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Emerging

Kevin Garret: Making Lemonade

Kevin Garrett is a Grammy-nominated pop artist and producer, signed to Jay Z’s Roc Nation label, and picking up the mentioned nomination for his work on Beyoncé’s album, Lemonade. We chat to him about how creative he’s been keeping during the quarantine period.

“There’s all sorts of names [for lockdown] here in the States: ‘Shelter In Place’, ‘Quarantine’, ‘Isolation Pod’, whatever makes people try and embrace it a bit more,” opens Garrett.

Usually based in Los Angeles (as you’d probably expect), Garrett is curently at home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: “I was quarantining out in LA until late March working on my new record. But then we hit this ‘shut the world down’ situation and I made a mad dash home to be closer to my family. I do have a home studio set up here, so fortunately I have been able to continue working.”

There is a joke in the music community that producers choose to self-isolate anyway all day in their studios, so what’s new?

“Yeah, I’m looking at it with a ‘glass half full’ mentality,” Garrett smiles. “I don’t like going out that much anyway! And because I travel so much for work, I don’t get to spend much time at my apartment, so it’s actually kind of nice.”

Juggling the two hats of being a producer and an artist in his own right has paid dividends in Garrett’s case. Having released his debut EP, Mellow Drama, in 2015, it was only a year later when he found himself in a situation where a song he had written was to be used for the Beyoncé album, Lemonade.

Indeed, Pray You Catch Me became the opening song on the album, which Metacritic lists as the eighteenth most critically- acclaimed album of all time.

Some people will want me to play the song at my shows, while others will say, ‘why did he just cover Beyoncé?’

“About a year out of school, I had some demos which I played to a few management and publishing types,” he says.

“One of them happened to also go to New York University and work at Roc Nation (Jay Z’s record label). He played the demos to Jay, and I found out Beyoncé wanted to cut one of them. This was when I’d just signed the publishing deal with them. This was my first song placement, so it was kind of weird for the first one to be for Beyoncé! Right place, right time I suppose. And then two years later, she released Lemonade.”

Knowing Garrett puts so much time, love and energy into every song he writes, I ask if there was still a hint of bittersweetness in giving a song away, even if it was to one of the biggest pop stars ever.

“It’s definitely bittersweet!” he concurs. “On the one hand, it’s opened so many doors for me in the music world and beyond. But on the other hand, it’s like giving away a child! There was still a back and forth on that decision, as the lyrics are so personal. She didn’t change so much of what I sent in the end — it’s me playing piano and a couple of other instruments in the final song. And then a funny thing is some people will want me to play the song at my shows, while others will say, ‘why did he just cover Beyoncé?’”

Words Adam Protz