MASTER OF SEX
Gramm winner Miguel turns up the heat to make like the biggest horndog in R&B
IT doesn’t matter how old, how successful or how famous you get, there are some things that just don’t fly in front of Mom.
Miguel understands that all too well. The Los Angelino’s new album, “Wildheart,” is a stunning blend of R&B, funk, soul and psychedelic rock — with a heaving dose of sexuality that recalls Prince before he found God and cleaned up his act. When it was released in June, “Wildheart” hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart and received rave reviews across the board. But even with that ringing endorsement, the 29-year-old admits that it’s probably not something he’ll put on at Thanksgiving dinner.
“You don’t want to listen to it with Mom,” he tells The Post. “My mom is not really into to anything that’s too sexual. It rules out songs like ‘The Valley’ [the lyrics of which reference the porn industry, graphic sex and religion]. I have to skip that!”
There will be no skipping the provocation, though, when Miguel brings his sultry live show to Terminal 5 in New York on Sunday (he also plays the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ, on Wednesday and Westbury, NY’s Space on Friday). But for all his talk, Miguel Jontel Pimentel is no freewheeling horndog.
He’s been in a relationship with model Nazanin Mandi for the better part of decade; as “Wildheart” shows, he feels the physical aspect of a relationship doesn’t always fade over time.
“It’s determined by the individuals in the relationship,” he says. “There’s a tremendous amount of spirituality that we forget to incorporate in intimacy.”
The sexual strut has been with Miguel since his debut album, 2010’s “All I Want is You.” Two years later, he broke big with “Kaleidoscope Dream,” earning a Best R&B Song Grammy (for “Adorn”) and tour-opening spots for Drake and Alicia Keys. He also guested on Mariah Carey’s Top 20 hit “#Beautiful” in 2013.
The singer has a competitive streak, saying in a recent interview with the Sunday Times of London that he makes “better music” than his contemporary Frank Ocean. It was a statement that sent Twitter into a frenzy, forcing Miguel to backtrack slightly by saying there was no need to compare “apples to or
anges.” But while the musical confidence of “Wildheart” leaves most modern R&B trailing in its wake, Miguel’s search for personal identity is ongoing. Born to a Mexican-American father and an AfricanAmerican mother, his mixed heritage is something that inspires the lyrical soulsearching of tracks such as “What’s Normal Anyway,” in which he recalls the frustrations of never quite being able to fit properly into any one cultural group.
“We live in a world where everything has to be defined,” he states. “Everyone always wants to know where to put things, where to find things. In the United States especially, we’re used to being able to categorize. There are all these boxes that people want you to fit in — but there was no box for me, and there still isn’t. Maybe that’s a good thing!”