The Hype Magazine Interviews Prince Malik

For those who don’t know Prince Malik, tell me who are you and where you’re from?

I’m from New York. My parents are mixed. I was raised in New York and I have a second album coming up named “Call Me,” scheduled to drop soon. We have a distribution deal with Sony Red. We have a bigger team and we’re going worldwide and global.

Right now we’re doing distribution for US and Canada only. I started my tour early in February with the first show in New York and it was great time.

You got some heavy hitting production on here. I see you got the Grammy award team of Mike Mani and Jordan Omley.

Yeah, they are part of the process, so whatever we’re doing they’re a part of it and they’re 24/7 I appreciate it because this is the kind of team that I was always looking for, so now we work on the timeframe. They will be like, “You’re ready, come let’s do it.”

That’s pretty awesome.

I like to have a team like that.

You have worked with just about everybody. I mean Flo Rida, DJ Khaled, Lil’ Mama, Young Joc, Ace Hood. You’ve been doing this for quite a while. When did you really get into the game?

I was into music officially after I graduated, that was back seven years ago when I told myself then I’m going give full-time to my passion now and I’m going to start writing, so like seven years ago I started off writing and I wrote my first track with Jack Knight. Jack Knight is the writer who wrote literally for everybody old school, but he’s one of the guy I admire in the music industry.

Me and him we sat down and we wrote, I co-wrote … and then me and him were working out great, so we did another record called “One Night.” The record was pretty big in Europe, in England and London and this is where I got all my energy and my ammunition, so I was like “people like my music I’m going to keep going,” and here I’m. We did over 200 or something records already.

Wow!

And we are still working.

Two hundred records and you break it down to a 14 song collection.

I know, its tough! To be honest, you got to understand every record that a producer writes is the best. With so many songs there is a lot of management and Sony Red discussion and a lot of arguments going back and forth. I was like no you cannot say that there’s no better record they are all good, but here we are.

I see the single that’s really banging and getting ready to be part of your major push is that “She’s on Fire.”

Yeah, that record is the only record I would say that when we got 100 people and we gave them 16 records, and asked what do you think? They all agree to that, so we going to start pushing the record fully this year. We did give exclusive to some of the retailers already, so they can have their exclusive rights and promote it early.

Our radio team, our street promo team, and video team began promoting heavy in January and we are in the process of working on video right now. I’m going back and forth for the treatment because for any record I do video, I personally get involved. I think it’s better this way because the person who is on all the records nobody can translate the poet but themselves, so this is what I’m working on back and forth over video production to get the right treatment that will so I’m very excited. Did you listen to the record?

I’m listening to everything. I’m a dance music fan; I’m coming out of the exclusively hip hop thing…I just want to hear good music!

You and me are on the same boat. When I started on the music I was always pop, but since I had a lot of people surrounding around me, my friends, and friends of friends were more into hip hop so I would write a record and they supported the record. If you listen to who my record it’s all pop, but when features get involved they rap and stuff like that, people started to see it in me. In my first album, they were like you’re a rapper? I’m like no, time out this is not me. This is not me don’t take me there because it’s difficult to get back here.

Right, you do what you do and …

Exactly.

All right, so you have some success already. The first thing you came up with “So Bad” was featured on the “Call Me” album. It hit the Billboard Hot Dance Charts, It came out on MTV as the number two most viewed and number one most commented on.

Yeah, it was my solo record. There are no features, just me. When I wrote the record I’m like guys we going with the solo, let me have a shot on my solo. Let me do my solo one record. As time went by, I crossed my fingers I’m like, please I don’t want my team to be saying we told you.

Well, now you get to say I told them.

Yeah, I’m so happy everybody in the team is like wow! You were right, so we hit but we were number one in New York, number one in Chicago, number one in LA, number one in Vegas on the record. On the radio station updates they played it so hard! I have a radio station playing me hundred sometimes a week. That’s literally like every five minutes.

Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. Tell me about your creative process, how does a song come together for Prince Malik?

I think the way I was talking to my fellow writer and I was telling him, “Dude a lot of people don’t know these things comes through writing that we have to be in certain alignment to write about that. We don’t make up stuff we write what we feel around us, we write what we see in the world, how we see it.”

That’s basically it, so I was like if you’re going to put me in some place where a lot of creative stuff’s going on, I’m not going to start writing about creative. If you’re going to put me in some spot where everybody’s having fun, partying and stuff like that, and they have no worries, this is where you write songs like “I’m here to drink.”

I pretty much convinced all my friends that surroundings are very important for the writers because we’re very sensitive we feel everything, so I just want to say I try to keep myself in a surrounding where good thing are going to happening, happy stuff. This is how I think I write my music.

Tell me about the remix with Sean Kingston. How did that song come? The vibe is similar but how did you guys come together to collaborate on your joint?

Well, we had a mutual friend, so he heard the record and we were sitting walking in the studio and he’s like, “This is true.” People sometimes they just want to think about one thing only, that I’m in this particular moment and I’m not think about my kids, I’m not thinking about my mom, I’m in a club.

I’m here to drink.

What I’m here to do is drink. In order for me to get all the energy back and give it back to my family and mom, I have to be in a zone sometime in my life. I wrote the record and when I explained it to him I was like, “Dude, this is what it is.”

After Sean Kingston was shown the record with the explanation, he was like, “This is dope I want to jump on it.” He asked me if that’s okay if he can be part of it? I’m like yeah of course he was number one in the world I would say when it comes to party music, his records are hitting hard then his record was coming out with Justin Berber and Shakira. Shakira got pregnant, so long story short, he loved the record, we did the record and we start communicating and I was like buddy we need to do a video.

We planned it together, he was a part of the process of creating the video. I really appreciated that. We went in LA, someone knew us, we shot the video and I’m glad everybody liked it.

Cool so on the remixes. I’m not a music, a DJ or producer or anything like that. When it comes to remixing, how do you select … I mean does a DJ pitch “you let me do your remix” or do you approach a DJ to do your remix?

This is a part of the process but what my management does is and along with the team, I’m a team player, I don’t make up my own decision unless I’m 100% sure that this is how it’s supposed to be, so my team came out with a couple of names and they said would you give you them an opportunity to do a remix on your records and I’m like yeah.

DJ Wheeler actually did the remix on my “So Bad” record and it worked out very good. I didn’t do the remix, he did the remix and I have other people to remix so we decided to do three remixes and then I went back and forth with the DJs and the producers to do some minor changes and there we are.

It’s like making a new record, so you start from the scratch, you got to come up with the concept of the remix, and then you got to play with each and every instrument. Most of the listeners don’t care about the process, I don’t blame the people have their own life. They listen to the music and the process of making it usually take a while because we have to go to each and every instrument, mix it, master it, it’s a process, but it’s a fun process.

Well, it sounds like too much work for me and I’m not interested. I did enjoy hearing it.

It’s a habit forming kind of stuff. The way I look at it though, I look at it when you give a birth to a baby, bringing baby in this is okay, but then making it grow … getting it to walk and all this, I don’t know.

I got you, so tell me about the day-to-day? What’s the day-to-day life of Prince Malik? Being a music star and songwriter, what is your day like?

Day to day is busy, I have a couple of businesses that of course I run that are happening financially, and music is my priority, so everything stops when it comes to the music. When I see my music I have the time and I have opportunity to do certain things I drop everything and start that.

I’m … you can call it busy during the day and the night is mine, so I was on the studio literally every day. We have a studio where we’re live in New York. We have a studio in LA, we have a studio in Miami, that I’m sharing with my other friends, everywhere is a home.

You just wake up and hey, this is my task list for today and here I go, and you just start?

Yeah, I don’t mind that kind of thing, that kind of concept is “okay I have to do this, this week. I have this many shows, I have this many interviews, and so these are the priorities, this are the many videos I’m doing,” these are the priority and during that if I have any time, I’m like, okay I’m going to make some boring phone calls today for my businesses.

Boring phone calls.

Yeah, like hey, how are you? How is the gig going? Good, right. Nice talking to you …

I love it. I think I’m glad to be one of those people who did everything with their life and they now have an opportunity to go for their passion 100%. No obstacles.

How do we keep up with the Prince Malik?

I’m on all the social networks. I’m on Instagram, I’m on Twitter, I’m on Facebook, I’m on this new stuff Pheed. I’m doing videos on that once in a while when I have nothing to do.

I’m saying technology nowadays is endless, like you literally can track a person by just following them. I have my own app … like everything is a live feed to my app which is free do download from every device you name it, Apple to Android and to Blackberry, so this is how I usually tell my fans to keep in touch and see what’s going on when I’m doing shows and all that stuff.

Interviewed By: Jerry Doby

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