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Looking Beyond the Jobs Report; Exotic Animals Back to Owner; Politics Of The New Jobs Report; Clinton On Bin Laden And 9/11; Rachelle Ferrell's Unique Music
Aired May 04, 2012 - 12:10 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: President Obama in a Virginia school talking about student loans. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is going to be speaking at a cement company in Pittsburgh. His event follows a private meeting with Rick Santorum who has yet to endorse Romney.
Live from CNN headquarters in Atlanta, I'm Suzanne Malveaux. I want to get you up to speed for this Friday, May 4th.
New report out today shows the unemployment rate fell last month. Hold off on the celebrations, however. The number of jobs created was less than expected. Jobless rate fell because workers dropped out of the labor force. The rate dipped to 8.1 percent. Employers added 115,000 jobs. Christine Romans, she's going behind the numbers in just a minute.
And the prostitute at the center of the Secret Service sex scandal is speaking out for the first time. She is providing new details about the morning she got into an argument with one of the agents sent to Colombia ahead of President Obama's visit in March.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SIANA SUAREZ, COLOMBIAN SEX WORKER (Through Translator): And I told him to wake up and to give me my gift that I asked him for. And he says no. Let's just -- let's go, just go, bitch. I'm not going to pay you. And then he just -- he put out 50,000 pesos for the taxi. And I was like, I was in shock in that moment when he just said that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: NFL legend Junior Seau's brain will be studied for concussion damage. The former linebacker's tragic death was now officially been ruled a suicide. These are exclusive pictures of Seau at a charity golf tournament. This was just 36 hours before he was found dead. The gunshot wound to the chest.
Here is a clip of what we believe to be his last interview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUNIOR SEAU, FORMER NFL STAR: You know, it's fun to be in the position that we're, you know, in for kids that look up to us and, you know, for us to be able to give so much back. (END VIDEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: Seau's good friend who was at the event described his mood that day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID BIBER, FRIEND OF JUNIOR SEAU: In a very good mood. He was light-hearted., as Tim said, signing autographs surrounded by people. It was a flurry of activity as always followed Junior. He's bigger than life.
HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: He and his family now want to go to the United States so he can pursue his studies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Beijing today talking about Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng. Now it might be a breakthrough for this man who was so vocal about stopping forced abortion and sterilization in China that the government threw him in prison. Well, the Chinese government says he can apply to study abroad like any other citizen. According to the U.S. State Department, he has been offered a university fellowship.
So we told you the headlines from today's jobs report. Unemployment rate dipped to 8.1 percent last month, but employers, they just added 115,000 jobs, which is actually fewer than expected.
Want to bring in Christine Romans who is going beyond the numbers here.
Christine, first of all, tell us what does it say overall about the state of the job market and the economy? How well are we doing?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It still tells us we've got 12.5 million people who are unemployed in this country, and you've got more than five million people who have been out of work for six months or longer. Forty-one percent of the unemployed have been out of work for six months or longer.
It shows you this intractable part of the labor market where people have been out and haven't been able to get their foot back in the door. So we're growing jobs, but not enough of them. That's basically the bottom line in the report.
MALVEAUX: What kind of sectors actually added jobs in April?
ROMANS: Well, I can tell you that we saw jobs growth in leisure and hospitality. This is likely not a place where you're going to see a high-wage jobs, though, so that's kind of a concern. We saw retail jobs come back, 29,000 of those. Again, those tend to be lower paid jobs.
Business and professional services was interesting, too. Sixty- two thousand jobs created there. Those are higher wage jobs in general. Wholesale trade and employment, about 7,000. And then transportation and warehousing, Suzanne, is where we had a surprise loss in jobs, about 16,000 there. So government jobs we lost, the private sector overall creating 130,000 jobs in the private sector.
MALVEAUX: And, Christine, not surprising, politics playing into all of this. Both sides already offering their spin on this trying to get what they can out of the report. What have you heard?
ROMANS: Well, you know, there's something for both sides here as well. I mean you do have, as Mitt Romney says, 39 months in a row, a record of unemployment rate above 8 percent. That is true. You also have, as the president says, 26 months now in a row of private sector job creation, more than 4.25 million jobs created in the past two years. That's true as well.
So they both have something for their message. Overall, this is what the picture looks like, Suzanne, since the last year of the Bush administration. If you follow me here, you can see in every month -- I show you this, right -- here is the big jobs disaster. All of those jobs lost. Millions of jobs lost right here. And then this is what the political fight is about, Suzanne. This fight over how durable the recovery is, whether it should be doing better, and what kind of policies are either helping or holding back this jobs recovery.
Here are the last four months, you can see hiring has slowed a little bit. It is, again, still positive jobs hiring, but not really enough to signal a strong durable jobs recovery.
MALVEAUX: And Christine, what's really important here, a lot of people trying to break apart these numbers, they're looking to see where do I fit into all of this. Is there a breakdown by race here? Any changes?
ROMANS: There is. And the demographics here are pretty interesting to watch. There is something we've been noticing over the past few months. When you look at a breakdown by race, 7.4 percent is the unemployment rate for white Americans, 13 percent for African- Americans. 10.3 percent for Hispanics. This number for African- Americans came down one full percentage point in the most recent month. And if you look out over the past couple of months you can see -- and against last year, last year the unemployment rate for African- Americans was 16 percent.
So it's been trending slightly lower here. So as you've had this job creation, you've seen the unemployment rate for African-Americans start to tick lower, but the structural part, and this is where the social scientists really jump into these numbers and what the recession has done to the labor market, the structural part of this, you still have big disparities here overall in the breakdown by demographic. Here are men and women, by the way, in vase you're wondering, 7.5 percent for men, 7.4 percent is the unemployment rate for women.
MALVEAUX: Pretty much equal. All right. Christine, thank you very much.
ROMANS: Yes.
MALVEAUX: Appreciate it.
Here is a rundown of some of the stories that we are working on.
First, it's the nightmare a former president will never forget. Bill Clinton desperate to find his daughter in the middle of a terrorist attack.
And Mitt Romney said yesterday it was a dark day for freedom. We're going to hear what he's saying out in the campaign trail. Live up ahead.
And just wait until you hear this voice.
She's a singer. I have been a fan for years. The amazing Rachelle Ferrell. We're going to talk to her live about her first new album in a decade.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MALVEAUX: We're watching a live campaign event. Mitt Romney in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Let's dip in and listen in for a little bit.
MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The value of their homes and their own home is down, and so they don't think they can retire either.
I met with some grandparents that said it was getting harder and harder to go meet their and see their grand kids because of the cost of gasoline. It's almost doubled under this president. So people across the country are having hard times and wondering why it is, and I'll tell you why it is. It's because President Obama is out of ideas. He's out of excuses, and in 2012 it's time to make sure we put him out of office.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
ROMNEY: Now, just this morning there was some news that came across the wire that said that the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.1 percent and normally that would be cause for celebration, but, in fact, anything over 8 percent, anything near 8 percent, anything over 4 percent is not cause for celebration. But in fact the reason it dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 percent was not because we created a lot of jobs. As a matter of fact, only 115,000 bet new jobs were created. That was well beneath what it was expected to be. I should have been in the hundreds of thousands. But it wasn't.
The reason the rate came down was because about 340,000 people dropped out of the workforce. So many became discouraged they stopped looking for work, and if they stop looking for work, the statisticians are able to say, oh, the unemployment rate is lower now because not so many people want to work.
This is a sad time in America. When people who want work can't find jobs. College kids, kids coming out of college. Surveys said half of the kids coming out of college can't find work or can't find work that's consistent with their -- with their skills. This is a time when America wants to have someone who knows who it takes to create jobs and get people working again.
I think it helps to have had a job to create a job, and I have and I will.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
ROMNEY: Now, people ask me what will I do to help create jobs, and one thing I know I'm not going to do is go hire a bunch more people in the federal government. That's --
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
ROMNEY: As a matter of fact, the president has put about 150,000 more people in government, and, of course, you're paying for them. That doesn't lift the wages and creates the jobs in the private sector that employ the American people. So I have a few things that I'd tell you I would do get -- to get this economy going.
First of all, I'd take away one of the things that frightens entrepreneurs and innovators and businesses of all kinds from hiring. I'll get rid of Obamacare.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
ROMNEY: And then there's something else that the president doesn't seem to understand terribly well about the importance of energy and reliable energy and low-cost energy for American homeowners and families struggling and also for businesses. This business here, I don't know how much energy you use and how much energy, you're nodding a lot, and how much energy is used, is used to produce these products and the raw materials coming into this facility are also energy intensive.
And so if energy is expensive in this country, if we drive its price higher and higher, why businesses that use a lot of energy go out of business, or they go offshore where energy is more reasonably priced. We have extraordinary energy resources in this country that are low cost, but somehow the president doesn't seem to like them very much. He sure doesn't like coal. He's making it harder for the people to mine coal and harder for enterprises to use it.
He doesn't like oil. He's made it harder for us to drill offshore and on the outer continental shelf in places like Virginia. He sure as heck doesn't like going after the natural gas that we have in abundance. The federal government has tried to insinuate itself into regulating natural gas and its development into -- into our system by regulating fracking technology.
The president the other day said that he's for all of the above when it comes to energy. And I couldn't figure out what he meant because to most of us who follow this topic, all of the above means you like all energy sources, but he's been anti-coal, anti-oil, anti- natural gas, anti-nuclear, so how could he say he's for all of the above? And then I figured it out. He's for all the sources of energy that come from above the ground. All right?
MALVEAUX: Mitt Romney, you've been listening to out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at a campaign stop. Obviously taking on the president. We know he wants his job.
Following another story, he owe opened the cages of tigers, leopards, and bears, and then he killed himself. Well, now the animals that survived that ordeal, they're going back to the same farm.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MALVEAUX: This is the bizarre private zoo suicide story that was all over the news a couple of months ago. A man in Columbus, Ohio, Terry Thompson, his unusual hobby was collecting exotic animals, so we're talking grizzly bears, tigers, lions. Last fall Thompson killed himself after setting 50 of the dangerous animals free. Lions, tigers, wolves, all at the same time. This is in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio.
The thought of the animals roaming the streets terrified people living there. Police hunted them down and killed most of them. But today we've got a development in this very strange and sad story.
I want to get to Jason Carroll in Zanesville, Ohio.
Jason, what do we know about now the widow and whether or not these animals will be returned in her care?
JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, according to the law Marian Thompson can bring these animals wherever she wants, she can bring them back to her farm here, she can take them to another location. It seems as if in terms of everything that we've been told in terms of what we've been told from officials, the animals are headed back to the Thompson farm. They're still about 20 miles away.
If you take a look behind me, Suzanne. You can see the Thompson farm behind me. Some of the cages that were there, this is where some of the animals were kept before. Once again waiting to hear from Marian Thompson in terms of whether or not the five animals that have been released back into her care, if those animals will be kept in some of the cages that you see now.
Understandably, there are a number of people who live in this rural community who are very concerned about these animals returning. One, in fact, who spoke to us, Sam Kopchar, remembers the day that those animals were released in October. He saw a tiger go by, a lion go by. He had to hide in his barn. He doesn't want to see something like that happen again. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SAM KOPCHAR, NEIGHBOR: I felt what she deserves to have the animals back, it's her animals, but hopefully she would take them somewhere and maybe put them, you know, some other kind of facility, or whatever and not bring them here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARROLL: Now, Suzanne, here's the situation now. Those animals were held in quarantine for a period of time. And now that that quarantine is over and those animals have been given a medical clearance, the law says they can go back to Marian Thompson, and so that's where we stand right now. Understandably, some of the folks over at the Columbus Zoo are concerned about that. They say they are the ones who are best to care for these animals.
I spoke to a representative from the Columbus zoo earlier, here's what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARROLL: Once these wild animals go back, who will be monitoring those animals to make sure that they are properly cared for six months out, a year out, et cetera?
TOM STALF, COLUMBUS ZOO ND AQUARIUM: Right. And currently with no restrictive law, the answer would be just local law enforcement if the animals escape. If there's a complaint, the local animal shelter would do an investigation, and if there's an illness or a possible illness, then it would be a health inspector.
CARROLL: But that's all reacting to something. I guess my question would be, proactively, is there anything in place in terms of monitoring and checking up the status of these animals once they go back?
FORD: No.
CARROLL: And the reason for that, Suzanne, is because the state of Ohio has one of the least restrictive laws on the books when it comes to owning exotic animals. Currently right now, in fact, there is new legislation that's being pushed through the house to try to get that law changed -- Suzanne.
SUZANNE: Well, Jason, good luck to the animals and to the neighbor there. Thank you, Jason. Appreciate it.
If you're going to skip school, it helps to have a note signed by the governor. That's right. More news from the campaign trail and our political panel up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MALVEAUX: Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum face-to-face behind closed doors. A source saying the two men met privately today for the first time since Santorum dropped out of the presidential race. Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall on that one?
Joining us our Friday political round table, Democratic strategist Maria Cardona and Republican, Alice Stewart, former spokeswoman from Rick Santorum.
So Santorum aides say they don't expect him to immediately endorse Romney, but what do we suspect Santorum actually wants? That's, of course, up to you to answer. You know the guy best. What do you think?
ALICE STEWART, FORMER SPOKESWOMAN FOR RICK SANTORUM: Well, Suzanne, there were no flies on the wall in that meeting. It was just the two of them. They just wrapped up a short time ago after speaking for about an hour and a half.
It was a good meeting. The Romney campaign asked for Rick to sit down and talk and it was a good meeting. Rick had a few issues he wanted to express to Governor Romney.
Those being manufacturing, the importance of that and certainly, he wanted to ensure that the issues and the views and values of the Tea Party conservatives, the social conservatives, and the blue collar conservatives were going to be folded into the Romney campaign.
And we'll see as we hear what happened in the meeting how that came about, but clearly what Governor Romney needs to do is what he's been doing, going out on the campaign trail, as we just heard.
One of the most important issues that came out of this campaign was the need to repeal and replace Obama care, and you just played some tape -- or live shot of Governor Romney campaigning and he's going to repeal Obama care.
MALVEAUX: Why do you suppose he hasn't endorsed him already? What do you think he's waiting for, real quick?
STEWART: Well, there's a lot of things. Certainly Rick has a few things he needs to do, but more than anything he wanted to make sure that Governor Romney heard the issues that he wants to make sure are included in his campaign. It was a tough primary, but it didn't divide the party. It prepared the party and prepared Governor Romney for what's ahead, which will be a difficult general --
MALVEAUX: I want to bring you into the discussion here. The new jobs report out today already becoming a political football, hiring in April less than expected. Romney was quick to call this terrible and very disappointing. We heard from President Obama talking about the job numbers just moments ago. Let's listen to that real quick.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The unemployment rate ticked down again, so after the worst economic crisis since the great depression, our businesses have now created more than 4.2 million new jobs over the last 26 months, more than 1 million jobs in the last six months alone.
So that's the good news. But there are still a lot of folks out of work, which means that we've got to do more. If we're going to recover all the jobs that were lost during the recession and if we're going to build a secure economy that strengthens the middle class then we're going to have to do more.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: So, Maria, put this into perspective for us because it will be month by month by month. We'll have these jobs numbers that come out. How significant is it now that you have this kind of disappointing number or are people just going to be looking towards those numbers that are close to November and he's going to have to capitalize off of that?
MARIA CARDONA, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think he's going to have to continue the balancing act, which I think he was great on just now, frankly. And the White House knows better than anybody, Suzanne, that this is a tremendous challenge.
But he also has to make sure that he sets the record straight. He is right. Clearly we have created more than 4.25 million jobs since the beginning of this recession when he took office.
The unemployment rate from last year has ticked down a whole point. Three-quarters of that ticking down was people actually getting a new job, but he's right, there are too many people out of work.
What's ironic is he put a jobs plan together last year that if it had passed independent analysis says it would have created one million jobs this year.
So it's ironic that Romney is hitting him for not doing anything when if the Republicans and Congress had supported what he wanted to do when Romney has no place to stand on his record for job creation when he was governor. It was abysmal.
MALVEAUX: Maria, Alice, we have to leave it there. You only get one apiece. That is because both President Obama and Mitt Romney spoke during our hour and they kind of took away your time there.
CARDONA: How dare they?
MALVEAUX: Pre-empted by both of them, but have a good weekend. Good to see you.
CARDONA: You, too.
MALVEAUX: In the middle of the chaos of September 11th, 2001, even a former president had trouble getting hold of his daughter in New York to make sure that she was okay. We're going to hear Bill Clinton's memories of that day.
POPPY HARLOW, CNNMONEY.COM CORRESPONDENT: Time now for the "Help Desk" where we get answers to your financial questions. Joining me this hour, Greg Olsen is a certified financial planner and partner at Lenox Advisers. Lynnette Khalfani-Cox is the founder of the financial advice blog askthemoneycoach.com. Guys, thank you for coming in. Lynnette, question to you from Rick in Ohio. He wrote in his parents are retired and ready to withdraw from their IRA accounts. He wants to know should they withdraw from their Roth or regular IRA first?
LYNNETTE KHALFANI COX, FOUNDER, ASKTHEMONEYCOACH.COM: Maybe their traditional IRA first, but it really sort of depends. Here is why. You know, obviously the differences between the traditional Roth and the -- the traditional IRA and the Roth IRA is you get to take the money out tax-free on the back end with your Roth.
But you have to have it in there for at least five years. So I don't know exactly when the parents put the money into the traditional versus the Roth, but If they only had it in for a couple years, they want to make sure they meet that criteria to take it out tax-free on the back end.
HARLOW: Thank you. Greg, your questions comes from Tom in California. Tom is 41 years old, has several mutual funds and index funds in his retirement portfolio. He wants to know what are the ricks in redirecting all the funds to dividend funds? He's wanting to get some returns there.
GREG OLSEN, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER: It sounds like he has a diversified portfolio already. So I understand that the allure of doing that because dividends are all the rage right now with bonds paying only 2 percent or 3 percent going into a stock fund that's paying 2 percent or 3 percent.
However, the risk is you take a diversified portfolio and make it undiversified. Should he want to put 50 percent into dividend funds, that's OK. But make sure the other 50 percent is completely diversified so it balances out that overweight towards dividend funds.
HARLOW: So do it but do it halfway. All right, thank you, guys, very much. If you have a question you want answered just send us an e-mail anytime to cnnhelpdesk@cnn.com.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MALVEAUX: Right now the Clintons, we all know Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in the White House Situation Room with President Obama and other top advisers when U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama Bin Laden.
But what you might not know is that she kept this mission so secret, she didn't even tell her husband, former President Clinton. He said he got the news directly from the White House after the raid.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL CLINTON, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I didn't know about it until they told me. She never said a word.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow. So then you called and said, I know, you can tell me now? CLINTON: More or less.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, amazing. You must have been just -- what was your reaction when you heard that?
CLINTON: It was a long saga for me. It was deeply personally and emotion because I'm a New Yorker. I knew people who died on 9/11. Hillary was a senator. Our daughter was in Lower Manhattan.
Our daughter was one of the tens of thousands of people who was, you know, in clear visibility of World Trade Center and was told just to walk north and keep going and we couldn't find her and didn't know what was going on. So it was an emotional moment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: If you go strictly by today's numbers, unemployment rate is down, so why aren't more people actually going to work? We're going get a look at what is really happening in the workforce and what it means for your career.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MALVEAUX: The pace of hiring slowed in April according to the new jobs report out today. The unemployment rate dipped to 8.1 percent, but the economy added just 115,000 jobs. Joining us to talk about the numbers and what they mean, Georgia Tech economics professor, Danny Boston, my favorite.
THOMAS "DANNY" BOSTON, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR, GEORGIA TECH: Wow. Gee, thank you.
MALVEAUX: Nice to see you on a Friday.
BOSTON: Good to be back.
MALVEAUX: So, you make it very simple for all of us, because you say there are three parts to the job report here. There's the good, the not so good, and the bad.
BOSTON: That's right.
MALVEAUX: What's good about the report?
BOSTON: Well, what's good about the report is that the unemployment rate went down from 8.2 percent to 8.1 percent. That's a good thing, right? And also good about the report is that the black unemployment rate went down from 14 percent to 13 percent.
MALVEAUX: Why do we suppose that happened?
BOSTON: Well, you know, it's difficult to know for sure, but you have to look at where the jobs are being created. We had a lot of jobs created in retail this time around and it could be related to that. So that's also a good thing.
MALVEAUX: The not so good.
BOSTON: Well, the not so good is that we only had 115,000 jobs net, 130,000 total, but then the government took away 15,000 of those jobs. So that's not so good. We're still struggling with teenage unemployment. It's up around 25 percent.
MALVEAUX: Which is very high.
BOSTON: Which is very high. So those are some real, real problems that we have to address.
MALVEAUX: And then, so what does that mean about the bad?
BOSTON: Well --
MALVEAUX: What's the bad part? If that's the not so good.
BOSTON: Yes. Well, the bad part is that when we measure unemployment, we are looking at the total amount of people who are out of a job, right? And that then counts the people who are actually in the labor force. And what happened is, the size of the labor force decreased significantly, 342,000 people. And we know that 103,000 of those people dropped out because they couldn't find a job. So when that happens, when it contracts by that much, then that cannot officially inflate -- deflate at least the unemployment rate. And had that not happened, then that rate could actually have been either the same or it may have even gone up.
MALVEAUX: And what happens when you have such a large number of people who are dropping out of the workforce? That must do quite a bit of damage for even productivity or what we could be doing or could be producing.
BOSTON: Absolutely. Absolutely. All of this unemployment that we're experiencing has a significant effect on lost productivity. You know, it's an interesting thing because last month we had 164,000 people drop out of the labor market. The labor force shrank by that much.
MALVEAUX: Sure.
BOSTON: This time, another 300,000. We don't really know what's going on with those people. We know some of them can't find a job, but we don't know whether they're entering self-employment or what because the earlier -- three months earlier we were getting about a half million people coming into the labor market. So that problem has to be resolved. Rather see the labor market -- the unemployment rate actually increasing a bit and people coming into the labor market than the unemployment rate going down and people going out of the labor market.
MALVEAUX: The opposite.
BOSTON: Yes.
MALVEAUX: Yes, that makes sense. Danny, have a great weekend.
BOSTON: All right, you, too.
MALVEAUX: All right. This will cheer you up a little bit. Our next guest here, she has got the kind of voice that really -- oh, I mean it like tears your heart out with a single note. We are talking about Rachelle Ferrell. She's got a new album out, out after almost a decade. We're going to talk to her about it live.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MALVEAUX: Her voice, amazing. Pure, powerful. She has a startling six octave range. You can't lock Rachelle Ferrell into one particular musical style. She was trained as a classical violinist. Started performing at 13. But she's made her mark as a singer, a songwriter, jazz, pop, R&B, urban contemporary. We are so pleased to have her in our studio with us. You're performing in Atlanta tomorrow. I have to tell you, I mean I was singing your songs to my team this morning. I was like you don't know -- I mean every time I hear that -- I forgive you --
RACHELLE FERRELL, SINGER, SONGWRITER: Thank you.
MALVEAUX: I mean, really, I cry every single time.
FERRELL: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. It's -- I am so overwhelmed right now with gratitude and the idea that you could allow yourself access to the music. Just -- it touches me. Thank you.
MALVEAUX: What inspires you? What's behind that --
FERRELL: Everything inspires me at this point, you know what I mean? There's so much because life is so tangential and so kaleidoscopic and -- like the words to a new song I'm working on, "Kaleidoscopic." (INAUDIBLE), kaleidoscopic and enigmatic. I can't stop it. And so everywhere one turns, there's something that's going to be catalytic to inspiration, to motivation, to thought, something that's going to be thought provoking or just causing one to feel something.
MALVEAUX: How do you feel so deeply because when you say, I forgive you, I mean, you say, oh, that's coming from a place of pain or heartache or love or something.
FERRELL: All of the above. Definitely. I went through a really what I call not a terrible relationship or a horrible relationship, what I would like to call it is a relationship that really demanded my growth and development. And that's what came out of it, that song, "I Forgive You." And the song that came after that was -- and in sequence. They were written in sequence, "I Got To Go."
MALVEAUX: "I Got To Go."
FERRELL: "I forgive You," "I Got To Go."
MALVEAUX: But tell me what's next. Can you give us a little sample of what's expecting?
FERRELL: A little sample?
MALVEAUX: A little sample. A little something something?
FERRELL: OK. A new CD called "Art and Soul," "Rachelle Ferrell Art and Soul," hopefully to come out this year. We're really pressing to get it out this year. A new single coming out that's called "Scrill."
FERRELL (singing): I need some scrill, scrill. Some dollar bills. I need some yens. Or some something that spends. Yeahhhh.
MALVEAUX: Oh, see, that's that range I'm talking about. People don't know.
FERRELL: Talk about the economic situation. You need range, right?
MALVEAUX: Yes, absolutely.
FERRELL: Yes.
MALVEAUX: It's beautiful. You know, something that was funny that we talked about during the commercial, you said, you were able to perform in front of all of those hundreds of thousands of people --
FERRELL: Yes.
MALVEAUX: But this is what makes you nervous. How do you do that, because I'm exactly the opposite?
FERRELL: I'm kind of experiencing it now because it has been literally years since I've experienced any kind of nervousness because the stage is my living room and this, though, on the other hand, it's like, whoa, where are the seats? Where's my microphone? Where are the people?
MALVEAUX: Tell me why you were out of the spotlight for so long. What happened?
FERRELL: Working on myself, living life, working on healing from relationships, personal and intimate, as well as business relationships, familial relationships, and working on trying to pull together the reason to continue. To continue to be who I am and to continue to do what I do, because like every other artist, you get disillusioned and you start turning to things. And I didn't want to just get disillusioned and start turning to stuff as a temporary fix. I needed to go inside and become deeply introspective and come up with a way to look at life and things that happen to me symbolically so that I could transform it into music, into art.
MALVEAUX: Rachelle, we are so glad that you are back on the scene. I can hardly wait. And I'll try to make it tomorrow to that concert.
FERRELL: I hope so. I hope so.
MALVEAUX: All right, thanks so much. So good seeing you, really.
FERRELL: Good seeing you too. Thank you.
MALVEAUX: Thank you. And good luck tomorrow.
FERRELL: Thank you.
