In today’s episode of ‘How It Went Down,’ Rapsody shares why she decided to name her new song "3 AM," how she filmed the live performance music video with Erykah Badu and more!
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00:00 I'm Rapsody and this is how I went down with my new single 3AM.
00:03 Getting to the final lyrical version of 3AM was a process.
00:17 First verse was actually lyrics that I pulled from another song that I had.
00:21 Regardless, when I was talking about love, I wanted to pull from a real authentic place.
00:26 You make me feel like a version, a new person. You make me pull back the curtains.
00:30 I'm not afraid to share what you would hurt me.
00:32 You know, I was really thinking about a relationship that I was in and the emotions
00:36 that I was feeling. It was just really raw and real and it just kind of poured out.
00:42 I took those lyrics and spit them over the version of 3AM beat and it just felt really good.
00:49 The last verse, which is actually performed as a spoken word piece,
00:53 I wanted to talk about the whole journey of love. You fall in love and then you fall out of love.
00:58 What that feels like. Where you can appreciate the experience. You can appreciate how you feel.
01:03 At the same time, sometimes you have to put yourself first and it requires letting go.
01:08 And that was just really the approach of it. You know, the last verse is super emotional though.
01:12 You know, you're like my second adolescence. Like, come on.
01:17 [Music]
01:25 The day that we recorded it, I remember again why I wanted to name it 3AM.
01:30 He played it and at the time it was just a piano that he had and that's kind of what I wrote to.
01:36 And once I wrote to it, we built around that. Like I gave it to him. I recorded it
01:41 in his studio and he built around it. When it came to him, he was like,
01:43 what are you going to call it? 3AM is such a special hour for me. But also on Pinterest,
01:49 I saw like these phrases and it says, I want to know the 3AM version of you.
01:53 Vulnerable, honest and real. And that's what this song felt like to me. Vulnerable,
01:59 honest and real. So I was like, you know, let's call it 3AM.
02:03 [Music]
02:09 The unofficial music video for 3AM. It was super fun. Scheduling wise, I know I wanted to have a
02:15 visual for it, but we wanted to do something really special that I felt like we needed,
02:19 I needed anyway, more time. Erykah Badu was doing her 53rd birthday bash. So, you know,
02:25 I always knew that I was going to go because I wanted, I love celebrating her and celebrating
02:29 her life. The night before the show, we had a rehearsal and she and I went to her rehearsal
02:34 studio with her band and we ran through the song a few times because this will be our first time
02:39 ever performing it, which I needed, you know. Day of the show, the energy was just, it's always
02:45 beautiful at her show. Like we're celebrating her life, family's there, friends there, Dallas,
02:49 Texas is there. And after she was finished with her set, she called everybody back on stage.
02:54 She introduced the record and we performed it live for the first time. So when you see it,
02:59 you're seeing the very first version of a performance she and I have ever done together
03:06 and done of this song, 3AM. So it was a special night for me.