Jessie Reyez addresses music executives who prey on young female artists in her track 'Gatekeeper.'
Oh I'm the gatekeeper, spread your legs, open up, you could be famous, if you come up anywhere else, I'll erase you," she sings on the track.The Toronto singer/songwriter, who signed with Island Records last year, provided the background to those lyrics during an interview with Ebro In The Morning.
"It fucked me up because I thought about it," she explained of sexual advances from record execs. "I thought about doing it. It's not like it was a solid no. I thought about doing it. I got in the car, I was like, 'Shit, am I fucking up right now? How bad do I really want this dream? Why am I not down if all of these girls are supposed to do it and this girl's telling me that this is what girls do to get into the industry? Am I really that ambitious? Is that really what I want? Am I made up for this? Should I quit? Should I switch professions?"According to Reyez, she was ultimately able to stick with her dream without submitting to the humiliating requests.
[Related: L.A. Reid left Epic Records after sexual harassment claim.]
She also addressed the response to 'Gatekeeper', which dropped earlier this year.
"It was an experience," she said. "The same way if I broke my finger today, I'd sing about breaking my finger tomorrow. It's just crazy, crazy the response. I didn't know what kind of response I was going to get. It was just crazy to have that.... and people responded, like, 'I've been through that.' Dudes who were like, 'I've been around that.'...It's 2017, how is this shit still happening? How are men that have daughters, and men that have sisters, and men that have mothers move that way?"Jump to the nine-minute mark to hear Reyez speak on 'Gatekeeper.'