Comedian, actor and R&B crooner Jamie Foxx seems to be good at giving people what they want.
His unforgettable performance as Ray Charles in the film “Ray” garnered him an Academy Award in 2005. Later that year, Foxx released the album “Unpredictable,” which eventually topped U.S. pop charts. These days, you can hear Foxx's hit single “Blame It,” banging in nightclubs and thumping in cars cruising down the highway.
Foxx has said that his latest album “Intuition” is for the ladies, that the songs are meant to be all about what women want. When Foxx comes to Louisville to play Freedom Hall on Sunday night, fans can be sure his show will follow suit.
“I think that in R&B, music is really designed for women,” Foxx said in a phone interview. “The music that's designed for guys is sort of like ‘Rocky' music, where you go work out, and (women) don't want to go listen to that.”
What they do want to hear, he said, are songs like “Overdose,” a smooth track on Foxx's new album in which he tells his lover, “They said I overdosed, overdosed, overdosed on you/ ‘Cause I want you close/ Need you the most /Without you I'm just through.”
Foxx's last visit to the River City was two years ago when he treated local fans to a high-energy show at the Louisville Palace. After an opening set of comedy, Foxx delivered an hour of sexy, soulful sounds that had grown women on their feet, squealing like love-struck school girls.
That's not to say Foxx doesn't want the guys to “wear some linen” and come enjoy the show too. “They can rock to it,” he said.
Foxx is one of few R&B artists who manages to cross generational lines. He said his music manager Breyon Prescott and others help make sure his albums stay relevant, and this means Foxx can't always sit behind his piano and croon, even if he wants to do so.
“I was playing all my old-school R&B chords and they were like, ‘That ain't it, Foxx,'” he said.
Foxx said his team convinced him that if he didn't work to keep his music up-to-date his new album would, “end up in the grocery store in that bin where they got the flip flops and the toenail clippers, a rubber ball and a duster all for 99 cents.”
Keeping your mature listeners happy and your younger listeners interested is a tough balancing act, but Foxx seems to have it mastered.
“Your mature fans are always going to be there, so you always leave music on the record for them to go to like ‘Overdose' and ‘Love Brings Change' and ‘Rainman,'” Foxx said. “But if you want to be relevant you have to stay with what the young kids want to do.”
Foxx said he thinks he had an advantage because he was introduced to many young listeners through his collaboration with hip-hop star Kanye West for the song “Gold Digger.”
“That joint right there made young kids say, ‘Hey, that's the guy that sings with Kanye West,'” Foxx said.
“Intuition” boasts collaborations with some of the biggest names in urban music like Lil Wayne and T.I. and production by hit-makers like The Dream, Timbaland, and Just Blaze. For his chart-topping single, “Blame It,” Foxx teamed up with the ubiquitous T-Pain and used the wildly popular Auto-Tune to give his voice a different sound and the track a hip vibe.
When asked what he thought of Jay-Z's recently released record bashing the use of Auto-Tune, Foxx said, “Oh, he ain't talking to me,” with a laugh.
“I'm a huge fan of Jay-Z, so whatever Jay-Z puts out, I respect it,” Foxx said. “But he even made the statement that he's addressing where hip-hop is and I'm not necessarily in that lane. But I like all the ways that music is being done.”
Many of the women who may be screaming Foxx's name Sunday night were most likely introduced to Foxx not as a smooth-talking soul singer but as the very aggressive and not-so attractive “In Living Color” character called Wanda.
“When I was doing the Wanda character, I was trying to make it,” he said. “But it did hamper me a little bit.”
Foxx shared a story of the time he was trying to give his demo tape to music mogul Teddy Riley, who was on the “In Living Color” set. Unfortunately, Foxx was dressed as Wanda when he approached Riley.
“I ran to go see him because he was leaving and he looks around, and nobody really knew the character yet, so he just saw this big transvestite running at him and he went, ‘Yo man, I'm uncomfortable with this,'” Foxx recalled. “I said, ‘Aight dude. Whatever.' I got mad. You can imagine how funny that is walking off in some 6-inch pumps, panties riding all up on you.”
Foxx said, however, there's no way he would have let Wanda keep him from being a star, even if that was the only character he ever had a chance to play.
“If that would have been my only thing, you can trust and believe I would have ended up in Vegas in that same character, like, ‘How y'all doin'? Hey!,'” Foxx said.
Fortunately for Hollywood, Wanda would just be the beginning. In Foxx's films moviegoers have not only seen that this funnyman has a serious side, but that he also has extraordinary acting talent, from his transformation into Ray Charles to his recent role in “The Soloist” as a mentally ill but incredibly gifted homeless street musician.
“That was a tough movie,” Foxx said of the film, which co-starred Robert Downey, Jr. Foxx said he hopes the movie made people look at mental illness in a different, more empathetic way and that people will realize how easily homelessness can happen to anyone.
“We're all one check away now with this recession,” Foxx said. “People have to understand that we're always close to that and I hope they get that message.”
