*My chat with Kelly Price shortly after learning of “Tired” earning a Grammy nomination: you KNOW you still play that joint when the walls are caving in and the kids are working your nerves, so keep reading…. *

Kelly Price  did  more than hit the charts and earn her fourth Grammy nomination with  her first  new song in three years, “Tired”: apparently, she ignited a  movement.

“I  was literally blown away,” says the 37-year-old from her  Los Angeles  home about hearing the news last week. “I was just telling someone  this  morning, this is my third or fourth Grammy nomination, but this one  feels  very, very different. I asked a little kid one day who was  singing ‘Tired,’  ‘what are you tired of?’ and he told me ‘School  lunch.’ So I said ‘Wow, that’s  a real problem!’” she laughs.

In the  midst of putting the finishing touches on her latest  CD, which is due  in March of 2011, Ms. Price broke down where “Tired” came  from, how it  evolved and why it’s resonated with so many fans.

MELODY CHARLES: “Tired” is such an emotional and cathartic  song. How did you write it?

KELLY PRICE: “Well, first of all, the conversation that I had with R. Kelly prior to  the  song’s inception—literally, we were talking about my career and  where it would  and should be, and he said, ‘ we have not had a Kelly  Price-penned anthem at  radio for a very long time. Since you wrote  ‘Friend of Mine,’ there hasn’t been  something that powerful at radio. I  keep hearing you sing the words ‘I’m  tired’…come on, think about it.  Even the kids get on your nerves, and that  doesn’t make you a bad  mother, but every mother has a moment where they want to  strangle their  kids. If you write this song, and just be totally honest, talk  about  those moments where you were ready to snap or just snap somebody else:   Everybody has had those moments and experienced them, and when they hear  it,  they’ll know you’re telling the truth and they’ll sing along too.”

MC- That’s deep. Did the words come immediately?

KP– “It  literally  incubated for about a year-and-a-half. One day I was on my  way to the studio to  work on something totally and completely  unrelated, and there was a weird  moment where I could literally hear  our conversation playing in my head and I  heard the words to the song. I  was singing and driving and then I was  scrambling, with one hand on  the wheel and the other one digging for my  Blackberry so I could try to  record it into the phone —I wouldn’t recommend  that because I was  driving in the HOV lane—and that’s literally how the song  was born. I  ran into the studio, told the engineer ‘take out whatever we were   going to work on today, because I have to get this out.’ I walked in the  booth,  sang the song from word one to the very last, with no music.’  That’s how it  happened.

MC-Divine  inspiration, no doubt. I know the song rocketed to the Top 30  on  Billboard’s Urban AC Radio Charts, so the response tells me that people  are  relating to the story. What have you been hearing about it from  fans?

KP- “Someone  sent  a comment to me one day saying ‘Tired makes me want to get into a  fight and go  to church all at the same time.’ (laughs) I totally  understood what they meant.  That’s one of the more humorous responses,  but mostly, I’ve heard a lot of  ‘thank you.’ That has to be the biggest  thing: ‘thank you for saying what I  couldn’t say and for being willing  to share what you were feeling, because I  felt the same way. A lot of  them also said ‘I felt like I was the only one.’

MC- So “Tired” is therapeutic to them as well.

KP-“Exactly. I   think that with people in our lives and in our human experience, that,  more  than anything, is what keeps us down. I think that going through a  situation  and being deceived to think that there are the only ones  dealing with it can destroy  a person. If you feel like you’re the only  one, you’re less likely to talk  about it, less likely to seek out help  for it.”

MC- So music does that for you too?

KP- “It does.   Music goes past being what I do to support myself and my family.  This  is my therapy, I can have a violent  moment and get it out in a song,:  you’ll know it because you’ll hear it, you’ll  see it, and it’s probably  the safest way (laughs).’”