Photo by Titus Houston
Lydia Caesar
On December 9, R&B artist Lydia Caesar will perform at the House of Soul in promotion of her new EP, Legendary Love, which drops the same day. The “Legendary Love Concert Experience” will feature the Queens native performing songs from the upcoming project, including the dreamy “The Ones We Love,” which was released last month and recently had its music video premiere on BET Soul. We talked to Caesar about her upcoming show, her new music, and making R&B songs that celebrate healthy relationships.
You chose House of Soul as the place to release Legendary Love. Why that space?
First of all, House of Soul is very sexy. I wanted the event to be very sexy, where people dress up and come out. They can sit or they can stand. It kind of gives you the best of both standing room and seats, so that’s first. Second, House of Soul is like my home. I host an open mic there the last Friday of every month called Cafe Soul. Cafe Soul is actually one of the sponsors for my concert, so I’m very familiar with the space. I love the [co-]owner. Her name is Nichol Stevenson. I love that she’s a woman and she’s Black, and I definitely wanted to give my business to a Black-owned and, if I could, a woman-owned business, and the whole concert is women. There’s a woman host and my opening acts are women. The whole operation is Black women, and that’s what I really wanted.
What was the inspiration behind “The Ones We Love?”
I just, a lot of times, think about experiences that we all have, and we’re so comfortable when it comes to people who we love, not just our partners, but our parents, our sisters. I think it boils down to what's more of our authentic self with these people, but, at times, that can translate to mistreatment and taking each other for granted. I really wanted to touch on that, because that’s something we don’t really talk about. We might talk about being deeply in love, breaking up, or getting cheated on, the extremes, but what about people who are in good, healthy relationships, but the love has died down or the fire has burned out? Instead of pushing for it, you’ve just become comfortable.
I really wanted to make a song about that part of a relationship just to promote healing within a healthy relationship. It doesn’t always have to be about getting out of it. Sometimes, you need to just fix what’s broken and move forward.
Are you in a healthy, loving relationship right now?
I am. I’m married to my husband. We’ve been married for seven years. This year will make eight years, and yeah, we’re in a happy, healthy relationship. We have problems just like everybody, but we always find a way to do better, to elevate, and at the end of the day, that’s important.
What was your introduction to music, and what made you want to pursue it?
I grew up in church like a lot of us. My dad is a pastor, a very well-known pastor, in Queens. I always grew up around singing and music. I was in the pulpit early on, since I was a little girl, singing in church and doing solos and stuff like that, so that’s kind of how I got started. It was a challenge because when I decided to pursue music, I didn’t do gospel, and that was a bit of a difficulty because people were like, “Oh, you’re going to sing secular music.” And I always thought to myself: My music is gospel, too. Even though I’m not saying “Jesus” and “get saved” and “turn your life around.” Christians and people of faith, believers, have relationships. They go through heartache, and they need to hear the lessons that I’m teaching in my songs. I was always confident that I can juggle being a secular R&B artist and still have a relationship with God, because my relationship with God is personal, and he’s woven through all of my music.
Over time, though, my parents [have been] so supportive of my music. They love my musical journey. I come from New York, and I’m a transplant in St. Louis. That was also very challenging, moving from the great, big music city to a much smaller city, but I’ve still managed to find my way out here. I still go home, and I do shows at home as well. I still have a very strong fanbase in New York, but it’s good to kind of cultivate two markets. I’ve made a name for myself there, and I’ve made a name for myself in St. Louis.
You first moved to St. Louis because your husband is from here. How has the city influenced your music?
Well, one of my biggest songs is called “St. Louis,” that I wrote about my husband. I wrote it before I got here, but I feel like that song helped people really warm up to me right away when I got here. Every time I perform it, it goes over well. People really love it, and they’re kind of like shocked that I wrote a song about St. Louis and I’m not from St. Louis. It was funny. I had met my husband, and I didn’t know anyone, personally, who was from St. Louis, and he told me that’s where he was from. We fell in love, and we were in the early stages when I wrote this song. I was just like “It’s gotta be St. Louis, because he’s amazing. It’s gotta be the city where he’s from.” That really helped me navigate the show scene and kind of get people to be like, “Ok, she likes our city.”
I also think that St. Louis is a more relaxed pace than New York, so I think it’s good for me to come from a place that’s so hustle driven, because I have that drive that kind of sets me apart from everyone. Not everybody, because there’s a lot of hustlers in St. Louis, too. There are a lot of people who hustle here in St. Louis. But I definitely have that New York drive that kind of gives me an advantage.
What’s your songwriting process like?
Some songs write themselves fast. I have a song called “Walkin Away” that I literally just got in the booth and almost freestyled the whole verse and hook of the song. It just came. I wouldn’t call that like my typical process, though. I’m very much a writer, like I have my phone in hand. I’m very strategic, like I’m looking up rhymes. I’ll look up definitions, too, because definitions give me other words, so I’ll look up a definition and underneath, it’ll give me similar words. I’ll look up synonyms. I like to see words because it gives me a broader perspective. I’m really strategic when it comes to writing, because I don’t want it to just be good. I want it to be great.
How often are your current relationship experiences translated into your music?
All the time. I will say that every song is not about [my relationship]. I have a song called “Yesterday.” It’s about cheating...and when people heard that song, they were like “What happened? What did [my husband] do?” And I was like, Wayne and I wrote this song together. We heard the music first, and that’s what the music gave us. We were in the studio just vibing, and that’s what came out of the process. [For] some songs, I will just go with how the music makes me feel, but a lot of the songs, even if it’s little pieces of it, I do draw from experiences I’ve had in my relationship, and I just think that that’s natural. I also draw from other people’s experiences. Like if I sit and watch a movie and the couple went through something, that may trigger a concept and I write it down. I have a list of concepts in my phone.
What can people expect from Legendary Love?
If you’re totally giving of yourself [and] you’re giving your true authentic self to somebody, I think that you are deserving of that back, of a love that is monumental. A legendary love – a love that fights for it, that’s resilient, that’s passionate. I don’t think that we see that enough in our generation’s music….I think that our generation needs to know that we can have good, healthy love. Our mental health doesn’t have to suffer because we’re in a relationship, and that’s where the concept of “legendary love” came from. We’re deserving of more. There’s more than sleeping around with each other and cheating on your man and cheating on your girl and side chick this and side chick that. We’re kings and queens, foreal, and if we start to see ourselves like that, we’ll start to love like that.
There are songs on there about heartbreak. It’s not just this beautiful picture. It’s reality. At the end of every song, you’re going to say, “I deserve the highest level of love.” And that will be your takeaway from the project.
Lydia Caesar’s “Legendary Love Concert Experience” starts at 8 p.m. December 9 at the House of Soul. Tickets start at $15 and can be purchased online.
