CANDIACE (Dillard Bassett) Talks New Single + Album, The Traitors Season 4, and More
CANDIACE knows exactly who she is, and where she's going. And we love it.
Some artists arrive in your life loudly. Others have been there the whole time — and you just weren’t listening closely enough.
When I sat down with Candiace Dillard Bassett this week, she was fresh off the Super Bowl in San Francisco and mid-press run in Los Angeles. Busy? Absolutely. But grounded. Centered. And very clear about who she is.
Most people met CANDIACE through reality television on The Real Housewives of Potomac, where she was a castmember for 6 seasons. But if you ask her, music has always been the main storyline. And right now? The plot is thickening.
The Castle, The Chaos & Main Character Energy
Let’s start with The Traitors on Peacock — because if you’ve been watching this season like I have, you know it’s been a wild but entertaining ride.
“I hadn’t even heard of the show at first,” she tells me. “People kept tagging me, saying I needed to be on it. I looked it up and said absolutely not. I don’t want to run. I don’t want to sweat. I don’t want to carry hay up a hill.” Relatable.
But when NBC brought the opportunity to her as a challenge, something shifted. “I love to challenge myself. Once I signed on, I was in it. And I knew I wanted to be an actual Traitor, not a Faithful. The show is called The Traitors…I’m a main character. I need to give main character energy!”
And give it she did.
What struck her most wasn’t just the strategy — it was how much fun she had. “It was the most fun I’ve ever had in unscripted television,” she says. “No regrets.”
Even when alliances cracked (looking at you, Rob. SMH.) and trust dissolved (looking at you again, Rob), there was a theatrical intelligence to how she moved. When I asked her what she’d name a song inspired by how it all ended?
“Serpent’s Demise,” she says instantly, referring to how fellow Traitor Rob (who fans may know from Love Island) played a selfish, but smart game that aimed to take out his fellow Traitor-mates: CANDIACE and Lisa Rinna.
“Mm-hmm. ‘Serpent’s Demise’ because we’re taking him down. We're taking him down in the song. Like he tried to take us down. Yeah.”
See. That’s the thing about CANDIACE. Even her reality TV arcs sound like R&B interludes waiting to happen.
Before Housewives & Traitors: There Was Singing
What people sometimes forget is that long before reality show cameras, people had whole lives. “I’ve been singing my whole life,” she says. Church first. Then school choirs. Musicals. Pageants (where Candiace actually won Miss United States and Miss District of Columbia US in 2013). And her talent was always singing.
Music wasn’t a hobby. It was home. Her father played snare drum in college. As a baby, she’d only fall asleep to Vesta. She grew up walking around the house singing. But the real shift came when she found her voice reflected to her through the greats.
Brandy. Toni Braxton. Anita Baker. Whitney. Mariah. Early Pink (what we call “Black Pink.”) When she talks about Brandy, her voice changes. Softer. Reverent.
“You have to put your ear to the speaker to really appreciate the vocal gymnastics. I used to sit on the floor with my ear pressed to the speaker and listen to every run that Brandy did.”
That image alone tells you everything. Artists like Brandy, Toni Braxton, and Anita Baker made her feel seen. As someone whose voice lives in richness rather than piercing soprano highs, she found affirmation in their restraint, their control, their texture. “It made me feel like there was space for me,” she says.
That’s the throughline. Space. Deep Space. And now, she’s claiming it.
“If Only…” & The Power of Saying It Anyway
Her new single, “If Only…,” doesn’t whisper. It doesn’t politely suggest. It addresses the elephant in the room directly. Written while CANDIACE was in the early stages of pregnancy, the song carries a specific kind of emotional clarity that comes when you’re deeply in tune with your body and your boundaries. “I just went for it,” she says about one of the song’s more direct lyrics.
“I know you been f*cking with these b*tches, I ain’t crazy.”
The Southern belle in me was like, ‘Can I say that?’ But that’s how I felt.”
The track calls out an all-too-relatable archetype: the man who thinks he’s pulling the wool over your eyes. The drama of dealing with a fuckboy.
“It’s like, how dare you try to play me?” she says. “If only you knew what I knew. Be seated. Swiftly.” There’s humor in it. There’s spice, but also conviction. She’s gearing up to release her second album, and she’s moving differently these days.
“I was very intentional about saying no and saying yes,” she explains. “Every lyric. Every piece of instrumentation. It’s all on purpose.”
She worked closely with producers Triangle Park on the project, cutting songs and then holding them for months before revisiting. If they still gave her chills? They made the album.
That kind of patience feels rare in today’s fast-food music era. But her fanbase, the ones who care about lyrics, nuance, and meaning, expects that from her. And she expects it from herself.
Live Music, Legacy & What’s Next for CANDIACE
CANDIACE lights up when the conversation turns to live music.
She’ll be joining R&B superstar Tamar Braxton on select tour dates this summer. She’s also celebrating the five-year anniversary of her Deep Space album with a DMV-area anniversary concert.
“I love live instrumentation,” she says. “Going to New Orleans and walking down Frenchmen Street on a random Tuesday, hearing somebody sing their heart out — that’s my favorite thing.”
You can hear it in her voice. She’s not chasing viral moments. She’s chasing resonance. Reality TV may have been the springboard (she openly calls it part of her “evil plan” to get her music heard), but the mission was always bigger.
“It’s sort of a double-edged sword, in that when you move into these reality spaces, people don't take you seriously as an artist, as a whole. Acting, singing, and those spaces are harder to break into. And even though I do feel like the Bravo universe is an amazing springboard and I'm really grateful for it, it did present me with like an additional challenge of having to be like, okay, I'm here. I’m not just here for a good time, I’m here for a long time.”
And in this new era, which she describes in three words as honest, brave, and intentional — CANDIACE sounds like someone who knows exactly who she is.
Sometimes the world meets you in chapters. CANDIACE is just getting to the one she’s been writing all along.