Mayer Hawthorne Interview

This year has seen the return of blue-eyed R&B types Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke. But the flyest of them all may yet be Mayer Hawthorne. The neo-soulster has just dropped Where Does This Door Go, which he’s touting as “a summertime album”. It’s also his first foray into the new ‘avant’ soul epitomised by Frank Ocean.

The singer’s ‘real’ name is Andrew Mayer Cohen, but he’s abandoned the ‘Andrew’ and adopted the ‘Hawthorne’ from his old street address in the Michigan college town of Ann Arbor, a Detroit satellite. “Mayer’s good, man – that’s my name,” Cohen drawls as he picks up the phone.

Cohen started out as an instrumentalist, DJ and producer, hip hop his thing.

In 2006 he relocated to Los Angeles to further his career as a beatmaker. Cohen dabbled in soul so he could sample it without paying for clearances. Peanut Butter Wolf of Stones Throw Records heard Cohen’s efforts and encouraged him to cut an album – the result was 2009’s A Strange Arrangement. Cohen never imagined himself as a vocalist.

“I got a really late start on that one,” he says. “I never sang in any of the other bands that I played in, really. I was never the singer – I was always the DJ or the bass player or the drummer.” However, he’s made a fan of Kanye West.

Cohen has matured on Where…, led by the single Her Favorite Song. “I’ve come a long way in a short amount of time, definitely,” he ponders. “It’s crazy to even have three albums. I feel like that’s an accomplishment in itself. I think one of the main things is that I actually learned how to sing a little bit for this new album!”

This time Cohen teamed with some intriguing personnel, among them Pharrell Williams (on three songs), Warren “Oak” Felder (Miguel’s producer), and Brit Kid Harpoon (Jessie Ware). Kendrick Lamar raps on Crime.

“I met with probably, like, 30 or 40 different producers before we narrowed it down to the four or five that actually worked on the album. In the end I chose the guys who I thought were the most creative and the guys who would push me to do something different that I had never done before – the dudes who could also understand where I was trying to go.” Nevertheless, for Cohen “the magic word” in the studio is “fun”. “I threw every other rule that I had out the window and the only rule that I kept was that it had to be fun.”

Cohen regards Where… as an especially personal outing. Indeed, little is known of the singer, who’s somehow managed not to become a ‘celebrity’.

“I think this is definitely the most ‘Mayer Hawthorne’ record ever. My personality and my history and a lotta info, a lot of my character, comes out on this record like it never has before. These are stories mostly from my youth – and [with] this album there was a major focus on storytelling. I tried to really tell the most vivid stories possible. Pharrell said it’s like a book. I think of it more as like a film. But people who listen to this album, I think you get a really good feel for who I am – and that’s a really great thing. That’s what makes the best albums.”

Detroit, in decline since the late ’60s, has been described as a city hit by a “slow motion Katrina”. In fact, it has just declared for bankruptcy. Cohen still feels an affinity with the Motor City, which has given the world Motown, The Stooges, Jack White, techno, Moodymann, J Dilla and Eminem. He himself loves, and listens to, Detroit ghetto-tek.

“I wrote a song about [Detroit] on my last album [2011’s How Do You Do] – it was called A Long Time,” Cohen says. “It always breaks my heart to hear about tragedy in Detroit. It’s a city that is really dear to me and really close to me always. I always try to represent Detroit in everything that I do. I was sad to hear it [of the bankruptcy] but, hopefully, that can be a new start of something good.”

WHO: Mayer Hawthorne
WHAT: Where Does This Door Go (Caroline)