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Did you always know that you wanted to be a musician, or were there other things you wanted to do?
My whole life I’ve been academically inclined; you know, math, science, etc. To be honest, I wanted to be an Astronomer. Things changed at one point during my senior year of high school when I got really deep into the Hip-Hop genre. In fact, the first album I’ve ever listened to front to back is 2014 Forest Hills Drive by J. Cole. The production style on there inspired me immediately to change my taste in music. I had always grown up around Hip-Hop, living in Detroit with black parents that is all I would hear on the radio, but for a while, I was mostly into electronic music such as trance and progressive house; some of those influences can still be seen in some of my current projects. I started writing poetry very early 2015, which eventually led to writing raps and making beats.
Your musical style reminds as of the golden era of hip-hop, Are you drawing inspiration from the 90’s hip-hop scene?
I take inspiration from all sets of modern and golden era hip-hop. Sometimes I’ll drop a stupidly vulgar song just because it’s fun, but my main focus in carving my one lane in the modern hip-hop atmosphere revamping and modernizing much of the boom back sound popular pre 2000s especially when I produce. A good example of me blending both into one composition is my song The Art of Contrarianism which features both booming distorted 808’s and a wild drum break; I suppose you could call it industrial boom-bap.
If you had to rank your five personal favorite rappers alive or dead, who would they be?
Alright, that’s pretty easy if I take this in terms of influence on my music:
- Kanye West – The level of his avant garde is unmatched. I aspire to have music as polarizing as this man’s. It’s all beautiful. My favorite song of all time happens to be Blood on the Leaves.
- The Weeknd – Not exactly a rapper, but his production style and the fact that he created a entire f*cking sub genre is very admirable to me. My entire dark sound is inspired by Trilogy. Initiation is another all time favorite of mine.
- A$AP Rocky – His flows are incredible and he comes with bars even when he isn’t talking about anything of substance. I aspire to reach the level of charisma he puts on a record.
- Andre 3000 – Innovative in the way he flows, Innovative in the way he marketed himself, Innovative even the subject matter of his music. This man is probably my main inspiration for reinventing the way to ride on a beat.
- Drake – The unmatched consistency of quality in EVERY record he releases is exactly what I’m working towards as I work to improve my craft daily.
This is a question for all the producers out there ? In your latest track “overbearing” you used some beautiful guitars and other real life instruments, This production style is not as popular as it used to be back in the 90’s care to share how you managed to achieve such beautiful sounding guitars? Are they real?
Yeah, the guitar is real… I mean it was real in the sample at least. The riff was sampled from a Portishead song titled Strangers. I added the percussion and vocals. I am huge on sampling, some inspiration shining through from Mr. West, there. I try to keep a balance of modernized music and some songs where I’ll throw it back to the production style that I’m most comfortable with (boom bap). I like getting out of people’s comfort zones with styles of music that they aren’t used to. One song where I think I tried to challenge people the most was my song What a Shame.
Any upcoming projects we can get excited about?
My first mixtape Voyager 3 will be full of self-produced songs and will be a very personal record. Before then, I plan on releasing EP’s with awesome local artists such as TIME and JØE. It’s gonna a fun ride. First music video in the works as well. I’m always working on something so I’ll be dropping singles consistently before those come to fruition.
What do you have in store for 2018? And how would you summarize 2017?
I credit 2017 with giving me the year where I could finally start figuring out my own lane and being comfortable enough with my artistry that I can experiment and be content with mistakes. Everything seems to change when you fall in love with the creation process.
2018 will be pretty exciting for me, personally. I’m constantly improving and my work ethic has been improving steadily as well. I look forward to dropping quality music consistently for my fans. I also look forward to performing much more often as I’m slowing falling in love the stage. 2 EPs in store, one Hip-Hop, one R&B, will be released in the first half of the year. I’m projecting Voyager 3 to drop sometime in the second half of the year.
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