music, so the acronym of having everything revealed.
I think on the surface it was mysterious, but you just open up.
H.E.R.: Mm.
Rob Markman: What was that thought that made you want to maybe pull a veil?
H.E.R.: I remember when I was making all this music, having a hard time being honest and
everybody in my life seeing me as this little girl prodigy, the little girl, and always
feeling like I had to live up to a certain expectation.
It's hard to be honest.
It's like are people going to like the music, first of all, and are they going to accept
the message?
I didn't want anybody to know how old I was or what I look like because I wanted to get
back to music being the forefront.
When I released Volume 1 I said, "Okay, I want the cover to be just a silhouette and
that's all you get.", and then I did it and everybody was like, "Who is this?
Who is she?
I think it's so-and-so."
That was the idea of just the birth of making music the forefront and people paying attention
to that, focusing on that.
Rob Markman: Chef Joe with the pot.
H.E.R.: Oh, look at that.
That looks legit.
Rob Markman: I made this.
I did this.
This all me.
Rob Markman: You talked about being scared initially and having this fear of being honest,
have those fears been alleviated?
Do you feel like you can be more honest in your music?
H.E.R.: Absolutely.
H.E.R.: I feel like I have a responsibility to be at this point, because so many women
have came to me and said, "You make me comfortable with being myself."
H.E.R.: Just as black artists get put in a box, women get put in a box, to be a certain
way, to look a certain way, especially artists.
H.E.R.: We did that.
H.E.R.: It's delicious.
Rob Markman: Wow.
I can smell the peanut butter.
H.E.R.: Finished product.
I can't wait to eat this.
it looks delicious.
Chef Joe: Yeah, it's the best
H.E.R.: Yes.
It wouldn't be a Filipino meal without steamed rice on the side.
Rob Markman: Without some rice, okay.
Rob Markman: Chef Joe, thank you so much for allowing us in your kitchen to cook with you,
man.
H.E.R.: Man, we killed it.
You did your thing on the sisig, on the pork ear.
Chef Joe: Yeah.
Rob Markman: Oh, I got it in my eye.
H.E.R.: We got the pork adobo.
I did my thing on that and I think we both did our thing on the kutti kutti.
Rob Markman: The kutti kutti, for real.
H.E.R.: With the peanut butter.
Mm, so good.
H.E.R.: Salamat, Chef Joe.
Chef Joe: Salamat
Rob Markman: Outside of music, the Bay area is the birthplace of the Black Panther Movement.
H.E.R.: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob Markman: How did that influence you?
H.E.R.: It's kind of crazy to think about, thinking that that was the center of it all.
People from the Bay just naturally have this confidence about themselves and that's really
what the Black Panther Movement was about.
It was about being black and being proud.
Be a leader, understand what's going on and change it, do something about it, that's some
of the influence it had on me, as far as just being proud and confident in who I am and
that I knew anywhere I went, I could be myself.
Rob Markman: I feel like every project you peel back a layer, we learn a little something
more about you and even sonically you explore different things, again, opening up that box
of what we're talking about.
Rob Markman: It's not just R&B, it's funk, it's soul.
If you could describe the evolution of your discography?
H.E.R.: That was the perfect explanation, but...
Thank you.
H.E.R.: It's really just been evolution of self.
It's been evolution of me and who I am, who I'm becoming as a woman.
I think you really hear that in the music.
H.E.R.: This upcoming project is definitely going to be reminiscent of the first two projects
sonically, but elevated because it's going to be much more musical.
It's going to be opened up.
Rob Markman: Finally, I want to talk about legacy.
If someone were to Google search you in ten years, what do you hope they find?
H.E.R.: Man.
So much has happened in the last two years, I don't even know what, by that point, what's
going to be found.
To be honest with you, before I released Volume 1, I created a vision board and I pretty much
covered majority of the things on that vision board.
At the end of the day, all those big accomplishments, little people around the world can say, "Oh
my gosh, this song changed my life.
This song helped me get through this."
I don't think I've even fulfilled my full purpose.
Rob Markman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
H.E.R.: I'm here to do multiple things and I've only just begun.
I'm only 22 years old, so sky's the limit.
Rob Markman: Grammy award winning, 22 year old H.E.R.
Was that on the vision board?
Was a Grammy award on the vision board?
H.E.R.: It was nominated and winning, yes, and I got two.
Rob Markman: Yeah.
H.E.R.: Ten nominations in two years, so who knows what's going to happen.
H.E.R.: It's just about impact.
It's about just being myself and not being afraid of living up to any expectation but
my own, and telling any other artists or any woman, black woman, whoever, that that's the
only expectation you have to live up to, is your own.
Rob Markman: H.E.R., thank you so much for sitting with us...
H.E.R.: Thank you.
Rob Markman: To talk and for sharing this food, and hopefully, we have this time again
soon.
H.E.R.: I'm sure we will.
Rob Markman: That's for all the times that your grandmother kicked you out the kitchen.
H.E.R.: Exactly.
Rob Markman: Yeah.