Magazine Article

We caught up with Chanel Smith over the weekend when she was in London promoting her new album ‘The Next Chapter’ with an EXCLUSIVE interview about her recent visit to rehab and her past accomplishments and what we have to look forward to from the international pop star. We travelled from our offices to The Dorchester where she was staying. She had actually flew in from JFK to London the night before and still welcomed us into her room while she was getting ready for a day of promotion with her makeup artist and hair stylist working away for the busy day.

We sat down with a starbucks and talked about her recent visit to the ‘Promises Treatment Centre’ in Malibu, California. It is an Oceanside drug and alcohol treatment facility which has become one of the most popular in the world. Well known celebrities like Robert Downey Jr., Diana Ross, Ben Affleck and Britney Spears were also ex-residents of the centre. The luxurious centre gives promises to deliver results through holistic healing and will only run you a whopping $8,855 a week.

Chanel opened up about the treatment she received and the people she met, she said that going to rehab was ‘the best thing for her at the time’. It also let her get away from all the stress of her crippling relationship in the press with Paul Smith. She wants to move away from the past and get on with her future with her new album and a new era of her life as she has just turned 20 in September.

We moved onto her new album, we asked her what was the inspiration behind the album? ‘REINVENTION’ was the key to the new music, she wanted to change her music as the way she has changed through the stages of her life.

‘I wanted the music to represent where I am at the stage of my life right now.’

‘I have gone through a lot this year, and I want this to be the start of a new me.’

We asked her if there are any artist’s right now that she likes, she replied ‘I like everything, if I like it. I like it.’ She is a huge fan of Nicki Minaj, ‘I really love her! She can sing and rap. And her sound is so versatile, even though she is a pop rapper, she can still mix it with other rappers like Kanye and Diddy and it sounds just amazing.’ We also asked her about the rumours of her and Nicki maybe collaborating, she replied with a promising answer ‘There has definitely been talk, but I don’t want to say too much…But all I can say it that it looks promising’.

We talked about her latest single ‘2.0’ which has sold over a million copies of downloads since it’s been released. We asked her how she felt about it and answered ‘Well, I am so unbelievably happy that my fans have been so supportive. I took a risk by re-inventing myself and my music, so I was definitely really nervous about the response from my fans. But it just means so much to me that they are so supportive and passionate for me.’

Obviously starting in the music industry from the tender age of 15, we asked her if there are any regrets she has had over the years since she released her first album ‘Me’. She replied ‘Oh yes, I definitely have some regrets over the years, I’m not perfect you know. No one is and everyone makes mistakes at least once or twice in their lives, I think these mistakes are the things that make you the person you are today. Without them, you’re not you. I definitely regret going down the road of just partying all the time and drinking, I was naïve back then. I was young and I just got sucked into all of it, I really wished that it never happened. But, I chose to change my life by getting better and getting myself the help that I needed and now, I feel like a better person. I honestly think that this is the happiest I have been in a while.’

She also opened up about her relationship with her estranged mother who she only met when she turned 16. ‘When I released my first album, about a year later for the first time, I met my mother. My parents split up at the age of 2 or 3 and I had always lived my father and I had never talked or seen her before. But my dad did keep a photo her holding me in the hospital on the day I was born. I had always kept that close to my heart, I would look at it and dream of meeting her. I had no idea that so much people would buy my album, and obviously it gave me more opportunities, I bought a house for my father and made sure that he was comfortable after all he did look after for nearly all my life, and then I hired a private investigator to find my mother. It actually only took a few days for him to find her, so I flew to New York where she was living and knocked on her door. I was so unbelievably nervous. She opened the door, and we just hugged and cried. It was just the most amazing moment of my life. Now she is in my life and I am just so happy, she was also there for me when I was going through rehab and I just cant say how lucky I am to have her in my life right now.’

Then we went onto the subject of what we have to look forward to from the young starlet, she said that there are a lot of things she has been looking into, she has a new TV show coming out called ‘The fast life with Chanel’ which keeps up with her for a few months and lets us take a more personal view into her life, get to know who she really is and what she has been up to for the past few months.

That was it from The Chanel Smith, we hope and wished her a successful album and happiness and we do hope we get to meet again.