Teyana Taylor has expressed regret over how little Pharrell pushed for her success as a teen star while she was signed to him early on in her career.
The R&B singer inked a deal with Pharrell’s Star Trak imprint back in 2007 when she was just 15 years old back in 2007, before later being let go in 2012. Taylor then joined up with Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music.
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In a recent interview with Angie Martinez’ IRL podcast, Taylor said there was a time during her tenure at Star Trak that she was frustrated by the way Pharrell handled her career.
“Getting signed to a man, it was like a figure to me … I looked at these people like figures. Whether it was as a dad, as a brother, it didn’t matter. So it’s like, you didn’t see me, you didn’t hear me, you didn’t protect me. you kind of just like fed me to the wolves type-shit without probably even knowing,” she told Martinez. “Some of those conversations still need to be had.”
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She continued: “I had a really, really, really, really deep and honest conversation with Pharrell, because, you know, he was the first person to sign me. He was Skateboard P, I was Skateboard T. You cannot tell me that wasn’t my pops. I really looked up to him. He didn’t have kids at the time, and he wanted kids. He’d be like, ‘Yo, she call me her pops.’ He was really proud of that.”
She went on to say that she was like Pharrell’s “baby twin,” but that as her career progressed he didn’t do much to elevate her to the next level.
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“He’s not confrontational at all. He’s literally one of the sweetest people in just the whole wide world, you know what I’m saying? So, it wasn’t that he didn’t protect me, it’s just that a lot of hands started going into the cookie jar … it’s P, he not ’bout to be like. ‘No, y’all n-ggas back up,’” she explained
“Maybe he was hurt about some things. You don’t know. It could’ve been a thing of pride and ego at the time. We don’t know. To me, as a 15-year-old, it was, you didn’t protect me. You let everyone mishandle me. I signed to you. You let everybody get in the way and everybody break us apart. You didn’t protect me.”
Teyana Taylor released From a Planet Called Harlem while signed to Star Trak, but said previously that she negotiated her way out of her deal in 2012 because she wanted a certain level of creative independence within the industry.
Teyana said the pair had a great conversation shortly after Ye’s “Fade” came out, and added it’s nothing but love between them now.
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“I be basking in my blessings, and I will be having them moments when I just think, ‘Damn, no matter how I felt when I was younger, none of these doors would have ever opened for me if it wasn’t for P,'” she said. “So one thing about me is that I just know how to give thanks to the people that have blessed me. With him is why I hold him on such a high pedestal because I didn’t have a dad and he enjoyed me bragging about him.”
She concluded, holding back tears: “It was clearly an emotional space for the both of us and my mom always told me to be grounded and just be thankful for people that are blessings to me. It didn’t matter that I was hurt, I was a mom, so I had learned patience I learned grace, so I was really hitting him up to just say thank you … Because knowing him as well as I know him it wasn’t anything you did on purpose.”
In other news, it was recently revealed that Teyana Taylor has been cast as the legendary soul singer Dionne Warwick in an upcoming biopic.
During an interview with The Tamron Hall Show back in March, the Harlem native spoke about how excited she is to “lock in.”
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“We’re already working on it,” Teyana Taylor confirmed. “We’re in the building process right now. I’ve always wanted to make sure like, I could lock in with any person that I would be playing, you know? How Angela and Tina [Turner] was, how Jamie Foxx and Ray Charles, you know what I’m saying? Like, to really get to know them and I miss when movies was like that, when you get to know them and tap in and just bond.”
