Haley Smalls ends twin confusion, breaks down 'Do Better' plus talks Drake and Toronto culture (Exclusive)
Toronto native Haley Smalls is on a non-stop grind with 2022 in full swing. From putting out hit anthems like ‘Do Better’ to poke fun at certain relationships to piecing together a much-needed new studio album, the Canadian crooner and hip-hop artist takes time to chop it up with Attack The Culture to dish on everything from whether she really has a twin or nahhh and her love for fashion to her studio grind and the way her sounds continue to evolve much like her stunning looks and hairstyles.
As always, check out some of the conversation highlights below and keep scrolling to check out the full conversation with the hip-hop singer.
How in the world did you pull off the ‘Never Have I Ever’ twin video thing? That was beyond crazy and my mind was blown. If you’ve taken the time to read all those comments on your YouTube page, people are beyond confused about how you pulled that off - what was the whole purpose behind that? I loved it.
Haley: Thank-you so much. Honestly, it was just something fun I wanted to do. I was kind of playing around with different content to put out and I do a lot of my own video editing so it was just kind of something that I was into trying and I thought it was a cool thing to do and it actually worked out great. I wasn’t sure if people were going to actually believe it but a lot of people were fooled and thought that I had a twin.
Where does the name Erica come from? Because that’s what really threw me off at first - Erica, was it nerve-racking, exciting with the editing process?
Haley: Yeah, it was fun. It was really fun. Trying new things when it comes to music or editing or just like content in general is always fun to execute and the name Erica just comes from my middle name.
Got you. But there is someone in reality, real life, that I’ve got to drag into this conversation which is McKenzie who we often see quite a bit whether it’s in your videos, on IG, looking like she’s loyal to the soil. Talk about who in real life McKenzie is to you.
Haley: So McKenzie is my cousin. A lot of people refer to her and myself as sisters. We basically are sisters because we grew up together and have been very close all our lives. So yeah, we’ve been really close and she’s an artist as well and an actress, so we’ve been very supportive of each other in our journeys because we’re naturally close and I’m very supportive of whatever she does. We always kind of end up in each other’s vibes and we help each other a lot.
Is there an infatuation with cars? Because I really notice a lot of cars in your music videos like ‘Keeper’ - is it the director’s idea, are you infatuated with cars? Talk about it.
Haley: I think cars are like a great thing to showcase in a music video. They always look nice. You’re always looking for a different visual aspect in your videos and to be honest with you, I’ve been an independent artist for a long time and it can be hard to get creative with content when you don’t have a major budget like a major artist signed to a major label. So you’re always looking for ways to decorate the scene and to make it look visually interesting.
Everybody loves cars. That’s really where it comes from. For ‘Keeper,’ there’s a garage from a friend of ours has them, we had that space and they had all these old school cars. I love that nostalgic vibe and it’s something I like to integrate into my style and into my music. I think that’s why sometimes you’ll see little nostalgic things. I like the old school stuff.
Got you! Well let’s go into ‘Do Better’ and obviously the latest visual, latest single - was it nerve-racking, exciting? I know you have a different hairstyle for that. Talk about that cinematic appealing, throwback vibes. There’s a lot of dope, nostalgic type things in there and talk about creating it and if it lived up to your vision.
Haley: It was directed by myself and my producer and so we really just wanted to play off the vibe of the song and at the same time make it memorable and I think bringing in some humorous moments, that was where we were going and we came up with a treatment and made out all of the skits for the scripts. We just wanted to make it nostalgic and were kind of going for that Home Alone, The Grinch, type vibe. And then we gave it some humor.
It’s tough because when it comes to humor, everybody has their own sense of humor and you don’t know how it’s going to translate. Just because you find it funny doesn’t mean everybody else will. But it seems to be translating in the way that we wanted it to be and we kind of had this idea of making it feel like a show. Almost like a Netflix show.
So we came up with this idea of the shitty boyfriend. Maybe we can even make that into a Netflix show eventually. That’s the idea we had before and we were going into with the video.