Over a decade ago, a promising and forward-thinking R&B album was stolen and leaked online without its creator’s consent. That fateful incident led to two key events: 1) the rightful valorizing of Jai Paul and his album Bait Ones as essential, and 2) Paul’s almost entire retreat from the music industry due to the trauma he endured.
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But in recent years, Paul has begun to take steps back into the spotlight. He notably performed at Coachella this year, and he’s got future shows booked for the fall in both the U.S. and Europe. And as the Haim sisters revealed this week, he “may or may not” be collaborating with them in the studio as well.
During an interview for BBC Radio 6 as they stopped over in the UK for some gigs, the trio hyped their forthcoming music, which they’ve been teasing as far back as January, by mentioning some guests they’ve had in the studio.
“We’ve been working with some cool people,” one Haim sister said, per Stereogum. (It’s hard to tell who is who on the radio.) “We played Jai Paul earlier. We might’ve been in the studio with him,” but that was followed by a quick “We may or may not have been.”
Signs pointing to a Haim/Jai Paul collaboration are exciting. Alana, Danielle, and Este have long been experts at working with other artists, but that’s really shined through over the past few years thanks to Taylor Swift. The mega-pop star has included them on the track “No Body, No Crime” from her 2021 album Evermore, one that they’ve since performed live as part of the Eras Tour.
Swift returned the favor as well, featuring on a remix of the Haim song “Gasoline” from the 2020 album Women in Music Pt. III.
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“Every album we get more and more confident,” one of the sisters said on the BBC show. “It feels very much that way in the studio, we know what we like and we want to do. We want to make an album we can play live and hopefully a global pandemic doesn’t happen this time around.”
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