Cosmopolitan UK / Rachell Smith
Bebe Rexha knows about making an escape.
The 30-year-old singer-songwriter has been making music since 2010, years before she celebrated breakout fame with hits like “Me, Myself & I” and “Meant to Be.” Along the way, Rexha has faced the darker side of the industry she long worked to break into.
In a newly released interview with Cosmopolitan UK, the star recalled several uncomfortable experiences with producers and writers she weathered over the years.
“When I first got to LA, I worked with a very big producer. He put me in a room with lots of other songwriters and engineers who all seemed high [on drugs],” she alleged to the magazine. “One writer walked in and said, ‘Listen—you have no hits, but I have loads, so I’m going to go downstairs and party with my friends and you’re going to write a song, record the vocals and edit it. That will be our song that we wrote together.'”
According to the article, that experience allegedly took place at Dr. Luke‘s home, the record producer who has long been in a legal battle with fellow star Keshastemming from a sexual assault lawsuit she filed back in 2014. He has repeatedly denied the allegations.
According to Rexha, Kesha’s mother told her not to work with the producer.
“I remember being at a dinner party with [Kesha and her mother, Pebe Sebert]. Her mom came up to me and whispered, ‘Don’t do it.’ She was talking about working with Dr. Luke,” she said. “The music industry can be a dark place, and she could have been trying to stop me from getting in her daughter’s way. But I listened and honestly? Trusting her was the best thing I ever did.”
Cosmopolitan UK / Rachell Smith
The songstress also remembered an unnamed, allegedly handsy producer. “There was a producer who would come into the studio and massage my feet. One time he tried to go above my knees and was getting a little rough, [so] I pulled my feet away,” she described. “He said, ‘Nah, I’m going to do what I want’. But I was raised to never let someone touch my body if I don’t want them to.”
However, the producer’s assistant later allegedly called her to tell her he wanted to buy the star a sundress for her to wear without underwear. “He’s really famous,” Rexha told Cosmopolitan UK. “My former managers said, ‘Just work with him, you need a hit song.'”
Cosmopolitan UK / Rachell Smith
Another recording studio experience spurred her to quietly get “the f–k out of there.”
“There was one night. I was alone in the studio and a [different] producer had a group of five or six guys with him. I had heard things about him from his past and I just couldn’t take it any more,” she told the magazine. “I felt like I was going to get raped. I quietly called myself a taxi from the recording booth, which was enclosed, and I got the f–k out of there. It was the worst night ever.”
The September issue of Cosmopolitan UK is on sale Sept. 5.