After years of teasing his vocal skills, Vin Diesel’s released a hit new track in collaboration with Kygo and honestly, it’s fire. The Fast & Furious star Zoomed with Ryan Seacrest on-air on Monday, October 19, and shared the inspiration behind the song and how he teamed up with the mega producer and DJ.
As fans are well aware, the actor’s been teasing his talent on social media for years, covering songs by Rihanna, Sam Smith, Beyoncé and more for nearly a decade, but this is the first time he’s dropped his own official track.
“Maybe almost ten years now I’ve been playing with music on social media,” Vin shared with Seacrest, explaining that quarantine and the pandemic pushed him to really invest in his skills. “With this year being the way that it is, luckily I have this to fall back on … as a creative outlet.”
The song, however, has actually been a long time coming.
“It started a few years ago when Kygo asked me to walk into a recording studio with him,” he reflected on his relationship with the award-winning DJ. “They threw a song at me … actually it was a Selena Gomez song and they didn’t even tell me what it was and they asked me to sing it and I was kind of taken aback and I said, ‘Let me step out of my comfort zone,’” he recalled. “… And I went into the booth and I started singing which is why this first song is on their label because in many ways they assisted me stepping out of my comfort zone.”
Vin’s own dad, Irving, also pushed him to release the track, but it’s his daughter who he thinks of most when he hears it.
“My father, who has been teaching this film program down here in the Dominican Republic for 10 years or longer, he heard the song and said, ‘that needs to be the first song that you put out,’ and so I just followed my father’s lead,” Vin shared. “And then — [when] everyone hears the song, they have their own reaction — when I hear the song, I think of my 5-year-old daughter Pauline tilting her head and singing the song and mouthing the words and it melts my heart,” he added. “The idea that my music is, above all, for my children so it’s kind of a beautiful thing.”
Watch back the full interview in the video above for more, including to hear Engineer Easton pitch Vin a movie idea and stream "Feel Like I Do" here now!