BBMAs host Michelle Buteau congratulates Tommy Richman on winning 2024 Billboard Music Awards for Top R&B Male Artist and Top R&B song for “Million Dollar Baby” at the awards show.
Michelle Buteau
How you doing?
Tommy Richman
I’m doing great. Thank you for having me.
Michelle Buteau
Oh my god, thank you for being here. Congratulations on your two awards. Who do you want to thank?
Tommy Richman
Yeah, I appreciate it. I’d like to thank my mom. I’d like to thank my friends. Donnie Killjoy, MyNameIsn’tJMack, Jonah Roy, Paco, everybody who’s helped me along the way and rest in peace my cat Zoe, RIP, and just everybody.
Michelle Buteau
How does it feel to be on the charts for the first time?
Tommy Richman
Chart for the first time? It’s insane. I didn’t expect it at all this year. It’s not how I thought it would play out, but how this year played out, it was great. I feel like I learned a lot from the universe, and I learned for better or for worse, but I’mma end this year and my head held high, for sure.
Michelle Buteau
I love that, like we never stop learning and creating as artists, right? Who inspires you?
Tommy Richman
My friends for sure, my friends and people who have come before me for sure, like Pharrell Williams, Quincy Jones, all types of people like that. I’m very inspired.
Michelle Buteau
You could feel the love through your music video for “Million Dollar Baby,” your friends inspiring you, having fun together everyone that came before you. I mean, how did you come up with the idea for the video?
Tommy Richman
For the video, it’s very interesting, because we shot a full-on full-budget, like really big-budget video with the label, because, you know, the song went crazy, and so I was like, OK, we gotta, we gotta hit them with something crazy. And we shot a video, and it just didn’t feel, it didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel like the raw energy that the song did. So I decided I wanted to strip the whole thing back and just make it simple, just VHS, $0 budget. And my friend Josh Belvedere shot the whole thing. And yeah, so we shot the whole thing. We edited it all just like for me moving around in Paris and LA and yeah, one big, organic video.
Michelle Buteau
That’s what it felt like. It felt like I was partying with you and your friends. Thank you so much. And congratulations.
Tommy Richman
Thank you so much.
