“I told him I didn’t really want to do the artist thing anymore,” Marsha Ambrosius recalls to Rated R&B.
It’s a June afternoon, and the Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter is reflecting on a talk she had with producer Dr. Dre a few years back about her career plans. “‘I’ve kind of been there, done that,’” she continues about the conversation. “‘I’m a mother [and] wife now.’”
The Liverpool native, who debuted in 2002 as one-half of Floetry before pursuing her solo journey in the 2010s, wasn’t entirely through with music. “I was so much on my pen game that I was comfortable offering my services to solely producing and writing,” says Ambrosius, who has written for Michael Jackson, Alicia Keys, and Ledisi.
But Dr. Dre, who has known her for 20 years, had a different sentiment. “He said, ‘Absolutely not. There’s one more [album] in you if this is the one more,” she chuckles. Around that time, both Dr. Dre and Ambrosius had recently suffered health emergencies. (Dr. Dre was hospitalized for a brain aneurysm in January 2021.) “We kind of met at this perfect storm,” Ambrosius shares.
The longtime collaborators decided to make more music as a form of escapism. They didn’t set any parameters, they simply wanted to give themselves the liberty to create music that moved them.
The first song they recorded was “Tunisian Nights,” which Ambrosius says happened “because [Dr. Dre] said, ‘Well, let’s just do something to keep each other inspired.” She continues, “It was such a freedom I’d never had in the studio. With Dr. Dre, [there are] a limitless amount of musical possibilities. He really just said, ‘What do we feel?’ Not, ‘What do we think,’ but’ What do we feel?’”
“Tunisian Nights” is track two on Marsha Ambrosius’ new album, Casablanco, released June 28 via Aftermath Records/Interscope Records. Dr. Dre produced and mixed the 11-track project, with production support by Dem Jointz, Erik “Blu2th” Grigg, Focus…, DJ Khalil, and Phonix.
Casablanco is an eclectic melange of genres — jazz, R&B, funk, hip-hop, and soul — from different periods, spanning from the 1930s to the 2010s. Each song presents a world of its own, transporting listeners to a new sonic dimension.
Casablanco is Ambrosius’ most audacious album, brimming with masterful samples and interpolations, a treat for music enthusiasts. The lead single, “The Greatest,” alluded to the album’s expansiveness, forging Fred Steiner’s “Park Avenue Beat,” T La Rock and Jazzy Jay’s “It’s Yours,” and Ahmad Jamal’s “I Love Music” in the best way possible.
“Cloudy With A Chance Of … Real” begins as a jazz arrangement over a Heath Brothers sample (“Smilin Billy Suite – Part II”) before morphing into hip-hop duo Audio Two’s “Top Billin,” then rounded off with Isaac Hayes’ version of “Walk On By.”
Further, there’s the erotic “Thrill Her,” which interpolates Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” and Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” with a sample of Duke Ellington’s “In A Sentimental Mood.”
Lyrically, Casablanco leans more into Ambrosius’ sensual side. She expresses her desires both directly (“I wanna f**k until the birds begin to sing,” she sings on “Tunisian Nights”) and poetically (“Ocean flow below my legs,” she coos on the dripping “Wet.”) She recounts a dream about a steamy ménage à trois on “Thrill Her” and smirks about a “One Night Stand.”
But Casablanco isn’t all bedroom delights. “The Greatest” underscores the winning play of love while she confesses, “Love don’t love us anymore,” on the heartbreak track “Best I Could Find.” One of the album’s brightest moments is the closing track, “Music of My Mind.” It’s Ambrosius’ sensational tribute to artists across various genres who inspired her, from John Coltrane and Nat King Cole to Jodeci to Talking Heads. “Man, I listen to everything,” she sings.
In Marsha Ambrosius’ interview with Rated R&B, the prolific singer, songwriter, and producer takes us deep into her world of Casablanco.
You first teased Casablanco in 2021. How much did the album creatively shift since then?
The album was the album then. We recorded [from] April 16, 2021, till maybe the first week of June, and it was completed. We put the live strings on it, the 27-piece orchestra, in a couple of sessions in September. The album itself never changed. Once we decided to do “Tunisian Nights,” it was like, “Okay, let’s make another one.” By the time we got to song 10, Dre was like, “One more, and that’s it. We’ve got it.” We recorded the 11 songs and kept it moving. The time in between has really just been the therapy, healing, pushing through life [and] clearing the samples.
It’s almost like you didn’t want to overcook the album and lose its true flavor.
You have to trust yourself [and] how you felt. If I were to go back in and try to create that feeling — I’m not even there anymore. I’m over the other side of that emotion. There were so many emotions going on for everyone in the room. Not just myself and Dr. Dre, but the musicians and the other producers alongside him. The whole team was on the same wave going through the same turmoil that was 2020 through 2021. We couldn’t recreate that if we tried because we didn’t know what it was going to be. It was an art piece in an act of desperation — an act of, “I don’t know what the world looks like after this, or if any of us survive it.”
You previously mentioned being content behind the scenes as a writer and producer. Did working on Casablanco reignite your passion for being an artist yourself, inspiring your next musical move?
Good question. As an artist, I believe with Casablanco, I was able to be pushed in a way that I hadn’t before. You know, I’m on my Leo-ish, and I know who I am. I was comfortable with that because I’d done so much. Had I been side by side with a Dr. Dre? No. But had we worked before? Yes. On something very specific? Not until now. By the time I get here, I’m like, “Wow. Even I didn’t know I could do that.” We needed to live the time in between to do that.
I don’t know if that elevates me as the artist side of Marsha, but it still pushed my pen. It pushed me as a vocalist [and] it will still push me as a performer. It taught me so much in so little time. It felt like everything that Dre and I had done from 2005 until now was leading up to this moment. I feel like I’m able to do whatever I want in that space because of it. Dre and I met during a perfect storm and it’s elevated who I never even thought I was before.
The album feels very theatrical in the best way possible. The way you sing and the way the songs are structured feels like there was so much freedom in exploring and discovering. It feels different from your past albums, in a sense.
I’d agree with that. It is different, but very the same. It’s nostalgic. I’m borrowing from every single influence I’ve had throughout my entire life, as well as Dre’s. He’d put me onto something. I’d put him onto something. We’re just doing this tennis match full of who can outdo the last sample and make it make sense. Like, there’s no way Stevie Wonder’s “Too High” should go with anything hip-hop driven and just drop out of nowhere to go to a “Butterflies” moment, to go to the “Say Yes” moment. They shouldn’t make sense. And all of this ended up making this, like you said, theatrical. We didn’t have to have any boundaries as far as structure in that way.
It’s like you were able to find a common thread among all these styles of music—jazz, R&B, soul, hip-hop—from different periods and blend them into something that feels intentional and rousing for listeners.
Thank you. I’m so glad you love it. I think it’s refreshing for me for all these years for it to happen the way it’s happened. It [took] close to a year to clear the samples, not really thinking that, “Okay, can we actually share this with the world? Are people going to hear this?” In the moment, it was okay for it to be just for us. It was a fun thing to do to pass the time. While we thought the world was ending, let’s just make the greatest music of our lives and say thank you to it for getting us through. That’s what Casablanco ultimately became.
“The Greatest” was the first taste from Casablanco. What inspired that decision?
We got the offer to do the song for the Heisman Trophy for ESPN. They wanted a song that was symbolic of a champion. I was like, “Oh, ‘The Greatest’ makes sense.” For it to be the first listen from Casablanco, it was so inconspicuous, as it pertains to the rest of the album, but it still teased what we were going to be doing conceptually. So yes, still very much dramatic. It’s giving you 007 vibes. I felt that in the studio. It was very theatrical. It’s Perry Mason. It made sense in the grand scheme of things for that to be the teaser.
You aren’t afraid to explore your sexuality in songs like “Wet.” What’s the backstory behind that song?
As soon as I heard the dramatics and the rain, it set a mood. My pen was running away. It doesn’t belong to me sometimes. Whoever was speaking just said that’s what’s going to be said. In true Dr. Dre fashion, once that beat came in, I was like, “Ooh, okay, it’s hip-hop now, so let me take a hip-hop bit.” It just kept escalating into this moment. Just when we thought we’d taken it there, it goes extra crazy.
By the time I’ve done the Minnie Riperton [“Inside My Love”] bit, everyone was just shaking their heads like, “This is too far.” I was like, “We don’t go far enough.” It’s that moment for me to lend from different experiences that I’ve had throughout my life, and that ultimately comes back to me and my husband and how we [are] very intimate. I don’t want to give you too much, but just know that I’m happy.
That’s what I like about the song. It’s very poetic and allows listeners to have their own imagination.
It’s still very sensual. Some things are sacred, but I give you enough where the mood is set so right that you make it yours and go crazy. I don’t have to give everything the song, the music [and] the strings, all of that is giving exactly what you’re seeing. It’s reserved. I’ve always given that. As open as I’ve been, even with “Say Yes,” I did write it for a man [Ronald Isley] to sing, but by the time it’s my song, and it’s coming from a female, that’s how I’ve been anyway. It’s sexy without having to give it too much. So that’s the same thing with “Wet” [and] “Thrill Her.” It’s all of these moments that almost were, and if you took it there, how sexy would that be? You leave it to the imagination, and you can have your own experience.
You close the album with “Music of My Mind,” in which you pay homage to all the artists who have inspired you. What does this song represent to you?
That felt like my eulogy almost. I know that sounds solemn and deep but just for where Dre and myself were within creating that album, it’s like if I had to leave it all on the floor, this is my very last. I had to say thank you to life and the music that got me through during that time. I imagined myself on a podium, kind of farewelling to Earth and taking my butt on the glorious staircase to heaven or something. It was that moment. It was that Wu-Tang or that [John] Coltrane. I went from [Prince’s] “Purple Rain” to Jay-Z to Mason Cameron.
Everyone got a mention for all these bullet points in my life like, “Thank you for getting me through basketball injuries [and] breakups to makeup, to having a baby [and] getting married. It was a wild ride of, “If there was a mental Rolodex full of the music that you cared about [and] you could put it on one song. That’s why I entitled it “Music of My Mind.” It’s Duran Duran, Talking Heads, Freddie Mercury, Quincy Jones. It was things that I guess everyone listens to but to put them all together in one particular [song], it’s madness.
What do you hope listeners take away from Casablanco?
I hope they hear themselves in it and their own influence and their own, “Ooh, that one right here got me through,” or “Oooh, is that Stevie?” I want it to be almost like The Goonies treasure map of finding the things that you love about us. This was for us, by us. This is the most Dr. Dre [and] Marsha Ambrosius album there could have ever been. If we could take music in one and give it to the world, that’s what I feel like we’ve done. It’s much yours as it is ours. We did this for all the music that we cared about and put it on one thing to just take it, breathe it in, and then transport you to the world of Casablanco, wherever you see that when you press play.
Stream Marsha Ambrosius’ new album Casablanco below.