Hot Press meets Miguel

“Whoah. I haven’t heard that one before.”

“You have too heard that one before!”
I’m not in the habit of arguing with my interviewees, especially the ones who can count themselves indirectly responsible for the great baby boom of 2013, but when Miguel Pimentel says he hasn’t noticed himself being dubbed the “saviour of R&B”, I just can’t let it go.
Falling somewhere between an edged-out Usher and an electronically-promiscuous Marvin Gaye, this 27-year-old multi-tasker has been repeatedly hailed, along with acts like The Weeknd and Frank Ocean, as a kind R&B Messiah, celebrated for steering the genre in a new direction.
He’s not sure about the whole saviour thing, but is there some truth in the notion that he’s on a crusade to revive R&B?
“I think changes come because culture and society have and are prepared for it,” he says, “because they’re tired of something else, and there’s nothing that anyone can do to change that, to create that. It just happens. I know for a fact that five, six years ago there were progressive R&B bands in Los Angeles alone that were making incredible music but the public and labels weren’t checking for it and people weren’t paying attention to it. For some odd reason now they are and I guess I’m just one of the artists that was fortunate enough to stick it out.”
If Miguel has been loaded with the task of carrying the R&B torch, it’s largely thanks to breakthrough hit ‘Adorn’, a dangerously sultry and adventurous 21st century ‘Sexual Healing’ that has doubtless prompted thousands of lusty listeners to knock boots. The Kaleidoscope Dream cut also attracted descriptions rarely associated with major label artists, words like ‘progressive’
and ‘innovative’.
“I love it!” Miguel beams. “As an artist I don’t think there’s a phrase or a description that’s more complimentary because any artist that ever made any change or any impact was, in their time, experimental and progressive. I’m not saying that I’m the most Oh-My-God avant garde artist, but for people to associate my creativity or what I produce with any of those things is a huge compliment.”
That said, anyone assuming that everything is rosy in Miguel’s garden right now is sorely mistaken. A few days before we met, the internet went into Meme overdrive when he misjudged a jump during a performance at the Billboard Awards and landed on a
fan’s head.
“There’s a million funny memes and photos and I’m laughing now,” he says, “but in the moment, the night of, I felt horrible for the girl, obviously, and disappointed because I knew that that would trump the creativity of the actual set-up, my idea of how I wanted the set-up to be and the projection and all of the editing that I personally did. We did something that’s never been seen on television before so for it to be trumped by an accident, by a mistake, was bruising, but bizarrely I think more people are going to see the performance because of it.”
Miguel’s viral tumble may have served a sizable blow to his ego but this musical multi-tasker is determined to be remembered for greater things than falling on his behind. A trilogy of EPs is planned for the summer, executed in Miguel’s signature style, complete with the bumps and glitches that other major label signees can’t seem to
let slide.
“I don’t want perfection,” he avers. “I don’t think that’s real. I’m not judging anyone but I think R&B music in general could benefit if people would stop using simple things like Auto-Tune. Stop trying to make your voice so perfect, that’s where you lose your individuality. How do I decipher that this is you and not the next person if you guys sound the same with the same vibrato because it’s all being processed with the same programme? You’re already saying the same things, produced by the same people, written by the same writers.”
Having produced, written and art directed most of Kaleidoscope Dream himself, Miguel appears pretty protective of his art.
“I’m only controlling in that I’m allowed space,” he explains. “I just want the space to do whatever the fuck I want to do, just let me do it. Don’t come in and try and tell me how I should or what I should, because then I’m losing myself, I’m losing my purpose. All my favourite artists gave you that little human part. That’s real and it makes you appreciate it more.”

Kaleidoscope Dream is out now.