It has been so long since I have kept a gem for myself; freelance writing is a blessing and a pebble in one's shoe for this reason. I share with you an interview that reminded me why I love to write in the first place.
*The conversation has been edited for length and clarity
Catch me up, how old are you again and what is your hometown?
I’m 23 [years young] from Newport News, VA.
I was surprised to hear what Go Outside! Became. I guess I was surprised because of the popular music coming from your peers and city as a whole, not so much because of the sounds you’ve traversed before this.
What did you think you’d hear? I like to know this sometimes.
I thought I’d something dirtier. I was happy to hear something so refreshing and light.
That’s what I wanted the album to feel like. Like with the cover.. you think of going outside. The album cover featuring mountains [is purposeful], like when I go there it's about the fresh air. You know in the mountains you don’t hear anything. The air is so much fresher, that's what I want the album to be for people, you know?
How long from ideation to a streaming platform did the album take?
The process was a year and seven months. I would say like a year and a half, really.
Can you tell me more about the cover?
This is pretty funny. I really wanted to go to the mountains to take another picture. The photo of me is me hiking. Throughout the album, I had issues with my car. I ended up using a photo from Facebook. I gave it to my friend and told him to do what he’s gotta do with it. He had listened to the album so he knew what kind of colors and feels were coming out of it. From there he worked with what I gave him.
So you’re in the mountains pretty often. I mean, how much are you actually outside?
As much as possibly can, if I’m not at the beach. I think thats the cool thing about VA, it’s so much different geography here and it’s still balanced. I think geography and where you’re from has a lot to do with what's coming out of the state. Sound influences art, us having water and mountains.
On ‘Overthinking’ I really like the sound contrasts you chose. I feel like you have a good balance of soft and harsh throughout the album. Most notably, on this track, towards the end your voice gets Cudi-like and distorted.
Yeah! I’m glad you caught that, there are [nuggets of] influence all over the album.
Can you speak more on your musical influences and the contemporaries you’re listening to?
I definitely listen to people from VA. You have people from Norfolk like Gabe and my friend Thomas, all of them. Then when you come back here you have my bandmates, like Bangloud. The scene here definitely influenced me. As far as [mainstream] artists, for my album, it wasn’t like I was influenced directly by the artists [but rather] something they did specifically within their music. Like when I listen to D’Angelo, that's how I came up with the core sounds in the album, believe it or not. I also listened to a lot of shoegaze. R&B, Frank Ocean is an influence. NERD, Pharrell, Kid Cudi, many indie bands. Many of my friends influence me.
I’m glad you introduced the genre shoegaze in the conversation. I got hints of that and other genres in the project. I thought soft rock, indie rock, shoegaze (of course) and alternative pop all at once.
I listen to indie Hip Hop, indie rock, shoegaze, lot of mad rock and punk rock songs too. I listen to A LOT of Hip Hop and that's where the lyricism in my songs come from. As far as that goes, with the day and age, we can’t really put labels and genres on things anymore. It’s so blended with everything. I think it's the time where people express things, I feel like people express [themselves] with colors and feeling. For me, i call this Colorblock. That’s my genre I made up. I realized that colors are a good way to express what genre-feel you’ll get from an album. When I say colorblock, I think of like an outfit or any colors where the options don’t match and there is contrast present but it blends well in the end.
So were you just handling production?
My friend Aaron Jackson, aka Lamborghini Jones, produced half of the album and then I had one of my friends Thomas from the band Bangloud, he did drums. I had my friend Will Arthur, who is my bandmate, do the guitar. There were songs where I had the idea, I had the chords on my computer and I would show them that and we’d create the idea we had. I did all the mixing and mastering, except for one song: Mission Kites. My friend Rasneek did that, shout out to Good Peeples. That’s the studio I work at and we’re pretty much pushing the music from there. All in-house.
Did working out of a studio or as an engineer help or hinder your album process?
I don’t think [working as an engineer] has ever hindered my process. Before I was an artist I would always put up music like production giveaways. So producing was always my thing, whether it be video or sounds. Any form of producing I would try and [still] try to tap into. Eventually I got into working at Good Peoples Studio and it’s good. I mainly record Hip Hop art, even though I have a lot of sounds. I am extremely influenced by Hip Hop; I may not express that, I still like B-Boying. There are many aspects to Hip Hop.
I love Hip Hop as a culture and artform. When I started getting nerdy about the kind of influence Hip Hop has I learned [the originators] set forth like four pillars. The original four tenets include b-boying, graffiti art, d-jaying and emceeing, right?
Yeah and this is where Hip Hop comes into play. Hip Hop has gotten started via the four elements: Bboy, graffiti, emceeing and djaying. If you want to be technical, you can include the fifth element which is knowledge. That is also important to the culture. I was into Zulu Nation back in the day, when I lived in the 757. You know, they had that fall out because of Afrika Bambaataa. My earlier roots with Hip Hop started with dance and that’s how I got tapped in. Seeing people emcee at the Zulu House and like dejaying there and being at these events that turn into jams- I get influenced by all these things. I think “Yo, I should try this myself,”. [So I began and thought] let me incorporate the elements of Hip Hop. Let me do Hip Hop but also add what makes me ‘me’ into the music at the same time.
Tell me more about the features you have Go Outside!
So Maddie is a [friend I met through a producer]. They all live in Auburn and stuff like that. We met up one time at a mutual friend’s house that lived in Newport News at the time and we all clicked automatically. He showed me [the track feat Maddie] and said “yo, she's also on that track’. So when I listened to it, I shed tears. There are some days I don’t and some days I do. Shout out to Maddie for that, she has a real folk background. When I think of the mountains her voice fit so perfectly for that. For Jasz on Wishing Kites, I liked how her voice contrasted mine and made the [overall vocality] so much lighter. It was beautiful mixing the song. When I think about being a kite, I think about being a kid again flying kites in the air.
I want more music like the interlude. Where is that and why wasn’t it longer?
I think this interlude is perfect for the time it is. It makes you want more and your like ‘welp, that's it’. That came from Lamborghini Jones, he wanted to include that because this original idea was his and mine idea. So we kind of put those together and I said you should out your own sound on here too. As long as we’re still making music, we’ll keep [pumping out that sound]. Right now, were in different spaces and were working to be in one spot. I am def going to keep working with him though.
I don’t know that many people will hear the Hip Hop influence but I heard the vibe in the songs Honey and Outside have aboriginal or west african-sounding percussion. The drums pick the songs up and take it in a different direction than the tracks with just live recorded drums.
My friends showed me random songs that have that sound. I can’t pinpoint the direct artist, but the reason these sounds are so expansive is because he is so [diverse] on what we want to listen to and what we want the songs to sound like. It’s a matter of trust and i trust him. I trust hell and something that will bring it something new. Before honey did not have those drums, it was just the strings and I already thought it was kind of sleepy, he send me the song back with the drums on it and I’m like this is it. I liked it, I dance so I think how can I get someone moving even though the sound is kind of slow and melodic?
Tell us why it's so important to go outside and how you came to want to share that message, please.
I’m excited to explain this to you, before it was a picture of the mountains. I wanted it to be a picture of my dog. When i first got my dog, like literally i realized… maybe lowkey this album is about my dog.. Subconsciously, maybe. [Anyway,] I would go outside and be like yo, if my dog is stuffy that's a reflection of me. We are connected mentally and spiritually. She is much more happy going out instead of being cooped up. I felt cooped up so she felt cooped up to, and when we’d go out i’d realize how much better [we both felt]. There were times when I was stuffed inside and I was thinking too much or getting bored. When you need a breath of fresh air, as cliche as it is, you need to go outside. It feels really good! Like walk around the block and listen to this album, you’ll feel good. That was a main [goal] for this album, if you don’t like going out- you know I’m introverted too…. so I understand. But if you want to go outside and walk to yourself, just bump this album and walk!
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