Lyfe Jennings fans were left a little panicked recently when the singer said he was thinking about quitting live shows, but he’s now confirmed to HipHopDX that they have nothing to worry about.
Back in December, Lyfe (real name Chester Jennings) revealed he was considering retiring from performing after a couple of clips of him seemingly singing out of tune went viral, leading to widespread criticism of his vocal abilities.
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“Just did my first show since all this shit and um seriously considering not doing shows nomore,” he wrote on Instagram at the time. “I be too much in my head now. Everytime I see a phone pointed at me I just be thrown.. fee like I don’t love this nomore.”
While he didn’t add a caption to the post, he accompanied it with a snippet of his song “Till You Gone,” which hears him sing: “They’ll never love you till you gone/ So don’t waste ya time tryna please no n-gga,” with the final word of the line cut off.
Regardless of his initial statement, Lyfe Jennings has continued to perform live several times since. “This is how I feed the family,” he told DX, adding that the reason for his retirement talk was down to how he felt after his return to performing.
“My first show back, it was so crazy because usually people are tuned in; they’re not on their phones, they’re not doing that,” he explained. “However, it seemed like 80 percent of the room had their cameras out like they were trying to catch a moment, ’cause they saw this guy went viral with his little comments and now it’s a chance for them to go viral. It was weird, man.”
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Speaking of the viral clips, Lyfe believes they were doctored. “First of all it was a guy,” he said of the person responsible. “A lot of people think it was a girl. It was not a girl, it was a guy. It was the part of my show where I sing to the women; so I don’t even understand why he had to comment on that anyway.”
He continued: “And then the cat altered the video. That’s why I felt it was definitely unwarranted, I feel that he purposely did it. He took two different segments, he pitched one part of one video, and if anyone know anything about music, if you’re singing something in C and then all of a sudden you cut to a video singing in F-sharp it’s going to sound off, you know? Then he pitched it on top of that.”
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Lyfe then turned his attention to the blogs and news sites who shared the clips, saying he felt slighted by their decision to post them and that they would rather promote negative stories over the more positive ones in his career.
“I feel like all these sites pick something like that up over all of the other accolades that I have in my career,” he said. “So I didn’t think all that press was warranted.”
Digital trickery aside, Lyfe admitted that he can get tired on the road, sometimes doing multiple shows in a single day. Although he’ll never fully stop touring, he told DX that he’s cutting back on the number of shows he does in order to take better care of his health.
“I do a lot of shows. In 2022, I did 86 shows,” Lyfe revealed. “I love what I do. So sometimes I’ll do it to the point that I’ll be doing six shows in two days. And even though I don’t feel like that was the reason that the clips sounded like that — I know that he pitched the clip — sometimes I just get tired, man, and I don’t think that I took care of myself like I should have.”
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“So what I wanna do is, I just wanna cut back on shows this year,” he continued. “So if you see me coming somewhere — usually I might visit a spot two times a year — it’s probably the only time I’m gonna be there, so make sure you get your tickets early. We sell out usually anyway but it’s gonna sell out quicker now.”
You can keep up to date on Lyfe Jennings and his forthcoming tour dates here.
