I signed to Def Jam and within two months, I heard that Ja Rule was looking for someone to do a song with.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
At the end of the day, you sign a record deal and you understand where it could go if you had the right song.
There were no rules, other than that the song should sound good and be fun to play.
The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today.
When I was signed, that was before the punk thing even happened.
After two years in the songwriting world, I wrote 'All About That Bass.' L.A. Reid heard it and signed me as an artist.
I met Ne-Yo in London. I sang for him and he said, 'I want to sign you.' It was amazing - it meant my name was buzzing around the industry and I got to meet lots of different labels.
I had to get out of my record deal that I signed with my previous band and get a full solo record deal going so, with all of the paperwork that, that entails it did take a while.
The band set up in January and just started rehearsing. If there was a song, we'd just rehearse it as a band, and it would get arranged as a band, and it got changed around a lot.
I put out this record on Ninja Tune called 'Florida' when I was about 22. And at the same time, I was DJ'ing and beginning to mix stuff up and promote shows in Philadelphia and New York and my own parties and make mixtapes, put out bootleg white labels.
I was singing a lot of waltzes. And I was with Jerry Kennedy, my producer, and he was playing me some songs, and he said, hey, I want to play you this song that I'm going to get Jackie Ward to record.