The week of February 10th marked an accomplished milestone in Ryan Leslie's career. Four years ago, Just Right was scheduled to be released under Universal Records, but the lack of interest in his singles -- "The Way Tha U Move Girl" and "Used 2 Be" featuring Fabolous -- forced the label to shelve his dreams and hard work. Fast-forwarding to present time, record stores reported a shortage of Ryan Leslie within days of its release. It's a humbling experience for the singer/producer/songwriter/musical arranger, but a long time coming, nonetheless.

Ryan's hometown can be split between a series of approximately seven cities, but the most impactful place in his life was Harvard University. By age 15, Ryan found himself to be an Ivy League student where he discovered his love of music, singing with the school's four part harmony jazz group named The Krokodiloes. From there, he endured academic probation, getting lost in creating music but successfully graduated with a degree in Government and Economics. Within four years of graduation, Ryan landed production and songwriting gigs with Beyonce, 702, Britney Spears, Carl Thomas and New Edition. He conquered various genres from hip-hop to pop to R&B, creating hits like Cassie's "Me & U", Cheri Dennis' "I Love You", and Loon's "Down 4 Me," but being an artist has proven to be the most humbling and challenging road he ever took. As Ryan absorbs the high demand for his album, the selling out of his performances and the stamp of approval by Usher, humility remains apparent. The preparation to conquer other avenues of the music business through his Next Selection Lifestyle Group is in motion in hopes of trailblazing a brand new business plan in today's market. But, the most important element to him is keeping his fans happy by connecting to them through his website RyanLeslie.com. To Ryan Leslie, all of the struggles endured throughout his career are what make the victories special. And he owes it all to his fans.

BallerStatus.com: Your did leak a couple of weeks before and a lot of people were surprised by your album. They're faithful in you as a producer, but they weren't expecting you to be as compelling as an artist. How does it feel to have people doubt you as an artist and not as a producer?

Ryan Leslie: I really just take it all as a life challenge. I have found [that] in order to achieve anything in life, it requires hard work. The only thing I can do is offer my best. I guess I try to be as passionate about it as I can be. I understand my limitation and as each of us as human beings strive for perfection, there are many, many, many instances where we fall short of perfection. So, I think a lot has to be said when someone gives everything that they've got. That's what I've done with this record, so I have no problem working hard to earn the respect of anyone who's interested in being converted into a fan. Some folks are just not interested and that's fine as well. I make music because it has gotten me through specific situations and it's been a soundtrack of my life. And not only has it been soundtrack of my life, it has been the motivated force in my life, so for me to do it, I just want to do it the best that I can and I appreciate the response 100%.

BallerStatus.com: Just Right didn't do well at all, so to see the contrast in the response in Ryan Leslie. Were you worried that the new album might meet the same fate as Just Right?

Ryan Leslie: Well the fate of Just Right has been very interesting. We've been through some serious challenges and Just Right actually was never released. So we got all the way up to the point of even manufacturing the record, and it actually had to be manufactured overseas, and it was never released. And like I said, I count everything as a learning experience. I have absolutely no complaints. I don't have any fears. I know that all I'm doing everyday is competing or on a mission to meet my own standards ... That's all I can expect from myself. The way people respond to the music, the way people like the music, the way people interact and relate to the music, that's up to them.

BallerStatus.com: I like Ryan Leslie a lot. I couldn't find the album in stores anywhere and I was very disappointed. How do you feel about that?

Ryan Leslie: I look at it from both sides of the coin. There's the fact that there's enough demand for it that it's sold out. But from my vantage point, when it goes down in the history books, it's not going to go down in the history books how many people wanted it. It goes down [as] how many people purchased it and how many records were scanned. Not that my year will be defined by a number of units, but because it's a metric for so long [that] defines the contribution of an artist. It definitely speaks volumes if the record still has a great first week because that means that the music was compelling enough that people went multiple times to get it.

BallerStatus.com: Do you think Universal has faith in you as an artist? "Diamond Girl" came out last year and the rest of your hits were spaced out from your release date. How do you feel about the support Universal has given you?

Ryan Leslie: Like I said, I appreciate everything. I'm not one of these sort of disgruntled artists. I knew my path was going to be different than everybody else's pathway. I knew that if I stood here and tried to sing a Stevie Wonder song, Stevie Wonder would sing rings around me. If I tried to sit here and tried to play against Herby Hancock, he's going to play rings around me. I know if I decided that if I wanted to play trumpet verses Wynton Marcellus -- these guys have proficiency skills and have made contributions, legendary contributions to the game of music. So, I understand everything.

I just knew that this is a contribution that I wanted to make and I look at Universal as a partner and partners even in marriages don't get along sometimes and they have different opinions and different priorities. There was no secret that, as a new artist in this climate, that it's very risky in terms of the outlay in finances whether or not they're going to make their money back. Artists that were guaranteed sellers had to be the priority of the label, and so for me, I have no problem with that and that's why I have no problem with investing over a half a million dollars in my own campaign. That's just something that I felt was going to be necessary for me to make the artistic statement that I wanted to make.

BallerStatus.com: What would be the next single off of your album?

Ryan Leslie: To be totally honest with you, in speaking about my partnership with the label, the top brass at Universal has indicated to me that I'm fortunate to have had three singles on this album, three singles before it came out, three singles with video before it came out and three singles with videos on records that did not break even the top 30 on the R&B chart, and three singles with videos on an album that they weren't sure was going to sell or not. Now that the album has been out, the sales are really going to dictate whether or not, they'll put up any money to support another single at radio or put a video together for it.

Me personally, as an artist and as an entrepreneur, musician, producer, I have a war chest of money that I invest in myself and I have seen the response gazing by iTunes popularity that "Valentine" has been absolutely overwhelmingly a favorite, so I've already been in talks with the French director and photographer Armen, who shot my album cover, about creating a visual treatment for it. Does that make it a single? What makes something a single? Now days it's whether or not the label want to push it at radio, so that's a very uncertain fate for the song, but I'm definitely very excited about that song.

BallerStatus.com: You touch an array of topics in your album, what statements are you trying to make in today's R&B?

Ryan Leslie: I really look at music as an extension in today's humanity and it's very challenging for me to stay inside of the box of like R&B and be in a category. I understand that for the purposes of organization or the purposes of categorization, you have to put someone in that sort of box, so at least you have a foundation, whereby you can relate them to other things. But, I just look at my album as an expression of my humanity. I just want to make human statements about my human experiences, so in life I think that it is so interesting that we value certain things and in relationships, which is really where my songs come from because those have been the most inspirational experiences that I've had. Something like "Quick Sand" or "Out Of The Blue" or "Shouldn't Have To Wait" really just speaks to some of the experiences that I've been through and I just hope that my human experience is relatable to other human experiences for people who aren't songwriters or singers or musicians. I'm hoping that this music can provide the soundtrack to the experiences that they're having as human beings.

BallerStatus.com: So what were you trying to say in "Gibberish"?

Ryan Leslie: "Gibberish," I think is just a great statement about -- sometimes you're just overwhelmed and you don't know what to say. That's the beauty of music, is that melodically it still can say so much. I think that "Gibberish" is an estimate to the power of music and how moving it can be, even if there's no specific language that's conveyed in the song.

BallerStatus.com: As you stated before you've invested a lot of money in yourself as an artist. Do you have a vision as to how an artist should be marketed these days since the business has drastically changed?

Ryan Leslie: Yeah.I really believe that an artist should market their most engaging characteristics. So for me, I'm a visual person, so we do a lot of videos. Not only music videos, but videos in general. My camera is always running. In those videos, I did my best to showcase what I felt was my best offerings -- my passion and enthusiasm for music in general. If someone is an incredible singer, I believe they should market the fact that they are [an] incredible singer. If someone is an incredible dancer, market the fact that they are an incredible dancer. Not only should they market it, they should train themselves, so that they could be the best and express themselves in the best way. Even for me, as I have more sophisticated musical ideas, I'm going to be training myself so that I have more proficiency, so that I can bring to [to life] that which I'm hearing in my head.

BallerStatus.com: You seem to be ahead of the game with your site and it seems like some people might have to catch up with you.

Ryan Leslie: We definitely want to be ahead of the game. We want to be pioneers and be trailblazers. The main issue that I have with YouTube and the main issue that I have with social networks like MySpace is that artists, which are probably the number one most attractive commodities of those sites, they get something out of the sites in that they have some technology and they have a way to build a fan base. But unfortunately, YouTube has gone on to sell for $4.5 billion. I don't know if they redistributed any of that money to the people that delivered them content. My guess would be no. MySpace went on to sell for half a billion. I don't know if they redistributed that money to the people who made that such a magnet for traffic. My answer would be no.

So my idea at RyanLeslie.com and for every artist website that we develop at NextSelection.com is to redirect all of that traffic and all of the benefits of that traffic to the people that are responsible for the traffic, which are the artists. That's what I'm hoping to lay the foundation and groundwork for at RyanLeslie.com and we've been pretty successful to date. We launched January 10th; I've got about 6,000 people that are registered through my BlackBerry, so that I can connect with them directly. We're just shy of about 4,000 people that have been part of my network via Facebook Connect, which is a new technology we're using, but I own that data. It's mine. Even though I had to start over, because on MySpace I have 140,000 (I had to start over from scratch), those people are my people. I consider them my real captive, active, real audience and I want to do whatever I can to reward them for interacting with me on that level.