'It's a blessing to be able to do this': Rochelle Jordan on continually evolving her sound
The singer-songwriter opens up in a new interview about collaborating with Kaytranada, Sango and more
Rochelle Jordan broke out in the music scene with her innovative, bold EP ROJO in 2011. Since then, the singer-songwriter has released a full-length album, Play With the Changes, and collaborated with heavyweight DJs and producers such as Kaytranada, Sango and more.
While on tour across North America, she joined The Block's Angeline Tetteh-Wayoe to talk about making it in the music industry while battling sickle cell disease, and honing in on her sound.
You can hear the full interview above and read an excerpt below.
Did you come up with [the title] Play With the Changes yourself? Is that a Rochelle Jordan [original]?
It is.
That is so dope.
Yeah. [It was a struggle coming up with it] especially at that time, because COVID had hit us all and there was a lot of changes being made. A lot of things were just different. Mind you, Play With the Changes had many different names before [that one] as we were creating it. And I just thought to myself, "You know what? Just let it go."
And then one day, after we finished a song called "Lay," Play With the Changes just hit me out of nowhere. Like, I promise you, I was walking by the TV and suddenly I was like, "Play With the Changes." I was like, "Klsh [Jordan's longtime collaborator], I got a name for that album." He's like, "What?" I was like, "Play With the Changes." And he was like, "My God, yes, yes." And that inspired more songs from that point on as well, because we felt it, now there's a name, there's a face to the music that's being made. So we were able to just stay in that pocket and continue 'til it was done.
It's such a mantra.
Yeah, it is.
You know, any time you're faced with something that doesn't go your way, [instead of] resisting, it's kind of like, just float.
Exactly.
I just want to talk a little bit about, you know, having a little bit of a struggle at this point in time. There's quite a few years between 1021 and this one, [and] you said you felt stuck. And I think that's something that a lot of artists do feel. How did you work through that stagnant period?
Yeah, yeah, it's really tough. Being an artist is hard. You know, a lot of people just kind of look at it like, "My God, that's so cool, you know?" And you're just like, "Yeah, it is." It's a blessing to be able to do this. But there is so much that comes with it. There is just so much self-judgment, self-deprivation or a lot of confusion that can happen. And if business is also integrated into this, now it's even more of a harder thing to push through. So yeah, I had some pretty difficult times in those years, you know, kind of going between being sick some of the time with sickle cell. So I was having that happening [too].
Is that something that you've struggled with your whole life?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Since I was two. So that was happening, but it was because I was so stressed, because I was in a management situation that started off really well and this person had real, real love for my music, but just didn't know what to do. And instead of saying that and being honest with me, they kept me kind of dragging along for a long time. And I trusted that and I moved with that. And I then realized, something is not right, and it just kind of kept on spiralling. And I had to come to a point where it was like, "I'm done, I have to break the situation." And I got to just go back to just relying solely on [me] and that's it, because I didn't come this far to just get this far. But yeah, as you can imagine, there's so much time in between that and, you know, coming to [a point where] I'm ready to move on now and it [became] very depressing.
Yeah.
It's very depressing and it affects your art. It affects how you see yourself and, you know, then there's social media that's [building] and you're seeing all this stuff happening, so naturally it's difficult. But in that time I had a pretty serious spiritual awakening.
And that spiritual awakening took me out of my situation. And I just realized, "Hey, I actually have control over my life here." And it took so much time to get to that place of realizing, "Hold on, this is not based on this management, this is not based on this label, this is not any of that. This is all up to me." And that pushed me out of the depression. [I] made a lot of inspired music. And I just came out of the fire.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. To hear the full interview, listen to The Block on CBC Music.