Tyrese Talks ‘Furious 7,’ Last Studio Album Black Rose, Green Lantern Rumors and More During Virtual Press Day

Photo: TyreseBlogs

Tyrese Gibson is one of those rare talents in the entertainment industry that has successfully spread himself across of the full spectrum and has excelled as an actor, singer, producer and a writer with two books currently under his belt (Manology: Secrets of Your Man’s Mind Revealed and How to Get Out of Your Own Way), one of which earned him the title as a New York Times best seller.

Tyrese is someone who is always looking for the next innovative way to shape the entertainment world and has done so with his virtual press days where he invites press, radio stations, blogs and print media to participate in a telephone conference call that brings a twist to your standard press junket. Early this week, I was on one of those calls with the actor/singer and he discussed his reasoning behind posting uplifting messages on social media, his last solo album project Black Rose, his late friend, the incomparable Paul Walker and “Furious 7,” in theaters next month. Check out some excerpts from the chat below.

On spreading positive messages on social media: “For me I have this feeling that what else is my life and my career about other than being able to pass on [inside] information that can help someone else to become successful. We have social media, I think people are addicted to likes, and shares, and views, and clicks on videos or whatever else, there’s an unspoken addiction that a lot of people have so instead of me just getting clicks, and likes, and shares; my Facebook page every month has 1.2 billion hits a month and I only have 23 million followers. 1.2 billion are the amount of eyeballs that view my content that I upload on my Facebook. Anybody else would look at those numbers and become arrogant or egotistical about it and in my mind I got 1.2 billion souls, spirits, and hearts that I can reach with a motivational and inspirational message.”

On “Green Lantern” rumors: “It was two fans online that sent me direct messages on Instagram with me as Green Lantern. They started it, and it’s nothing like a comic book fan getting excited about someone that they can see playing one of their favorite comic book roles, so as far as I’m concerned I’m innocent. I was at home, I was relaxing, eating a bowl of cereal, and then I started getting direct messages with me as Green Lantern, so naturally because I liked it, I put it up on my timeline, and that’s when everything started. So then I started putting my feelings out there, getting some energy going, next thing you know it ends up being on every website, everywhere just like, ‘Tyrese is Green Lantern,’ and I just ran with it and had fun with the fans. They were like ‘We really want you to do it, we think you’d be awesome,’ and I just was like, I’m almost at 5 billion dollars worth of box office receipts under my butt from all these movies, I never starred in every single movie, but I’m in them, so domestically and internationally I think I could strap up and put on a Green Lantern suit, take the oath, put the ring on, and do my thizzle. So I went to the Warner Bros. lot, I did go up there to have “A” meeting and I won’t tell anything. I’m not going to speak on what the outcome of the meeting was, but I went to have a meeting, a little something.”

On Black Rose: “I’ve created what I like to call ‘Black Rose Universe’ and this is my last solo album. We all know that the music business is a very different music business, and even though I’m independent, it cost me that much more money to be an independent label because nothing is free. Everything you do, every move you make, every single you drop, I’m literally paying for everything.”

Personal reasons also contributed to Tyrese deciding to release his last solo studio album but we won’t be seeing an end to his music career. He said:

Photo: Dumb Shit Video Still

“Will I still sing, yes, but I’m not doing anymore albums. This is it. So with that being said, Black Rose is a universe that I created, double album, one whole side is R & B, the other side is me rapping, Black Ty, and it’s going to be a total of about 20 songs, 10 on each album including some interludes and everything that I’m doing is like a story. So I’m doing “Dumb Shit,” I’m “Ashamed” of it but “I’ll Be Waiting On You,” because “Your Love Is Unbelievable,” so those are the singles that I have in mind, back to back, those are the titles. “Dumb Shit” is the first single featuring Snoop is an honest record and I’m looking at this album [as Usher’s Confessions album] where he’s coming clean even if it embarrassed him and that’s what I’m doing.” [WATCH MUSIC VIDEO BELOW]

Black Rose will also feature a documentary and book and will be available July 7. The call then took a bittersweet tone when the topic of the late Paul Walker came up. His untimely death came during the filming of “Furious 7” in 2013. He died in a car accident. Tyrese was gratuitous enough to speak about his beloved friend and working on the film following his passing. 

On Paul Walker: “I want everyone to know Paul Walker was literally an angel. Paul Walker was the nicest guy in the world that you could ever know or meet. He was a sincere soul, and so as you see people doing all these tributes and giving all this love you would say, ‘man we see people pass away all the time,’ but it reminds me of when everybody got sad after Aaliyah died, you remember how sad everybody was when Aaliyah died in the plane crash, she was the sweetest, most innocent girl ever and it reminds me how people feel about Paul. Totally different situation but it’s like ,oh my god it’s not that he’s some attractive guy because they are a lot of attractive people out here that are mean as hell and you just don’t like them. [So] He was the nicest guy ever and I think the world knew it and it’s really hard to let it go, or shake it. [So] I’ve been knowing Paul for 14 years and he was the nicest guy ever.”

Tyrese went on the share a personal story about when he first met Paul back in 2003 shooting “2 Fast and 2 Furious” and the day they became best friends. It was a sweet, intimate story that I will keep between the conference callers, Tyrese and myself, sorry.

On promoting “Furious 7”: “None of us wanted to do a press junket. None of us wanted to do any kind of media and press because in our minds, how is it possible to not make it about us, that’s the most uncomfortable [thing], you want us to go on a red carpet, four, five days of press, when it’s not about us, it’s about Paul, so there’s a lot of sensitivities. If all of us would have witnessed the car accident, all us would emotionally deal with trauma, and kind of seeing that car accident very differently. [And So] We’re all still mourning, we’re all still sad and now we have a movie poster with our brother and family on it and he’s not here. The one thing that made us feel better when all our self-conscious started kicking in like, ‘they want us to finish the movie, what do you mean,’ so when Paul’s mother and father stepped up and said we are in full support of you guys finishing this movie, because Paul was at about 85% of the movie done. They said we are in full support of you guys finishing Furious 7. Universal Pictures donated a million dollars to Paul’s charitable organization called “Reach Out Worldwide” and that all made us feel really good. And then what made it even better for us, and made us feel much better about moving forward is when Paul’s brothers Cody and Caleb Walker was physically on the set with us everyday stepping in to play Paul Walker, to help us finish the movie because they look just like him, so all of that made all of us feel that much more comfortable with something that we all felt very uncomfortable with doing. This is his last movie and we look at this as a celebration of his life.”

Watch the music video for “Dumb Shit” below along with an extended first look at “Furious 7,” in theaters April 3, 2015.

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