The-Dream Discusses Autobiographical ‘Love IV’ Album + Gucci Mane Track

The-Dream, born Terius Nash, is ready to share his diary, or rather ‘Love IV.’ His fourth studio album, expected sometime around Memorial Weekend, travesties romance and relationships gone wrong. That just sounds like one big mess, right? Except the beat-making machine — responsible for some huge pop hits like Rihanna‘s ‘Umbrella,’ Beyonce‘s ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),’ and Mariah Carey‘s ‘Touch My Body’ to name a few — can deliver that methodically, where he’s pumping out sexually explicit lyrics along the lines of R. Kelly, but producing mid-tempo beats that remind us of Prince, especially with his smooth falsetto.

Nash speaks with PopCrush about his autobiographical song ‘Tendencies’ (how his ego drove a relationship to its demise), a Gucci Mane-featured track (channeling drug lord character Nino Brown from ‘New Jack City’) that he thinks his fans will love, and what to except from upcoming records he’s producing for Casha and Pusha T.

For a while you stated that ‘Love King’ was going to be your third and final album. So what made you change your mind?
It’s like cocaine, you just can’t quit. You tell all [of] your friends, your family members, ‘You know what? I’m just gonna quit. This is gonna be good. I’m gonna lay off the drugs.’ It never happens. You’re just on drugs. It’s all good. It’s OK. So now I’ll probably go on to do 50 more albums … I can’t stop making music. They’re just sitting around going, ‘man if the world heard this…’ I’ll go crazy and do something sporadic [if I don't make music]. We don’t want that.

You originally had a longer title to your album…
‘Diary of a Madman’?

Yeah, why did you shorten it / change it to ‘Love IV’?
I just shortened it, just because … I’m impulsive [laughs].

When is the release date for ‘Love IV’?
I don’t know when the actual release date is but it will be sometime around Memorial Day Weekend … somewhere in that particular place.

Can you tell me a bit about ‘Love IV,’ and how it’s different/ similar to your mixtape ['1977'] and the futuristic R&B and sexual laden ‘Love King’?
It’s all that s—. Now it’s everything. You’ve got ’1977′ mixed in with the love saga — so now it’s just one big ol’ bundled up, messed up relationship-ness. Yeah. So now it’s all bad. It’s romance, travesty … beautiful, dark, mysterious, love.

Will all the tracks be autobiographical?
Yeah … I think so … Well, this one record I got called ‘Tendencies,’ has a lot to do with me and a certain relationship. I’ll leave that up to everybody to figure out, which is so great … And it’s more so just talking about the things about me and how I’m self-centered (and I can be sometimes), how I can be harsh (which I am, because I tell the truth most of the time because there in my mind I think of as is). And depending on the person looking on, that’s what it feels like, you know. But, I’ve never shied away from what I am or who I am. Like I know what I’m weaknesses are.

So me putting this song out here isn’t because something happened and I said, ‘Oh, by the way, could you please?’ No. It was me, basically reminding [myself], ‘no we all have problems, so let me be the first one.’ [It's] like when somebody says, ‘somebody want to step up and say who did it?’ And I was like ‘OK, I’ll go first.’ Nobody wants to step up because they feel like they’re going to be crazy, or look crazy. So, yeah.

Tell us about the video treatment for ‘ROC’:
It’s like a party! I made sure I did it really ’90s-like where it’s not ‘hey! Sit over here and do this.’ It’s just a party, there’s a BBQ, [there's] games, it’s just fun. Patron. And Fun. And more Patron, with more Patron, and Patron.

Watch the ‘ROC’ Video

What tracks do you think your fans will be most excited to hear?
I think they’re going to be excited about … hmmm, there’ s a record with Gucci [Mane] called ‘Paid.’ They’d probably be excited about that. It’s pretty good. It’s really Nino Brown-ish. Yeah. It’s pretty good.

We just met Casha [featured on 'Kill the Lights'] — she said that her EP was coming out the same time as your album?
Yes, it will drop the same day that mine does.

Are you producing all the tracks on her EP?
No, actually she has some stuff by Hip Roy [and] Da Internz — who do ‘Birthday Cake’ with me … I just stumbled upon a couple of tracks that they did. They’re actually really great. So no, she’ll have her way around it. I won’t be hogging the spotlight.

Can you talk about the Casha-assisted track, ‘Kill the Lights’?
It’s named after the Kill the Lights tour. So, I decided to do a song to the title of that. And of course one song to me turns into three, three turns into eight, and then eight turns into a whole other album. So now, there’s probably going to be a Kill the Lights Tour album, which I hate, because then I do all the politics on how to get that out [sighs]. Yeah.

Listen to ‘Kill the Lights’ Feat. Casha

What about featured artists on your record? Pharrell, Big Sean, and Casha were all on your mixtape.
I don’t have anybody locked in yet. I have people recorded on a lot of records, but I don’t know if I’m going to swap out or, so I can’t say, yet.

What’s your whole feeling on the featured artist thing?
If you look at my past [albums], I don’t feature that many people. That’s why I never know about it until the end — because I don’t put something on there because they’re hot. That’s what everybody else does. ‘Oh cool! They’re hot. Let me put them on there.’ I don’t do that. What I do is, if you go with a record, you go with it. It just sounds like something you’d do, and we do it. If it doesn’t [sound good], then it’s good.

What future projects (producing / songwriting) are you working on right now?
Pusha T, from the Clipse, [I'm] working on his album. He has a solo album that’s getting ready to come out. So I did a lot of work with him. We’ve been in Miami vibing for the last three weeks. Really great stuff. Really excited about his album. Him, and of course my artist Casha. Those are the two things I’m really excited about.

Pusha T is very hard hip-hop. Do you think any of his upcoming songs could be pop radio-friendly, much like Big Sean‘s debut?
Oh definitely. He has a very well-rounded album. And it’s different from Sean’s because … Sean’s actually working on a new album right now also … but I think the difference is the depth of Pusha’s album that makes it pop. Because it’s talking to a popular mass of what he’s talking about. It’s not just a clue to one culture or thing. It comes from the culture, it sounds like the culture, but the idea was to write songs, for real, and have real songs that could play on pop radio.

Will Pusha T’s album come out later this year?
It will be out before fall, I think.