Miguel on Wild New Album and Becoming Pop’s Most Wanted Man

As a kid, the singer split time between the lower income housing areas of San Pedro and his grandmother’s house in middle class Inglewood following his parents’ divorce. Half Mexican and half black, he recalls the race wars of the early Eighties and Nineties between the two communities that put him “in the middle of a lot of bullshit.” “I was just trying to figure out where I belong or who I am, which directly affects how I create my music and why I create the way I do,” he says. “I’m rooted in soul, but I’m in love with rock & roll and I’m not gonna conform to any of their expectations because I do what the fuck I want, you know? There’s no box for me. There was never any box for me.”

With Wildheart, Miguel is continuing to create music by his own rules. “Nothing great ever happened because the person was antiquated or was completely by the book,” he says. “They had to be a little delusional, a little wild. They had to dream a little.”