Interviews

Published on April 26th, 2020 | by Percy Crawford

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Southern Soul Singer Ronnie Bell: “We’re Making Music That People Can Jam to Year-Round!”

Ronnie Bell drops single, “Love Ingredients,” ahead of the release of his new album, “365,” on May 5th!

What do you get when you come down south and you mix R&B with Traditional Blues? You get Southern Soul. Southern Soul is a sound that, Ronnie Bell has perfected. Southern Soul is not as depressing as traditional blues and not as slowed down as R&B. It’s the perfect blend of feel good music meant to be blasted at family get togethers. Bell’s popularity took off when he decided to vacate his R&B roots and welcome his Southern Soul sound. With hits like, “Cotton Candy,” and “I’ll Pay The Shipping Cost,” Bell has cemented himself amongst the top of the genre. With new music on the way, Bell is poised to make the best out of 2020 despite it’s shaky start.

Bell opens up about his, “365” album, his hit single, “Love Ingredients,” and the ins and outs of the business and how he learned the game.

 How are you doing, Ronnie?

Ronnie Bell: Man, I’m blessed, man. I got a good family, so it ain’t that hard being home most of the day.

And musically, you seem pretty active still. You recently dropped a single, “Love Ingredients,” so I’m sure your ability to still put out music helps you at this point.

Ronnie Bell: Ah yeah! You know, the music’s been done. It’s just a matter of getting it all together and packaged right. Trying to get all the moving pieces together and do it the way I want to do it. It’s a little harder right now because I can’t move around and pick up that extra money and do all the bells and whistles that I like, but the Lord see fit, it’s going to come out the way it’s going to come out. I’m going to be able to do what I’m able to do.

Do you still plan on putting the, “365” album out in the first week of May or will there be delays?

Ronnie Bell: It’s still coming out May 5th. It actually kind of got pushed up. I was going to put it out at the end of the summer and then as I talked to my wife and people on my team, it’s like, man, it’s never going to be a good time in this situation. People are going to be inside and have plenty of time to listen to whatever, why not now?

For sure. Obviously, the title is revolved around how many days there is in a calendar year. Is it more to it than that? How did you come up with the title?

Ronnie Bell: I actually didn’t come up with the idea. It was a former manager of mine that passed away, Mr. Kim Frost. Kim Frost was talking to another friend of ours, who I would have come out and dance with me sometimes. He does a Michael Jackson impersonation. I had that line in, “Cotton Candy,” “24/7-365, wanna give you all my love until you satisfied.” He was listening to it and he was like, “That’s the title of your album right there. “Ronnie Bell-365;” year-round. You make music people can bump to year-round. And when they presented it to me, I was like, “You know what, that’s it right there.” It just fit. With him listening to, “Cotton Candy,” and I think I just kind of put the reasoning to it. We’re making music that people can jam to year-round! Why not?!

Love the new single, “Love Ingredients.” How did you come up with that one?

Ronnie Bell: That song was just the perfect song. It’s a bittersweet song. Me and my man, Tedy P went to Southern University together, we recorded with each other for 13-14 years now, and we were talking and setting up for months for him to fly out to New Mexico to my house and record. We were throwing around ideas and Frost passed away the week before he was supposed to come out. And this was one of the ideas that we were already talking about recording. It was just bittersweet because, the full name of the song is, “Love Ingredients (Frost Song).” Because it has that old school intro and the feel to it. I was like, “Man, he would’ve loved this song.”

He was an old school cat, man. He was just one of them people you could talk to and tell all your problems to and you don’t have to worry about him telling nobody your business. He would just give good advice. Sometimes he would just listen to you and let you vent and wouldn’t say anything. Again, you don’t have to worry about too much judgment, you don’t have to worry about him telling nobody else. That’s definitely one of them songs, you can be in the kitchen cooking, and let that joint play on repeat. When we finished it, it gave me a, Stevie Wonder, Christmas kind of feeling. It was the wintertime when we recorded it and I was like, “I don’t know, this feel like a Christmas joint, but it’s not.” Once it really kicks in, it’s a good groove. It just felt like one of them joints our auntie or grandma would be sitting there cooking Thanksgiving dinner or a birthday party or something like that and they just got that good music playing and everybody in there dancing, “What is that? That smell good.” Make you put your foot in them pots and put some love in it.

It’s definitely one of them joints to where if you hadn’t heard it before and someone plays it, you immediately asks, “Who is that? What record is that?”

Ronnie Bell: Yeah! When I was a little younger, I was doing a lot of R&B, but we were doing a lot of songs with meaning. I realized that was kind of our downfall for R&B. People didn’t care so much about the meaning. It’s really about the beat. You could be talking about the world’s greatest topic. You could be giving out the cure to cancer, but if the beat ain’t a certain way that people want it, it ain’t happening. So, the key is, when we went over to Southern Soul, Frost was able to teach me the formula. You can talk about whatever, the first thing is, you gotta get em on the dance floor. And it don’t have to be a dance song, but the groove gotta be good enough to where they can dance, and then you give them a little something. You have to carve your own niche out and that was always my niche. And it went so perfect together. It was music that people could dance to but majority of it… with the exception of, “Cotton Candy,” all of it had a nice message.

You have dealt with some rough times. The loss of Frost and now this Corona Virus thing. Has music occupied your mind enough to get through all of this?

Ronnie Bell: Oh yeah, man. Frost passed away in 2018. Honestly, I’ve been sitting on this album for about a year. Him passing kind of made it hard in finding direction and figuring out how and what way I wanted to do it. It just got to a point where this year, I said, “You know what, it’s time. I’m not letting anyone sidetrack me. Any label wanting to sign me, no, we’re going to put it out. If they wanna sign me they can get on board or re-release it. However, they want to do it, but the world needs to hear this.” And thankfully Southern Soul music is timeless music where it don’t fade out in 6-months.

I don’t think I have attended a family gathering where your music wasn’t played. Whether it’s been, “Cotton Candy,” “I’ll Pay The Shipping Cost,” or, “Can I Get Some.” How does that feel to you?

Ronnie Bell: Man, it’s a blessing, man because fair enough, I grew up in an age before the cellphones blew up. I grew up in the late 80’s and 90’s, so for me, the radio was always the goal. To have someone get in their car or sitting at their house and you on that thing. That was always the goal. Again, understanding a new direction, when I hooked up with Frost it was like, okay, the radio could come. Let me back up a little bit. When I was doing the R&B thing, I would go to the DJ in a club and try to get the R&B record played, “Look man, I know it’s going to be towards the end of the night, when you’re trying to slow it down, why don’t you play my music.” “Man, you gotta get it poppin on the radio first and then we can play it in the club.” Okay, then we would go to the radio station and be like, “What we gotta do to get this in rotation to see if it is a hit or a miss? Just let the people decide.” “Well, you gotta get it poppin in the clubs first and then we could jump on it.” And I’m looking like, these are DJ’s who are friends. So, I’m looking at both of them like, “Dude, where? If I can’t get it in the club because they want to hear it on the radio and I can’t get it on the radio because they want to hear it in the club first, where can they hear it?” I said, you know what, I realized it was a business and it was all about money.

People started explaining it to me and opened my eyes. It don’t matter how good your music is, how you present it or how you look, somebody behind the scenes wanna get paid. I said, “Alright!” But when I got with, Frost, he showed me another way. He said, “Man look, people wanna hear good music. You just gotta find places where people actually wanna hear good music and it’s just about good music.” So, after we recorded, “Cotton Candy,” he sent it out to a few DJ’s, but he particularly brought it to this one DJ… DJ Willis. He passed away about 2-years ago as well. DJ Willis started playing my joint out in this lil hole in the wall club called, “Buddy’s” out in Marrero. It was a very popular spot, and they would do live remotes on the radio in New Orleans. DJ Willis liked the song. Him and Frost had a relationship, so he fed him the song and DJ Willis kept playing it and people started jumping on it. And then when they would do the live remotes, he would play it there too. Once he started doing that, I started getting calls from people, family members and people in New Orleans. “Say bruh, you got a song on the radio?”

Oh, you didn’t even know it was being played.

Ronnie Bell: No, because at this time I’m still in grad school at Southern [University], so I’m telling them, “Nah! I ain’t got no song on the radio.” I had recorded, “Cotton Candy” 6 or 7 months prior and I’m going to school and people calling me up, and I’m like, “Man, cut it out. Stop trying to prank me.” They would say, “I swear I heard your song on the radio.” “Not to my knowledge.”

Do you remember what it was like to hear your song on the radio for the first time?

Ronnie Bell: Yeah! I had to pull over, man. I had got a call from, Frost. He told me they were about to play it. I guess he was there. He stepped out and gave me a call and then he texted me when they were about to play it. I was driving home from school or something and I tuned in to that station. Thank God I was able to catch the station. I was in Baton Rouge and it was a live remote in New Orleans. It was crazy. I had heard my song on the radio before. I had a couple lil small songs that I was able to get on the radio before, but that one was really special because it wasn’t nothing planned. It was organic and people just liked the song. It wasn’t, I know this person, or we paid this person or we promoting an event or something. Nah, it was like, you got good music and I’m going to play it.

On YouTube, “I’ll Pay The Shipping Cost,” has hit somewhere in the 15 million views range. When you created that song, did you think it would have that kind of impact?

Ronnie Bell: No! Because at the time we had, “Cotton Candy,” and I had never experienced anything like, “Cotton Candy.” It took a while, but after about a year or so, “Cotton Candy” had really started to hit. At about the 18-month mark, “Cotton Candy” was really poppin. I didn’t think I would experience anything close to that. They say the first one is usually the biggest one and everything else, you’re just trying to make an equivalent to that one. You rarely exceed what your first success is. That was just one of them songs… we had, “Cotton Candy,” and we were like, “Man, we gotta start recording some other songs because people really feeling this, “Cotton Candy” now.” We would have a show somewhere and I would fly in early, me and Frost. And Frost would be like, “We’re going to get in the studio.” So, I was like, “Cool.” We would get in and record some stuff and his way of doing things was a little different from me. But we would record stuff. He would be like, “I want you to record this part, this part and this part.” And I’m like, “Where the rest of it at?” He would say, “Ah, don’t worry about it, I’ll put it together.” I was like, “Alright… this easy.”

When you say, “easy,” compared to what?

Ronnie Bell: Well, I came from R&B. So, 10-years prior I was doing R&B and trying to do hooks for rappers and recording R&B songs. R&B songs take hours and days to record with all the harmony’s and saying the verses right, backgrounds and adlibs. I recorded, “Cotton Candy” in like 45 minutes. ‘Shipping Cost,’ in probably 2 hours. I recorded, ‘Shipping Cost’ and probably didn’t hear it for over a year before Frost was ready to put it out. He was like, “We gotta put out a couple of more singles.” So, it had literally been almost a couple of years before I heard, ‘Shipping Cost.’ And at the time I had never heard the whole song because of the way he had me record it. I heard the verse and some of the hook. I had never heard the whole song. I recorded it in like 2013 or 2014 and didn’t really hear it until 2016.

Do you feel it was necessary for R&B in the south to be replaced with Southern Soul because that seems to be the way it is heading?

Ronnie Bell: Oh yeah! Johnnie Taylor and Mel Waiters and those guys… Bobby Womack and those guys had this genre rollin years back. It was slept on. R&B became so popular and so mainstream that it became watered down. And then you had to put so much money into it that people thought, “This is crazy.” Unfortunately, Blues became so popular around the world, I think it got commercialized and watered down to a certain degree. And then the labels came in and took over. R&B became the #1 genre in the world. Rap was popular, but across the world, everyone loved R&B. Usher, Ginuwine, Tyrese, Brian McKnight and all those guys were flying all around the world doing shows and stuff. Rappers weren’t flying around like that. You didn’t have rappers going to Africa and stuff in the 90’s and 2000’s. Those were all singers or 80’s rappers like Run DMC. I think as all of those other genres got commercialized and watered down to a degree, people got tired of hearing the same 5,10 to 15-songs on the radio all the time. But you could go to your local hole in the wall and hear this timeless/classic music; it’s the Chitlin Circuit (laughing). It’s the underground. It’s what’s going to play at your BBQ’s and your repass. I saw a video where somebody played, “Cotton Candy” at a funeral.

I can’t wait to hear, “365,” if anyone haven’t downloaded, “Love Ingredients,” be sure to get that. You won’t be disappointed. Is there anything else you want to add?

Ronnie Bell: Definitely man! You can pre-order the album or order the album, www.reelentgroup.com directly from me or May 5th, it’s going to be available on all the digital outlets. If you pre-order it, you’ll have one new song, “Pretty Lady.” That’s kind of an ode to my Zydeco guys. It’s going to be a free download that comes with that pre-order that’s $11.99. I just want to let everybody know, if you’re going through some things and you can’t afford it, I do understand, but if you’re doing alright and you do got it, $12, man, show ya boy some love.



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