To say that Normani’s new single, “Wild Side,” is racy is an understatement, so it’s easy to see why the singer’s now admitting she was “so terrified” to play the song for her father.
Speaking to Ebro Darden on Apple Music 1, Normani says, “You have no idea. I was so terrified…oh my goodness….[I was] avoiding it, he kept asking to hear the record because everyone else heard it but he didn’t hear it. And my dad is my biggest fan.”
“He works nightshifts,” Normani explains. “He hustles for his family and so to get through the night sometimes he listens to all my records and he was dying to listen to this one and I was just like, ‘Dad, um… I’ll play it for you later.'” But eventually, Normani says, her mom played the track for him — and the reaction wasn’t what she expected.
“He was like, ‘that s**t is hard,'” Normani reveals, laughing. “He’s like, ‘That s**t is fire,’ and he told me all the time, ever single day, I kid you not: He’s like ‘Are you ready to take over the world? Are you ready to take over the world?’ He loves the song, he loves the record.” No word how Dad feels about the video.
Normani also explains why, after releasing the single, “Motivation,” it was “very important” for her to release “Wild Side.”
“Coming from ‘Motivation,’ I was very vocal about that record not wholeheartedly representing my truth and who Normani is,” the former Fifth Harmony singer says. “Representation is key, and me coming from a…very mainstream pop group, I wanted my fans to see this other layer of me…I’ve always been expressive of the fact that I want to be genre-less. I can do it all.”
(Discussion about her father comes at 5:22 into the video.)
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