Breland has a reputation for dropping bangers like “My Truck” and “Throw It Back,” but for his latest release, he wanted to get a little more serious.
“I ended last year on a pretty crazy run of having played, like, 170 shows, and I was pretty physically, psychologically, spiritually exhausted, and I felt like I kind of lost some of the joy,” the musician, 29, exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the release of his new EP, Project 2024. “People have always said that I’m a very joyful person when I make music, when I’m on stage, but I could just tell that I was starting to lose it.”
The artist — whose music blends everything from country to rap and gospel and R&B — isn’t complaining about his success, but he felt like he needed a “better way” to approach his growing fame.
“I gotta kind of ground myself and center myself in what the purpose of this is,” he recalled thinking. “If I’m gonna miss my nephew’s birthday and one of my best friend’s weddings and all of these other things in pursuit of this dream, it has to mean something more than just me becoming popular and me making money and me being a superstar.”
JOHNNIE IZQUIERDO
After speaking with his mom, Breland, who grew up in New Jersey, decided to visit Selma, Alabama, where many of his older relatives were born and raised. The city is known for being a center of the battle for civil rights in the 1960s, but now it’s one of the poorest towns in the state — which gave Breland a lot to think about during his trip.
“I saw Selma as this really vibrant pillar of the civil rights movement where it was a symbol of hope for a lot of people historically,” he explained. “And when I went there, it was pretty destitute. … I was just realizing, ‘Wow, I am one or two ancestral decisions away from having grown up in this community.’ For all intents and purposes, these are my people, and how did this happen and what can I do? I felt really moved.”
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After that visit, Breland began working on the songs that became Project 2024, which debuted Friday, October 18. The EP only includes six tracks, but it still manages to incorporate sounds from all the genres that Breland knows and loves: country, hip-hop, gospel and more. And while the lyrical content is occasionally more serious than what “My Truck” fans might be expecting, there are still bops. “Motion,” for example, stirs Afrobeats together with country, while “Icing” is a twangy stomper about a gorgeous girl.
“I felt like it was important for me to make a project that was more intentional than the music that I’ve made previously,” Breland explained. “I wanted to get back to the source of, like, ‘What is country music? What is my place in country music?’ And it’s really about storytelling. And I’m like, ‘How can I tell some stories that are a little bit realer?’ Not to say that a song like ‘My Truck’ isn’t real. I’ve driven trucks, but I wanna go a level deeper than that. Let’s not just make the bops, but let’s make bops that have a little substance to them as well.”
The “Boots Don’t” artist emphasized that fans of his 2022 album, Cross Country, needn’t worry that he’s changed too much — he’s just trying to become more vulnerable.
“I’ve lived too much real life and experienced too much over the last couple years, not to let people in a little bit more,” he explained. “I’ve never gotten too deep. With the music that I’ve put out previously, to an extent that was kind of easier because I could protect some of my inner thoughts and feelings on that level. But I do think that vulnerability is important in art, and I’m understanding that more than I had previously.”
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Because Project 2024 is so much inspired by his family, Breland made sure that they heard all the music before it dropped — and they gave their stamp of approval. He even enlisted his 2-year-old nephew, Cassius, to ensure that everything sounded good.
“I literally said, ‘I will not put anything on this project if he doesn’t like it.’ So we had a few songs that I played for him that he didn’t really have much of a reaction to, and they did not make the project,” the singer quipped. “So, shout-out to my nephew for secretly A-and-R-ing this project. … That’s the true essence of why we make the music, to make people feel something. So on the family front, we’re good. Everybody loves it.”
Breland’s Project 2024 is out now.
