Singer Trey Songz is 'Ready' to get back to business

R&B artist and Grammy nominee Trey Songz sang several of his hit songs live on WGCI’s ‘Whispers in the Dark’ at Chicago nightclub Blu 47. If you missed him Thursday night, don’t worry. He’ll be back on June 22 at the House of Blues, two months before his

R&B artist and Grammy nominee Trey Songz sang several of his hit songs live on WGCI’s "Whispers in the Dark" at Chicago nightclub Blu 47. If you missed him Thursday night, don’t worry. He’ll be back on June 22 at the House of Blues, two months before his new CD "Ready" releases on August 4. But before he left the Windy City again, Trey Songz talked with the Defender.

Defender: What will listeners get from your new CD "Ready" that we didn’t get from the other two CDs, "I Gotta Make It" and "Trey Day"?

Tremaine "Trey Songz" Aldon Neverson: It is a more cohesive work of art as far as bringing my different worlds together. I do mixtapes, ballads, crossover records, hip hop.

D: Who are the guest appearances on the album?

TS: (covers face smiling) I can’t tell you.

D: Yes you can. Can you give me one?

TS: I’m doing more. As of now, three, and I keep them very limited. Anybody else I add is going to be very special.

D: What is the best part about being in the music industry?

TS: Doing what you love and touching people you don’t know, people you may never meet, people you’ve never seen and being able to change lives with music. Making a person feel a certain way, happy or sad.

D: You’re affiliated with the program, Songz for Peace. What is your connection with (Chicago native, former gangster and current entrepreneur) Noonie G. Ward?

TS: We met a couple years back. He actually booked me for a show. He expressed to me the alarming rates of youth dying in Chicago, and I expressed to him the neighborhood I came from of despair and how kids have no hope. So we came together for the youth and to let them know they can be whatever they want to be. We bring together panels, figures in the neighborhood like radio deejays, local celebrities, authors maybe, sergeants, district attorneys, people that can show them where they could end up if they take the right path and where they can go if they take the wrong path. We give them school supplies we gave shoes away to a prize winner before. We’ve done two to date, starting August of last year. The first one was at Lindblom Math and Science Academy and the second one was in Virginia, and we bussed in about four different schools of seniors, juniors, freshman and sophomores.

D: What kept you on the straight and narrow?

TS: My momma. (laughs) My momma and my grandma. My support system of women were very strong. I didn’t have a father figure too steadily, and my mom was actually a juvenile probation officer. She wasn’t playing that. I had my times where I drifted off, but I was always put back in line.

D: What separates you from other R&B artists?

TS: I think I’m an R&B artist that sings to the women but men can relate to. I think I sing songs that are real. Songs like "The Last Time," "Can’t Help But Wait," "Gotta Make It," "From a Woman’s Hand," "Coming to You." I think I’m an artist that’s real. Not to say that anyone else is fabricated, but I’m real.

D: What is the most memorable experience you’ve had since the release of your first album?

TS: My Grammy nomination for "Can’t Help But Wait." My mom and my grandmom came out, and although I didn’t win, we had a great weekend and just to be mentioned among the elite. To see the whole process of the red carpet, doing all the interviews leading up towards it, sitting four rows from Katy Perry and Taylor Swift and all of these elite people in the industry. Seeing the performances with Jamie Foxx, B.B. King, Justin Timberlake. It was just a great experience for me starting at a state where I didn’t think music was something I’d be doing.

D: Why did you think it was so far-fetched?

TS: It was just so far out of my reality realm as a child, and that’s another reason why I did Songz for Peace to let people know that dreams can come true.

D: You started singing at 14, correct?

TS: Yeah. Usually people start singing at five and six.

D: What made you get into music at 14?

TS: It was something I always played around with, even from four, five and six. But it wasn’t something that I ever took seriously or was relevant in my life. I did the same with rap. I would rap all the time. I would sing all the time. I was musical, but it wasn’t something that I knew I was good at.

D: Did your mom know you could sing?

TS: No. I actually did my first talent show in the sixth grade, but it was something I did just to do it. And I didn’t enter another talent show until four years later.

D: Oh, you took a real break. What was her reaction the first time she heard you sing for real?

TS: The first time she heard me sing, she actually rallied up a group of family members, and she was like "We have to go just in case he’s not good. We have to go to support." And I actually surprised them all because no one knew.

D: What did you want to do at that time (in your teenage years)?

TS: I didn’t know. I was in high school. Everybody at that time doesn’t know what they wanted to do, whether it be a lawyer, or doctor or typical things you’re supposed to say at that age.

D: What is your biggest goal as an artist?

TS: I haven’t set a fixated goal as far as achievements. I think my goal is to be respected musically and appreciated by my peers as well as the masses. I think that’s coming daily. When I reach that point of achievement, I’ll know. I’ll never stop. With every achievement I’ve attained, I get hungrier for more.

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Click here to check out the Message from Montie blog "Simeon HS nonviolence event with Trey Songz, Noonie G"

In photo: Trey Songz in a lobby restaurant at the Swiss Hotel on Wacker Drive (Chicago)