Christina Milian – All Grown Up


Although she’s still acting and singing as much as she ever has, times have changed for Christina Milian. Acting-wise she’s outgrown the high school sweetheart roles for more serious fare and musically she’s gone from the major label confines of Def Jam to the independent outfit MySpace Records. This week, on the heels of the release of her latest film, The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, I caught up with the lovely Latina to find out more about what she’s been up to, which rumors about her are true and which are false (including that ever-present one about Rihanna’s “S.O.S.”), and how she’s been handling stardom’s oftentimes bumpy road.

Adam Bernard: Let’s start with the juicy stuff everybody wants to know. What happened with you and Dre of Cool & Dre?
Christina Milian: We are currently on a break right now, but we’re still really really really close. I just got to a point where I just needed to find myself. It’s just a lot of self-discovery and opening myself to opportunity that’s in front of me. We have an amazing relationship, it’s just a little difficult when it’s long distance.

Adam Bernard: Your latest film, The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which stars Matthew McConaughey, opens this weekend. Now be honest, does your taking a break from your relationship have anything to do with the fact that you were making a movie with someone who many regard as “the sexiest man in the world?”
Christina Milian: No. {laughs} No, not at all. Actually I was with my boyfriend at the time and he was very patient knowing the type of scenes I’d be doing with Matthew McConaughey. He was very supportive.

Adam Bernard: Is there nudity in this film?
Christina Milian: No, no nudity, but I do get very close with Matthew.

Adam Bernard: In addition to your film work you also have a new album you’re looking to release later this year. Other than being independent and on MySpace Records, what’s different for you this time around?
Christina Milian: The independent approach to everything has kind of let me be an independent woman making my music, which is really awesome. I feel like there’s been a lot of growth and there’s been changes where I’m just becoming more of a woman and I know the specifics of what I like and what I want in my life, whether it has to do with myself, a relationship, or in business, so when you listen to a lot of the records that I’m doing right now they’re very much to the point. Even if it’s a love record, there’s no going around things like I’m trying to say this, but not really, and here’s the hook!

Adam Bernard: Is there anything musically that you can look at and say “they would have never let me do that on a major?”
Christina Milian: At my previous record label they really would have been down my throat every day trying to listen to every song like oh what’s going on, what’s going on. In this case my label people aren’t showing up every ten seconds being pains in the butt about what we’re trying to achieve, because at the end of the day you can’t force something. Sometimes things take time and people have to have chemistry develop to build and make something and I feel that this label has been able to allow me to do that.

Adam Bernard: What happened at Def Jam? Why didn’t it work out there?
Christina Milian: A lot of it was just budgetary reasons. The budgets that I had accumulated over the years, I had been bounced around from Def Soul to Island to Def Jam, and a lot of the time they were trying to change my style and my image. “Oh, your next single, we need it to be on these networks, so you have to be extra urban.” My first single (“AM to PM”) was a really pop record and that’s who I was. I grew up watching people like Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson and my whole idea was I wanted to be a big pop artist. So a lot of time there was a lot of shifting and changing. A lot of money was spent that I wasn’t aware of, also, and eventually it had just gotten to be so much that by the time my album came out we had decent sales, I think we had 55,000 albums sold that week and the highest for that week was 80,000, but I guess they just figured hey, it’s time to let her go. They didn’t want to spend more money on my project. Personally I think that project would have been worth spending the money on.

Adam Bernard: For a while there was a rumor going around that you turned down “S.O.S” and after that it was given to Rihanna. Is that true?
Christina Milian: That one’s not true. People try to say that’s the reason why I got dropped from the label, but that wasn’t the case at all. When I heard that record it was already done and she had already shot a video, so when people try to blame it on that, or try to say that, that’s not true. At one point they did ask me later on to do a duet with her, but we never got to do it because of everything that happened with the label.

Adam Bernard: Is there any beef between you two? Do we need to get you in a steel cage? If we do I’m sure we could make some solid PPV money doing so.
Christina Milian: {laughs} No, there’s no reason to. I’m not jealous at all. I’ve seen her a couple times since everything happened at that label and she was a sweetheart, we both said hi and she had really nice words because we had met before. It’s funny because before everything I remember one day I sat down and had a dinner with all the people at Def Jam and she was sitting there. I remember telling my mom when I left the table that day, I was like that girl is a star. Her accent makes her really sexy. She has a presence about her.

Adam Bernard: Finally, back in the day your videos would air on TRL. With all the changes that have gone on at MTV do you almost feel like you have to be a character on The Hills to get a few minutes of airtime on the network?
Christina Milian: {laughs}Basically, it’s kind of funny, it’s exactly what you just said. It’s gotten to that point where you’re like hey, can I get a feature on The Hills, or maybe can you play at least 20 seconds of my video at the end of the credits. It’s so different now and it’s kind of shifty which kind of sucks because you used to be so excited about spending this money on a music video and having the world see it and now you’re just hoping that you get the opportunity to get it to the eyes of millions of viewers. Fortunately we have the internet now. I still feel it’s not the same because it’s not like watching HD quality and you gotta wait for something to load. It’s great that you can find things on your own, but to be real with you, TRL and 106 & Park made it really exciting. I even miss the days of Jukebox where you could just order em, which used to be so much fun when I was a teenager. There’s no more Box, which stinks. Even the promotion is different from the record labels. They’re not spending the same kind of money, but that’s also a good thing because it used to be such exaggerated amounts of money that used to be spent. It wasn’t about the music anymore. I definitely believe in having a great visual for a music video but the amounts of exaggerated money that were being spent were just kind of ridiculous.

Adam Bernard: All that money being spent and then OK Go blows up off of four guys on treadmills.
Christina Milian: Right? It’s so crazy, you just never know.

Related Links

Website: christinamilian.org
MySpace: myspace.com/christinamilian

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