Macy Gray making her own way this time

“I think the main thing is it kind of turned me on to a certain caliber of musicians. Jazz musicians are kind of a whole other planet of musicians’ skill,” Gray said in a phone interview last month. “It just raised the bar for me, as far as the musicians that I wanted to be around, and just the level of excellence onstage, to be really not only entertaining, but just to be really, really good at what you do.”

In a larger sense, Gray seems to have gained more control of her career, her music — and her life — as she begins promoting “The Way.”

In fact, the new album finds Gray sounding much like the artist who wowed the public with her 1999 debut, “How Life Is,” drawing on influences that include hip-hop, rock, R&B, jazz and soul to create a gritty, grooving, highly intoxicating sound that smartly blurs the lines between genres.

Gray said she thinks there’s a particular reason why she was able to be especially true to herself on the new album.

“I didn’t have a lot of people in my ear telling me what I should do and what I shouldn’t do and what I should try this time, and I needed to change things up,” she said in her famously raspy voice. “So that was the difference. I wasn’t attached to a label when I started this record, so that was a different freedom (with) no kind of suggestions or advice.”

As Gray suggested, her career had gone off track since the early years. Fueled by the smash hit single “I Try,” the debut album went triple-platinum with sales of more than 3 million copies in the United States alone. It was quite a whirlwind period for Gray, who also gained a reputation during this time for her unpredictable behavior and diva-ish ways. A mother of three teenagers, she seems more settled now, but said she relished her success.

“It was crazy,” she said. “I got to meet people I never dreamed I’d meet, and get into parties that I always saw on TV. And I got to see the world. It’s different when you’re younger. If it happened to me now, I’d have a whole different answer for you. But, back then, I was so excited that I had all of that money and all of this stuff. I could buy clothes and shoes and send my parents money. I just really had a lot of fun, ridiculous fun. I rode on a jet for the first time in my life, stuff like that. I had diamonds for the first time ever. So I was just really caught up in going shopping and going to parties.

“Oh, yeah, I had a ball,” she concluded.

But the salad days didn’t last that long. The albums that followed — 2001’s “The Id,” 2003’s “The Trouble With Being Myself,” 2007’s “Big,” 2010’s “The Sellout” and 2011’s collection of cover tunes, “Covered” — received mixed reviews, indifferent sales and left many seeing Gray as an artist who never fulfilled her initial promise.

Whether “The Way” can help Gray recover the momentum that once seemed to have her on course to be a top-drawer R&B-pop star remains to be seen. But she seems to have found her musical mojo on the album.

For her tour to promote “The Way,” Gray said she is keeping things real.

“It’s pretty raw and it’s like old-school, so it’s just me, bass, guitar, drums and keyboards,” Gray said. “You’re going to hear everything. There are no machines. It’s just us, and we’re playing the new album, of course, but we also have songs from all of the old ones, all six albums. And it’s about an hour and 45 minutes. It’s pretty sexy. It’s pretty awesome. My band is incredible and it’s a good show. It’s proper entertainment.”