Jon Batiste on unreleased Lana Del Rey collaborations: “It’s some incredible, really great, beautiful stuff”
Grammy-winning jazz and R&B auteur Jon Batiste has shed light on unreleased collaborations with Lana Del Rey – describing them as “beautiful”.
The renowned pianist and singer-songwriter was speaking in a new interview with NME when he recalled his time working with Lana Del Rey, and how there are still numerous recordings from the singer that have not yet been released.
The discussion came ahead of his upcoming album ‘World Music Radio’, which is set for release on Friday (August 18) and features collaborations from Lil Wayne, New Jeans, JID, and more. It also sees him once again join forces with the ‘Video Games’ singer – following the two collaborating on ‘Candy Necklace’, a track from her latest album ‘Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd’.
“We had a great first meeting after our mutual friend and musical collaborator Zach Dawes introduced us because he thought we would have a great creative spark,” Batiste said, explaining how the partnership came about in the new NME interview. “We met and it just turned into a beautiful collaboration.”
“I met Rick Rubin in Italy and he suggested I go to Shangri-La [Rubin’s studio in Malibu, California],” he continued. “I told him I was inspired to create a new album and I was creating with all types of different musicians and producers and in that creative spur, I had a lot of things that I was recording with Lana, and I recorded a lot of things with Lana that no one has even heard yet.”
“But two of those things ended up on her last album,” he added. “And ‘Life Lesson’ on my album is like the palate cleanser after the credits roll in the movie. It’s a spiritual relative of the album sessions.”
Later in the interview, he also described the currently-unreleased recordings as sounding “beautiful”, and teased that there may be plans to share them at a later date.
“It’s some incredible, really great, beautiful stuff we’ve made together,” he began. “We’ve talked about doing something together. But this music, I mean, hopefully, at the right time, I don’t want to say too much, but I hope one day I have more to say about what will happen with it [laughs].”
Elsewhere in the interview, Batiste also explained the inspiration behind his upcoming LP, and revealed that he hopes to make people question their definition of world music.
“I also was making music and thinking about how popular culture and world culture have become more and more synonymous with each other,” he explained. “The definition of what and who that can be is expanding in terms of age, race and demographics. It’s something that I was thinking about a lot.”
“Everything that is said about world music is really wrong – it feels almost like a separate category but everything in the world is world music. Music that is made for everybody in the world, that’s what we’re doing,” he continued. “And I think if you reinvented and reimagined what that term means, it’s a beautiful prompt, not a marginalising idea – it’s an expansive one.”
Meanwhile, earlier this year the musician joined forces with NewJeans, JID and more to share the new single ‘Be Who You Are (Real Magic) – made in collaboration with COKE STUDIO.
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Liberty Dunworth
NME
