My song, "I'll Find You" with Tori Kelly,
it's got millions of views and a lot of comments.
A lot of times comments are negative,
but this one really has some powerful, positive comments,
so I'm gonna read a few of them.
Alright, let's see...
Emmanuel says,
Wow.
"Masterpiece." That's big.
A lot of times we love to dwell on the negative,
or kind of rebellious art, and not just like,
"Hey, what about something to inspire people?"
and that's what we did,
and I'm grateful that it's working like that.
Hey man, listen.
Love is the new gangsta. Positivity's the new thug life.
Step into my world, man.
It's rough in here in these streets.
I mean, that's it.
That's like the sentiment that you hope to get,
you know, when you put out a song like that.
When I first saw the first take of the video,
I was like, "No, no, no. Not gonna cry today.
"Real thugs don't cry."
It's powerful, man,
that it can reach millions of people around the world,
and you just never really know when you're creating something
that can have that kind of impact.
"I'll Find You" was a special song
because Frank E. the producer, we connected because
both of us had loved ones who were battling cancer
and we wanted to inspire them.
The video for "I'll Find You" highlights kids from St. Jude's.
And also, a portion of the proceeds from the song
go towards St. Jude's,
so I just wanted to highlight them
and allow their story to be told.
So Tori Kelly and I are really good friends
and we were trying to find the perfect song
for her and I to collaborate on,
and this one was the one that just made sense.
We could've written a song about anything,
but we really wanted the song to matter and mean something,
and I feel like that's what we did.
The emotions that I felt writing it were lyrics like,
That's when you really feel hopeless like,
"Look, if this is real, God if You can hear me,
"I need a lot of hope in this situation,"
and just that transparency and that raw honesty
that I was trying to give to people.
So the album's called
It's a really dynamic project
that kind of allows you to see my whole journey,
and allows you to kind of walk with me
through everything that I've experienced,
and it's chaotic,
but then there's hope in the chaos.
So it's like a movie.
I got to work with a lot of incredible people:
Ty Dolla $ign,
Tori Kelly,
Metro Boomin, Boy Wonder, T-Minus-
so it's really like a lot of different palettes.
A lot of music that's currently out there that I've released,
it either surface-level or uplifting.
I haven't taken people down a dark hole yet,
so you really gotta get into the album to hear that.
The whole idea or the concept of creating music
is to make people think.
And I don't want to just create music
that makes people escape their problems,
but I also don't want to create music
where people just dwell on their problems either.
I want them to be able to go through that tunnel of chaos
and come out on the other side.
That's just the way I'm wired
because everybody shouts from the rooftops
the stuff that they need to hear.
So I probably am always trying to give people hope,
because I always need it.
And I can only imagine if I do,
there's people out there just like me,
so that's really the way I approach it.