Miguel on Frank Ocean, Leg Dropping Fans: I Am Better Than You
In a recent Sunday Times profile, R&B singer Miguel claimed that he possesses more musical talent than Frank Ocean and The Weeknd, two contemporaries to which the 29-year-old is often compared.
“To be completely honest—and no disrespect to anyone—I genuinely believe that I make better music, all the way around,” Miguel says in the interview. He never names Ocean or The Weeknd outright, but it’s clear to whom he intends no disrespect. At one point, he states that he and Ocean are not friends, but “cordial.”
Miguel, who released his third studio album Wildheart on June 29, adds that he was raised to be “super-competitive.” To be fair, the statement about him making “better music, all the way around,” does seem to have been at least partially goaded by the profile’s author, Paul Lester, who is intent on positioning Miguel as Frank Ocean’s musical nemesis throughout the piece. (“I venture that Ocean will listen to ...Goingtohell, a new track from Wildheart—to the motorbike revs at the start and the idiosyncratic rhythm—and kick himself for not thinking of it first,” writes Lester.)
As for what Miguel thinks of Ocean’s “status as R&B’s complex ‘trouble man’”?
“But that’s Frank. Frank is the tortured. That’s his thing. That’s not who I am. I may not be dark—as dark—and I may not be as poetic, but I’m living my real shit.”
And, finally, here is Miguel on the infamous leg drop from his 2013 Billboard Music Awards performance:
“It just reminds me that I’m not afraid to fail,” he says of the BMA incident. “You just have to take the leap of faith. Yeah, they’re gonna call you crazy. But nothing was ever achieved without being a little delusional.”
It’s always good to believe in yourself.
[Image via Getty]