eddie-murphy-rs

The last time we heard actor Eddie Murphy on wax, it was 1985 and he was rocking the mic to the tune of “Party All The Time” (not counting his musical stints as his Shrek character, Donkey). Now Eddie is back, channeling his inner Bob Marley, with a new feel-good jam called “Red Light,” that also doubles as a socially conscious record.

“Broken economy, the streets are dire/ Even more than before/ I need some betterness to take me higher/ Feels like I’m gonna blow,” Murphy sings.

He recently spoke to Rolling Stone about possibly returning to the stage, working on his new album and doing another Beverly Hill Cops movie. Check the highlights below:

So you put the studio in and just got to work. What was the process like?
The tracks and stuff start falling out the sky. Because I had a studio in my house in Jersey. I sold my house in Jersey to Alicia Keys last year, so people are still making music in it. I put a studio in this house. I hadn’t had a studio in here the whole time I was living here, so I had like maybe five years where I was just putting stuff on guitar, just writing stuff. Then when I put the studio in I had just a backlog of songs. So we’ve been nonstop since I put it up in there.
—
How did Snoop Lion get involved?
Well, I loved Snoop from ever since and when he turned into Snoop Lion, I was checking to see how he was coming. I tracked that song around the same time I started hearing about him doing Snoop Lion. And I was like “Yo, if he’s Snoop Lion now, he can jump on this track, because I wanted to have a rapper on it.” It was perfect. He’s Snoop Lion, I got this reggae track. It was like just meant to be.

I assume he got you pretty high?
Nah. The room was already buzzing when Snoop got there. We did two tracks together. We did that song. We did actually a song that’s like just a new . . . the new weed anthem. A track called “Mellow Miss Mary.” It’s a shame – I was working on it with Rick James before he died. I wrote the song and went to Rick and he was loving it. And Rick was supposed to be on it and Rick kicked out and I still had the track and it was like “‘Ay, I’m going to take this and put Snoop on it.” Snoop is like the governor of weed! [Laughs] Got him on the track. On the surface, if you listen to “Mellow Miss Mary,” it sounds like a love song to this chick named Mary. But when you listen to it, it’s like “Hey, man. Is Mary reefer?”
—
There’s talk of another Beverly Hills Cop movie – now that the TV show fell through – and there’s talk that you might be in Triplets with Danny DeVito and Schwarzenegger. Anything real there?
I’ve had all types of talks like that. Nothing’s come together yet. All things still in the talking stage. Right now, this is what’s happening.

Read the full interview here.