Vocalist Niykee Heaton, who is signed to Steve Rifkind and Russell Simmons’All Def Music imprint, recollects being attacked by a “blitz” of words during her first time meeting Mr. Simmons.
“Oh my God, I was like blitz attacked,” Niykee Heaton explains in an exclusive interview with HipHopDX. “All of a sudden I get an email from his assistant that’s like, ‘Russell wants to meet you.’ I was in New York by myself ‘cause [my manger] Lauren [Pisciotta] had left and [Russell Simmons’ assistant] was like, ‘Meet me at this address, he’s getting out of yoga, come to the car,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, okay.’ I get in this SUV and she’s like, ‘Oh Russell’s come down from yoga, he’ll be here in a second.’ I’m in the back seat, he gets in the front seat and turns around and goes, ‘Oh.’ I was just stunned in the back seat of his SUV and he was just talking at me after his yoga class and I was just trying to listen to what he was saying but he literally talks so fast that I don’t know what happened. It’s literally like being attacked by words and I honestly don’t even remember what it was about. He was just saying, ‘I believe in you’ and I’m like, ‘Cool.’ I drove [with] him to the airport, dropped him off and then his driver drove me back. It was the strangest thing that’s ever happened.
“He just wanted to be involved after that,” she continues. “He just called me on the phone all the time and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, Russell,’ and I’ll just take his call. And then he just wanted to be involved after that. I was like, ‘Okay, cool.’ I don’t know how it happened.”
Niykee Heaton Details Creation Of “Infinity”
Later in the conversation, Niykee Heaton, who was raised in Geneva, Illinois, says she doesn’t find the difficulties surrounding the music business problematic as she’s ultimately pursuing her dream.
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“I mean no,” she says. “I feel like if I was a pop act who had to really put on a face and sell things that weren’t me, it would be a job but this isn’t a job. My whole life, since I was six-years old, I’ve been composing music. It’s really the only thing I know and writing music when I was that young was the only thing that kept me alive because I was going through so much that my only outlet was music. So to be able to continue to do that as a career, it’s not hard at all. Dealing with a bunch of business douchebags? Yeah it’s hard but I have to think about [the fact that] I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do my whole life. This is my dream, to create music that touches people. And to do that is not work at all.”
Finally, detailing her recently released “Infinity” single, Niykee Heaton says the inspiration for the record came from a song she describes as the “corniest shit ever.”
“The way that came about [was] me and Lauren were in the car. And I think this song came on and it was a girl singer and she was like, ‘I love you for infinity’ and I was like, ‘That’s the corniest shit I’ve ever heard,’” Niykee Heaton explains. “I’m like, ‘Lauren if I ever write a song that says I love you for infinity just fuckin’ shoot me,’ and she was like, ‘Well why don’t you say something cool then?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll fuck you for infinity,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God, wait.’ And then I made it into a song. That’s where that term came from but ‘Infinity’ again is one of those songs that I generalized. So it sounds like ‘I could love you for infinity, I’ll be your baby forever’ it’s a love song, but I actually wrote it for my sister where I’ll be your baby even when you’re gone. It’s that kind of love, eternal. That’s what that song is about. I just had to add a ‘for’ in there to make it interesting [laughs].”
Niykee Heaton’s Bad Intentions EP was released yesterday (September 23) and is currently available for purchase on iTunes.
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Additional reporting by Justin Hunte
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