“One Thing That Was Very, Very Strange Was When He Embraced Me & Began…”

With Betty Wright‘s long-awaited Betty Wright: The Movie finally in stores this week, SOHH decided to ask the music veteran about her chemistry alongside the album’s executive producer, Questlove.

Likening her in-studio bond with Quest to one she would share with family, Wright opened up about The Roots‘ drummer and his charming ways.

“It was family, it was really family,” Wright told SOHH. “Quest is not a real, real talkative guy until you get on a subject that he likes. He’s not the type of person that’s going to shut you up and down. He’s very concentrated and very focused. He’s quiet in his own way, charming in his own way and he’s definitely locked in to what what he’s locked in to.” (SOHH)

She also said the project was recorded around their busy work schedules in New York.

“The one thing that I do remember that was very, very strange for me was when he embraced me to hug me, he began to tell me what I smelled like,” Wright added. “He was like, ‘Hmm hmmm, berries, coconut,’ he started naming it. Everything he said, I had. It was either my shampoo or my perfume but he had every favor and smell down pat. I mean, that’s a dangerous thing. [laughs] We had fun. Of course I’m a soul girl and he’s a soul guy — that boy works four days a week on that ‘Jimmy Fallon’ [late night] show and he does gigs over in Brooklyn, so you know I had to come up there [to New York]. Even though I think everybody would have loved to have come down to Miami because there’s so much you can do here for free.” (SOHH)

Earlier this week, Wright gave her Top 5 reasons why fans should support her new LP.

“It pays money for the art. It keeps me going and it helps to keep other artists going. This pays the light bills, the toilet paper bills and anything else because this is for everybody. I started putting songs together about two and a half years ago. Then I stopped and began working with Joss Stone, Angie [Stone], Lil Wayne and Tom Jones. I was doing these songs for about five years because I would write a little bit and then stop. So it really began to evolve. I am constantly creating music. I wanted to be multi-dimensional. I wanted to make it big. That’s what the whole movie angle is about.” (5 Reasons Why)

Betty’s new album features collaborations from rap stars Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg.

Betty Wright: The Movie is this Miami soul legend’s first album since 2001’s Fit for a King, but it’s hardly a return. During Wright’s decade away from making her own records, she was busy helping others — including Kelly Clarkson, Joss Stone, Diddy, Keyshia Cole, and Lil Wayne — as a songwriter, arranger, producer, and background vocalist. Here, she links up with the intrepid Roots crew and several supplemental session musicians, and she wrangles complementary appearances from Stone and the tremendously underappreciated Lenny Williams, as well as disruptive interjections from Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg. (CD Universe)

Check out Betty Wright’s “Grapes On A Vine” below: