Jessie Reyez is all about making things happen. The Colombian-Canadian songbird’s ambition helped her propel her single “Figures” at the top of the charts and her debut EP Kiddo to critical acclaim. But the singer gets it’s all from her parents.
Speaking to VIBE VIVA at VEVO’s Halloween concert in Richmond, Calif. over the weekend (Oct 28), the 19-year-old falls into nostalgic bliss while looking back at her favorite Halloween costume. “I wanted to be like a fairy or something so I told my dad but the costume was hella expensive,” she said. Down, but not out, her father helped her transform into her dream fit.
“He made me this crazy wand craved out of wood, stuck fake bedazzled jewelry to it and threw some shiny things all over it. We approach a lot of things in life this way, so it was great.”
Dressed as her Kiddo EP cover, Reyez belted out “Figures” and her new single “Phone Calls” for thousands of fans. There was also the moving track called “Gatekeepers.” The song stemmed from an incident where an unidentified music industry head attempted to coerce her into an unwanted sexual act.
Reyez released a short film about it called, Gatekeeper: A True Story and an letter to her emotional abuser earlier this year.
“I love that women are coming together to talk about sh*t we have to deal with,” she said about sexual abuse accusations from women in entertainment about Harvey Weinstein and Amazon CEO Roy Price. “It’s been around forever, but it reveals itself in waves. It’s shi**y that we’re in 2017 and people are still dealing with things that happened 20 years ago.”
Check out her soul-stirring performance above.