FUSE TV - Exclusive Q&A: Brian McKnight Defends Lesson in Female Anatomy

Before this week, Brian McKnight was an internationally known, GRAMMY-nominated R&B songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and singer known for gentle, romantic tracks like "Back at One" and "Love Is." Now, with the release and subsequent ubiquity of the raunchy "How Your Pu**y Works (If You're Ready to Learn)," McKnight can add "unlikely viral star" to his list of accomplishments. I already tried to guess the singer's out-of-character motivations, but figured the best thing would be to talk to the man himself. McKnight spoke to Fuse from his Los Angeles home about the song's origins, its polarizing online reaction, his new website and his, um, personal experience on the song's subject matter.

Fuse: “How Your P**sy Works” exploded on the Web. What’s the story behind the song?

Brian McKnight: I recently posed the question to my Twitter followers on what subjects they wanted me to discuss. it’s not that I wasn’t being serious; I just wanted to see where people’s heads were at. I prefaced it by saying that this is an adult mixtape. If you go to a hotel room and it says “Adult Movies,” you don’t go in there thinking you’re going to see Steel Magnolias. You’re probably gonna see some sex.

It’s funny to me that people’s perceptions of me were like, “No, you can’t even be thinking about talking about sex. Oh no!” I could’ve toned [the song] down, but that would defeat the purpose of making it “adult.” This wasn’t for the radio; this wasn’t a career change. It was one funny day because I just had Achilles tendon surgery and I’m stuck in my house. I thought that for my 40,000 [Twitter] followers, this might be funny. I had no idea it would blow up. I wish I could predict that something like this would happen.

So this wasn’t some viral marketing gimmick?

Not at all. I was sitting in my room Monday night until three in the morning just looking at my timeline saying, “I think I just mind-effed the whole world.” There are people on my timeline who have so much to say about what they think my career is, but they don’t know that I’ve released 10 albums since the last time they heard me. Here’s the thing: If you listen to the song, it’s an actual song. It’s not just, “Let me f**k you. Let me f**k you. Let me f**k you. In your a**. In your a**.” It’s a song, people.

On your Twitter page, you refer to the track as “parody.” Was that the idea from the beginning?

Yeah, because people who have seen me on tour—I did 120 shows last year—know that I use humor in between the serious love songs that I sing. That’s who I really am. But it’s so funny to me that all of these people have this perception when they don’t know much about me at all. And this really wasn’t for them. This isn’t for everyone. That’s why it says “Adult.” Are you really not able to look at yourself like I am and laugh?

Do you think it’s a question of artist perception? People see you as a soft, clean singer, so it’s weird to hear you sing, “Bet you didn’t know that it could squirt.”

Definitely. You see it all over my timeline that, “You should just stay in your lane.” On what radio station are people still playing those songs? Why has Celine Dion not made a record? Why has Justin Timberlake decided to just do movies? Because we can’t be creative anymore. We can’t continue to do what we really love because there is no outlet for it. But these same people who are high and mighty will listen to worse songs than this. I said two words [“p**sy” and “squirt”] that were questionable; everything else was pretty f**kin’ clever actually. I’m actually trying to say that men need to pay more attention to their women and take care of them.

If you're with your significant other and you’re about to get down and dirty, this is for you. Or if you just want to have a laugh, whatever. This is entertainment. This isn’t what I normally do, which is try to make you think about your situation about love. This is a distraction from all of that. I can write anything. I can make anything sound good.

Listen to Brian McKnight Explain "How Your Pu**y Works (If You're Ready to Learn)"