Laurieann Gibson Plots 'Super Dope' Music Career With 'Last Chance'

Onetime Lady Gaga collaborator talks to MTV News about how she went from behind the scenes to center stage.
By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Vanessa White Wolf

Laurieann Gibson
Photo: Getty Images

Laurieann Gibson has worked with artists like onetime muse Lady Gaga and current inspiration Nicki Minaj, helping the pop princesses craft stage spectacles and killer dance routines. But, having spent the last chapter of her career shaping the careers of other artists, the former Fly Girl feels now is the time for her to move from behind the shadows and kick-start her own music career.

"When I began to choreograph and find my way pulling other artists' dreams out and changing music in a visual way, there was still a part of me that had something more to say," she told MTV News about working on her solo album. "There was still a desire to rock a stage and ultimately perform the eight count of my dream, but there was a lot of insecurity there."

It wasn't until last year, however, that she found the strength to hit the studio for this album. And she channeled all of those feelings into her music, including her lead single, the dance-floor anthem "Last Chance." "I put that into the album, into the lyrical content and I'm really proud of what is coming out of the studio," she said.

Gibson said she started working on the album after wrapping up her E! show "Born to Dance" and directing Gaga's video for "Yoü and I." "It took a lot out of me creatively and after basically doing a lot visually and looking for another artist to spring board what was inside of me, the reality of 'How can I move something bigger than what I was doing?' It kept coming back to my own self."

Therefore she enlisted folks that she felt could help shape her vision. "[It was about] the own lyrical content, the desire to not necessarily work with a lot of my friends, the top producers and approach the album like that," she said. "So on my team I was working with DeMarco Webster, who has been working with me for a long time too, to independently A&R this vision that we had."

When they added songwriters Infared Ink to the mix, the album began to take shape. "I realized that, for me, great records always moved me with the lyrics and the melodies," she said. "And so I said, 'I think I can do it now,' 'cause I found a team of people who understand I didn't want a record that was 'drop it, pop it, shake it' just 'cause I can dance. We really made the album the old-school way. They watched me fight against the adversity and they learned to take my experience and my lingo and my language and we wrote an album that was really personal [to me]... it's really a super dope project."

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