July 26, 2024 • 46 mins
In this episode, our guest, Alex Fitts (aka The Kickdrums) takes us on a fascinating journey from his early days in Cleveland to his current life in Spain. He shares how he navigated the music industry, collaborating with notable artists and evolving his sound. Despite the geographical distance, he continues to work remotely with artists worldwide, embracing new technologies and staying true to his creative vision.
Discover how his move to Spain has influenced his music, leading to a happier and more content life. He also offers valuable advice for aspiring producers, emphasizing the importance of staying true to oneself and the ever-evolving nature of the music industry.
Follow Alex Fitts:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekickdrums
Twitter: https://x.com/thekickdrums
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4S6Am3CAk1XAYoqPg1GjNy?si=gjy4kvv3Q0ytsEchmZoX-w
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheKickdrums
Website: https://www.thekickdrums.net/
Follow Flux88
Newsletter: Flux88.substack.com
Website: flux-88.com
Instagram: instagram.com/fluxeightyeight
TikTok: tiktok.com/@flux88_studios
YouTube: youtube.com/@flux88studios
Episode Hosted by Rich Nardo.
Intro contains music from "Plan A" by Dmytro Somov.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:54):
Once a week, we reminisce about the old days or like he tells a story from back
in Cleveland or something.
So I feel like you're still currently someone that I talk to a lot because I
hear about you so much from Till all the time.
But yeah, it's been like two or three years, I think, right?
Yeah, I talk to Till all the time too.
But Matt and I have never really stopped working together in a sense.
(01:15):
Things have just been more sporadic. So I go one direction, he goes the other
direction. And then when we cross paths, we cross paths.
It's like every single year we've always managed to kind of collab on something,
whether it was him maybe doing some art for me or me doing something music wise for him.
And then recently we've been working on some new beats together.
So that's exciting. Everything that I've done recently, it's still beat based,
(01:38):
but I don't do a lot of music that is hip hop music, at least recently.
I try to, I want to. I did some stuff with Ari the Rugged Man.
And there were some really cool tracks in there because some of the features
on some of the stuff, you know, bucket list features like Atmosphere,
for example, or like Jedi Mind Tricks, these people that I really liked when I was growing up.
(01:58):
So it was cool to do music with them.
But that's really the only thing that I've done that's been like hip hop.
Everything else just has elements of that sort of production.
And that's obviously really popular right now that everybody wants to kind of
have that bedroom producer sound, that sort of hip hop sound,
or at least that sound that used to be exclusive to hip hop and now is permeated through everything.
(02:20):
I've always been good at that, too, branching out from hip hop,
but still never leaving it completely in the past. But working with Tilla,
even the video stuff that he does, it's really based in the world where we grew up.
I don't know what you would even call it, to be honest.
It's almost like mainstream hip hop or something, right?
Like, what would you call that genre? It's like rap? It's mainstream hip hop,
(02:41):
but it's almost like conscientious mainstream hip hop.
Because when I think of you, I think of like Chip the Ripper, Kid Cudi, even Wu-Tang.
Wu-Tang is the forefathers of all that. And I think of when we first met,
you guys were doing something with RZA.
And did some stuff for Wu-Tang. So I think of you guys being a key moment of
that time period where hip hop went to this experiment a little bit more and
(03:04):
bubbled from that really cool pivot that you guys were at the forefront of.
I can see that. I think that's the combination of the two of us because we definitely
come from more of like a conscious hip hop background.
But then Tilla's a DJ, so he knows if he goes to a certain club and he's DJing,
he can't just put on like conscious records.
There's certain records you got to play for certain crowds. And then there's
(03:27):
me, I like all types of music.
So if you put it in front of me and let me work on it, I tend to turn it into
something that's a little bit less commercial, but will have a nice polish to it.
So when you put all these things together, it does create a really unique sound.
And if you happen to put somebody really famous on it, it's going to attract a lot of attention.
(03:47):
It's funny that we're starting here on you and Tilla, because one of the things
that I really wants to get into is just how you kind of got started and what
Cleveland was like when you guys were coming up, how you met Matt,
the artist that you were working on when you guys started to really break through.
Yeah, I started working on hip hop because I grew up playing music,
instruments, whatever.
And I was playing in some sort of bands, if you want to call it that when I
(04:10):
was really young, like seventh, eighth grade, freshman year of high school,
just playing covers or just messing around and stuff like that.
But I ended up moving high schools and I didn't have any of those friends anymore.
So I didn't know how to make music by myself. And somebody told me they're like,
Oh, you know, you could just make it on your computer.
And this was like a long time ago. Now it's obvious. But back then,
this was kind of new technology.
(04:31):
And so sat down and I started making music on the computer.
And it was all just weird electronic music. Honestly, sometimes it sounded hip hop.
And sometimes it sounded almost like drum and bass, just really weird stuff.
But one day, one of my friends came up to me and he goes, Hey,
I heard you kind of make like beats or instrumentals or something.
I'm like, no, I don't know, whatever.
He's like, well, I've been writing some rhymes. Do you think you can make something for me?
(04:55):
I was like, yes, of course. Why not? So we started working on stuff and he had
some other friends that he brought in from the outside and we ended up forming a group.
It was like a four guy group where I was the main producer and we started doing
shows in the Cleveland area when we were 17, 18 years old. and Matt grew up
in the town over from me and he was doing the same thing.
(05:17):
Him and his roommate at Kent State University made an album EP,
like a short album. And I remember hearing it
and thinking like, oh, this is good. I really liked it. His production style is very Tilla.
It's like very sample based, very MPC, you know, hitting the pads, hip hop, right?
Which that's what we really like. I didn't grow up listening to very much mainstream rap music.
(05:41):
Like you said, I listened to more Wu-Tang Clan, Outkast, Mobb Deep.
And that's what that four man group was making. But anyways, I heard that album.
I'm like, man, I got to meet this guy. So apparently he had had heard some music
that I was doing too and felt the same way.
We ended up linking up and it took a little while, but eventually we had like
a production team of like six people.
We were working with those people for a little while.
(06:04):
We did maybe one or two projects where everyone was contributing tracks and
it was a little hard to get everybody in the same place at the same time.
So at some point, Tilla and I just decided, let's just go off and do our own thing.
And we ended up making beats together and having a fair amount of success for
at least eight or nine years.
When you were still in Cleveland before you moved
to New York that's when you guys hooked up with like Cuddy and
(06:25):
Chip the Ripper and everybody yeah Chip the Ripper for example I
wouldn't say we like put him on but we were the first production team to make
music with him that I know of our friend Joey had brought him to the table because
at the time we had some really big records we had a couple platinum songs so
we were the go-to guys in the city but we lived there so we were looking to
(06:46):
work with somebody local,
trying to take advantage of what was going on in our career.
And Chip was the guy that Joey brought to us like, this dude,
you got to work with this dude.
But at the time, as far as I know, Chip didn't really have any music.
He maybe had something, enough that Joey was looking at him.
So we made a whole album with him. A couple of the songs got really big.
(07:07):
One was called Get It Girl.
They just had the DJs in Cleveland had a pool.
Where they voted on the top club records since the 2000s up till now.
And Get It Girl was number four, I think.
So to this day, people still talk about that music.
It is crazy. It's wild to me because I love that music, but I didn't realize
(07:28):
at the time when we were making it that it would have such an impact.
That song particularly wasn't even just impactful in Cleveland.
It was all over the place. I met this one girl, Devo9, who's a singer,
and I was producing some songs for her.
She's from where's Notre Dame based out of like South Bend right South Bend
Indiana yeah she's from there and she was like yeah no I know your music it
(07:50):
was what the first moment when someone was like my mom loved Chip the Ripper
get it girl and I was like oh you know what I mean.
Yeah this girl was like 21 years old you know what I mean but so that song actually
was a Midwest phenomenon and do you remember and it doesn't have to be like
a eureka like one second you were just local. One second, you felt bigger.
(08:13):
But do you remember what it was like when you guys started actually getting
more attention for what you're doing?
Not just in your home city of Cleveland, but it kind of started to feel like
what you were doing was a little bit bigger than that.
Actually, there is one moment in particular.
I was engaged and I got married to a girl in Cleveland. And at the wedding,
(08:33):
this was all around that time.
At the wedding, her whole family was There's this big Italian family and I got
to know all of it. And her cousin came up to me and we were just having a random
conversation, but she, her response to something we were talking about was,
yeah, but you know, you're famous though.
And I've still, I've never forgotten that where I was like, what are you talking
about? She said, it's a matter of factly.
(08:55):
And so just like, yeah, you know, but you're famous, though.
And I was like, oh, wait, people actually think that because I just don't.
I just don't think it's never occurred to me, even even now.
And after stuff like that happening so many times and we're seeing because,
you know, how the Internet, everyone's in contact with you.
So they send you messages or there's comments and stuff.
So I get it. But I still don't. I don't understand it. What point in your career
(09:19):
did you guys then move to New York?
When was the breakthrough where you started working with 50 Cent,
John Legend, doing all those high profile remixes and everything like that.
50 Cent was actually while we were still in Cleveland. And John Legend,
one of the first guys we worked with, Chip the Ripper.
Oh, sorry. Ray Cash. He was working on a second album.
And the guy who was his A&R at Sony had John Legend, who was he was down to
(09:43):
sing a hook. So we had a beat.
I sing a hook on it. And Ray Ray had written a verse, and then John Legend re-recorded
the hook that I'd written and sang or whatever.
The 50 Cent thing actually happened before that. Believe it or not,
the 50 Cent song was probably one of the first things that happened.
That was the big moment that broke us out because we had some really good moments
(10:05):
before that. We were doing a lot of cool remixes.
We obviously had the local stuff that was getting a lot of attention.
But the 50 Cent thing was like, okay, that sealed the deal.
That's when it started really taking off. Yeah, 100%. Because at the time,
50 Cent was one of the biggest artists in the world.
He's still such a big, influential guy. But back then, he was only a musician.
(10:25):
How did you get on 50's radar? That was Tilla. I remember making it just randomly,
and I knew it was really good.
And it got just fit into either a zip file of beats.
Or even back then, there were just physical CDs with instrumentals on it.
And he gave it to somebody, and that person gave it to an engineer.
It just passed through some hands until...
(10:46):
Eventually 50 Cent heard it somehow and they recorded to it.
And I don't even think they asked for the multi-track.
I think they literally just recorded to the beat, put it to mastering, and that was it.
Yeah, I mean, that was kind of his style back then. He was one of those first
rappers to really break from the mixtape game. And that was just going over the beats.
You know what I mean? That wasn't super high production value or anything.
(11:08):
It was just finding a sick beat.
What was behind the move to New York? The move to New York was...
So around that time, around the Kid Cudi, Chip the Ripper time,
I started working on some more singing stuff.
That's when I really started diving into that. Truth be told,
the only person that did support me was Tilla because we were doing really well as a production team.
And everyone was like, why in the world right now would you start singing a
(11:32):
completely different genre?
Try to promote this like this makes no sense. But Tilla was like, this is cool.
I like this. And that's why we always made a good team is neither one of us
think really in terms of we have to do something that's going to be successful.
I've met a ton of people in the music industry and a fair amount of them are
very focused on being successful.
I don't think we've ever done that. We just focus on what we like.
(11:54):
So he would send me some ideas.
I would send him some ideas. And we started making songs when I was singing.
And it took a couple of years, but we started getting better at it.
At some point, this sort of magical moment, we hit on combining the hip hop
sounds with me singing and my vocals are very sort of English.
I don't know why, but they always come off sort of Tom Yorkish or like Blur
(12:16):
or something like that. Right.
And the combination was really cool and it worked really well.
And back in the blog era, I put out a couple of songs and they just did really well.
Everyone was listening to the songs. They're really well received.
And I did an album in like a month till it sent me a bunch of ideas.
I did a bunch of ideas myself. And like, boom, just put together 10 songs.
In a month probably the fastest i've ever done any music in
(12:39):
my life and it took off when we started getting calls from
record labels universal flew us to new york
a bunch of people were interested in managing us like all these really cool
new york people were like yo i want to manage you so i knew i had to move i
picked up everything and moved to new york and till it followed maybe six months
later i don't know it was cool i mean new york still feels like a second home
(13:01):
to me i spent a lot of time there. I don't know, it's weird.
I haven't been there in about seven years and I don't necessarily miss it,
but I still feel like the love, you know what I mean?
I feel like if I came here tomorrow, I would feel like, oh, I didn't even skip
a beat. I'm just back in New York.
I know exactly what you're saying. Even on a lesser level of that,
from when you lived here and we were tight and we were hanging out all the time.
(13:23):
I used to be in the city five, six days a week, even though I live on Long Island
because my office was there and I work in the music industry,
I was going to, you know, five shows a week, six shows a week anyway.
So I was even coming in when I didn't have to go in the office.
But ever since pandemic, I haven't really been going into the city that often
when people are like, oh, let's meet up in the city. No part of me is excited.
(13:45):
I'm always like, can we do a phone call? Can we do a zoom, something like that.
But then when I do go in, I'm happy I'm there.
And I still have that feeling of I don't want to take the subway because I want
to walk because I like walking in the city.
You know what I mean? I still have that love for it. I'm still super proud of
being a New Yorker, but I don't need to be there every day anymore. No.
(14:05):
One of the main things I miss about New York is riding my bike everywhere.
I love that. I loved riding it through Brooklyn, especially on a nice summer
day or riding into the city.
People who've never done that in New York, they're like, that's crazy.
Why in the world would you ride a bike in New York City? It's dangerous. And I'm like,
I never felt in danger ever. It was just free. It was like the most freeing thing ever.
(14:29):
I live in Spain now and there's nowhere to ride a bike. It's so congested.
It's crazy because speaking of New York, everyone is always like,
oh, I'm a New Yorker. You know, I know congestion.
I know this and that. That's because the United States is so spread out and
the cities aren't really walkable necessarily.
You only have a couple of walkable cities and obviously New York is one of them.
But like every city here is like that. There really aren't any equivalent to the United States here.
(14:55):
So no matter where you go, it's all like New York.
Where I live in Malaga, it's just thousands of people walking everywhere all the time.
And you're bumping into people and you're like, oh my God, the tourists are
all in the wrong place and moving slow. It's the same thing.
And that's why I used to ride my bike in New York because you could get around all that.
You just whisk through the whole city. But here you can't do it.
(15:17):
There's nowhere to ride.
There's no space. face maybe it's because like the pictures you've sent
me have all been like up on a cliffside overlooking the
water i'm picturing you in like a spanish villa up in
the mountains sipping sangria eating beautiful food like all day long every
day that's like what i think your life is and then you just go in and you record
a couple of beats and then you're like okay well that was work for today and
(15:38):
you're sitting on the back porch taking a siesta so it sounds like i have a
very incorrect correct view of how your life is right now?
No, I mean, that's actually not that far off. The only difference is I don't
know how luxurious my life is or anything.
I just live in the city. So it's the same as like living in Brooklyn or something,
but just the Spanish version of it.
I mean, there is a piece of me at this point that I think it would be cool to
(16:01):
live a little bit outside maybe, but I don't know.
There's something about, I have everything, whatever I need,
I can just walk to it or I could go to five different grocery stores,
whatever, just right there. I have a bunch of all the corner stores.
They don't call them bodegas here, but it's the same thing. And I'm just not ready to give that up.
Even at my age, I'm just like, I can't do it. Can't live the life where you have to get in your car.
(16:25):
And go to the grocery store. I just don't want to do it. And when we're talking
about you living in Spain, every time I tell somebody, oh, my friend Alex picked
up and moved to Spain, they're all like, I want to do exactly that.
So I just, I want you to tell the story. Yeah, so I came here in 2018.
I was working on a project. I had really nothing time in New York. I was single at the time.
(16:45):
I was here recording with a friend for three months, a little less than three months.
And during that time, I met some people here. we were traveling around this
part of south of Spain. That was in Cadiz. So it's provinces here.
I live in Malaga and the neighboring province is called Cadiz,
but it's not that far away.
It's kind of like counties in the United States, like the size of a county.
(17:06):
I had met people that had a school here and they were looking for people to
teach classes or like just music production, basically.
And so I did a masterclass for them and they invited me to come in and sort
of be a part of that if I wanted to.
And at the time, I'd been doing music for so long. And I'd seen so many other
people make the transition from being a producer or a musician to start teaching
(17:29):
at maybe universities or developing a course or something.
And I thought, maybe that's something that I would be interested in doing.
I didn't really have a direction at that time in my life of what I wanted to
do next with music. All I knew is that I wanted to make a change.
And I knew I didn't want it to be Los Angeles.
99% of people that I know moved to Los Angeles, which is totally fine.
Like I do like it there a lot. But at that time, I just wanted something completely different.
(17:53):
And so fell in love with it here, had this opportunity to do some teaching and thought, okay, I'll go.
Once I was here, I just took it upon myself. I just really wanted to be a part
of what was going on here.
I worked really hard to learn the language, you know, started dating, made friends.
It just slowly but surely developed. And I was learning like everything here
(18:13):
when you first get here is a little bit different it's all the same but it's
just a little bit different so.
You almost do have to relearn a lot of things, just dumb things,
you know, like even their front doors here don't work like our front doors work
there. The grocery stores are set up differently.
You can't go into the grocery store and just buy the things you want to buy.
You have to reestablish, say, like cooking or whatever your recipes because
(18:35):
the same ingredients aren't here.
Everything's a little bit different. So after a year or so, I just became really
comfortable and just I haven't really thought about going back since.
And then with all the political turmoil and everything that happens in the United
States, I was really happy to sort of be away from that.
I was there for 2015, 2016, and it was just like not a good feeling.
(18:57):
And now it's just home. Now I don't even really think twice about it.
I'm going back to Ohio to visit my family in September.
And that's cool. But I don't really go back that often.
Everything is so remote now. And you're able to collab with all types of people.
You don't have to be in the studio. Would I like to be in the studio from time
to time? Yeah, of course.
I think it has its benefits for sure, but it's just not necessary like before.
(19:19):
And that is another thing that you mentioned earlier that I think kind of set
you up really well for this move too, is you had the right mentality.
You were one of the first wave that I'm aware of, of what you would call like
a bedroom producer, where you were making music at home that was high quality.
Now, being that you're in Spain and most of the artists you work with are in
(19:39):
North America, you have a great understanding of what it takes to work remotely.
So it doesn't matter if you're in Spain or Japan or Brooklyn,
you know how to manage that process.
I love doing that. I just did a project with my friend in Los Angeles,
and it's called Oh Bummer, and we did two EPs together, about 12 or 13 songs.
(20:00):
And we just put out the last one, maybe last March or something.
And yeah, we were texting back and forth. Dude, we did all of this without ever
being in the same room together.
And it's pretty complex. The music is more poppy and stuff, but it's still complex music.
You can do really artsy, inspired music and you don't have to be in the same room together.
(20:20):
I think you just have to have a connection with somebody that's willing to meet
you halfway because that's the main thing.
If you're sending stuff back and forth and you send your part back and the person
thinks we should do something else, then it's not going to work.
You need that synergy with someone where you send them something,
they're excited. They send you something, you're excited.
Everybody's just excited all the time. And then it's like, you can do whatever
(20:41):
you want. The world's your oyster.
So how do you figure out how the collaboration is going to go?
Do you do playing stuff for people over Zoom or is it all just sending demos
back and forth and discussing them after?
Zoom has never worked for me. I've tried to do Zoom writing sessions during
the pandemic, there was just never any way to get the sound to match up to where it was effective.
(21:01):
It was just frustrating the whole time. So typically what you do is somebody
sends an idea of something they have.
Typically it's like a batch, somebody like this Obama project,
for example, he had probably hundreds of little ideas that he recorded just on his laptop.
The sounds are very, you talk about like bedroom producer, like that's a real
bedroom producer, just, you you know, little sounds but cool songs.
(21:23):
So I would say send me the breakdown.
Give me all the stems of that.
And I would start reworking it. A lot of times I would just solo out the vocals
and remake something altogether and then send it to him and be like,
hey, what do you think? Do you like this direction?
Because I would totally mess things up. He would send me something that was
really slow and I would send it back to him like two times as fast,
(21:44):
totally different feel.
Take it from like a hip hop tempo to almost like a house tempo or something.
So it gives you a lot of freedom, but you're just demoing things out.
You're just testing ideas, trying to find what makes
the song pop because there's always that kind of
eureka moment where you're working on something and it
goes click and you're like that's it that's the melody
(22:05):
or that's the tempo or whatever and once
you have that it's pretty easy so now you have that demo that you know is good
and you just start producing it making it sound good and then they'll cut the
vocals in their part of the world send it over to me i'll put the vocals in
and we'll mix it all together so it's a lot of back and forth but But it's just
building and building and building until you have the song.
(22:28):
Do you feel like there's like ever loss of that kind of chemistry that you would
get if you're working in a physical studio together?
I don't know. I like the idea of everyone works on their own timetable.
So there's a lot of people who prefer to work at night. There's people that
prefer to work during the day. Like I work during the day personally.
Everybody has their workflow or whatever. So when you're alone.
(22:50):
You're able to do whatever you want.
You're able to screw up. You're able to make mistakes.
And sometimes you don't have that same comfort level when you're in the studio
with someone. And sometimes you just don't have the time either.
You don't have the luxury to sit there for 12 hours.
That's what I'll do when I'm working on something. I'll work on it for days
and days and days, messing around with it.
Imagine how crazy that would be for somebody I'm collaborating with that to
(23:13):
sit there and be patient, you know, and same for them, you know,
they could be writing lyrics or working on whatever they're working on and I'm
there breathing down their neck.
So I think there's actually advantages to not working together.
The advantage of working in the same studio with someone is,
and I've had this happen with someone like Duckworth,
is that you can have these magical moments where you're really playing off each
(23:36):
other, where what that person does well influences what you do well.
And you're just, it's really exciting.
You're both just almost like running around the studio, excited,
playing the instruments, cutting some extra vocals, you know what I mean?
Just bouncing ideas and so it's definitely cool
to be in the studio but it's not necessary finishing the
music and are you better to be in the studio that's for sure because the
(23:57):
finishing of songs is the thing that's the hardest to do
when you're separated i swear you could finish a song in a couple hours the
final touches right if you're in the studio with someone but when you're alone
and you're just sending stuff to them they're like no no no actually i meant
could you put this dub back in and then take this one out and it's like, okay.
(24:18):
Bring up the session, take the dub out, put the other dub back in center.
Oh, wait, actually, now I'm hearing that this needs to come,
you know, and it could take forever.
It'd be like a week going back and forth just to do two or three things that nobody hears only us.
And is there a studio around you that you go and work out of ever?
Is it always just from home?
I always work at home. I don't, I've never had a studio that I go to that.
(24:40):
I remember I was in talks with one studio in Brooklyn when I was going to produce for a couple bands.
I was going to go in there and use them sort of exclusively.
But I never even ended up doing that. I mean, it's necessary if you're working
with a band, if you have to do all the instruments.
But I typically don't work with artists like that. I work with just multi-instrumentalists,
singer-songwriters, people who are looking to play maybe guitar on the song or whatever.
(25:04):
Or if we need drums, we just outsource it to somebody.
That type of production. Yeah. I'm sure that was also a benefit for you as well.
Because as we've said here a couple of of times, you have your own creative
direction that you wanted to pursue.
You were able to take more risks because your expenses weren't as high because
you weren't paying for expensive studio time.
(25:24):
You're doing it all yourself. So you could take those risks and keep going.
I do want to backtrack to a specific moment that I remember when you and I first
started working together, when I was working for the Stevenson's and they were managing you.
It was when you and Tilla were still together too. And you put out that Coachella mixtape.
And I just remember the entire blog world just exploding around that. That was all Tilla.
(25:48):
Like I said, Tilla's a DJ. So those are type of promotional things that he was really good at.
I think he had discussed doing that with Rob Stevenson as well.
So I'm not totally sure if it was 100% Tilla's idea or if Rob had been like,
hey, why don't you try this?
But whatever it was, at the end of the day, Tilla put that all together.
And that was right around the time that we were doing an album with
(26:10):
Last gang so we also
put out another mixtape called the ghost
tapes that was 20 original songs
a lot of features and the
reason i say that is because we were putting all this out like coachella mixtape
ghost mixtape and then we had an actual album and the label was like whoa like
(26:32):
what are you doing why are you putting all this stuff out like you're ruining
the release or whatever but But then it got so much positive attention,
both of those projects, that the album did really well.
So they slowly calmed down and were like, oh, okay.
I mean, sometimes putting out too much is bad, but in that case, it worked.
(26:53):
It's funny, too, because that was kind of ahead of its time as well.
Because now you look at it now, if you're on the come up trying to break through...
You have to be able to put something out like month over month over month,
even if it's just one song per month, because the way people's listening habits
are now it's all streaming.
Anything they could ever want to listen to is at the tip of their fingers.
So it's like, if you don't keep putting stuff out, you're going to fall out of people's minds.
(27:18):
So now labels are saying the complete opposite to artists.
You guys are kind of doing that right at the turn of that, which is pretty cool.
Yeah, it was a good time for music back then.
I'm not really sure if you would say it was a better time or
it's strange everything is just kind of relevant but that was
the game back then is put out as much music as you can
i do see people doing that now who is it grizelda do
you listen to them at all yeah just massive amounts of projects you're talking
(27:42):
about grizelda records right yeah yeah yeah and even someone like yeah just
puts out yeah a ton of music just keeps it moving more just music yeah music
that's how you got to do it you really got to know yourself and that's always
going to be the hardest thing about music is who am I as an artist?
If you identify as an artist that only puts things out one album a year,
and then you spend the rest of the year on the road, or you spend the rest of
(28:03):
the year promoting that music, and you got to be true to that and figure out
how to make it work for you. But it's super competitive now.
So many people are making music. And I don't know, I think I definitely fall
more into the range of I like to do a lot of things. I like to do collaborations.
I like to do original music. I like to do different genres. And so I'm just
always going to be releasing music.
You had the record on Last Gang, then you put out a follow-up on Hopeless a few years later.
(28:29):
And then after the Hopeless release, you took your career kind of back into
your own hands and you started releasing more independent.
So what was that process like? Was it freeing for you?
Yeah, it's freeing in a way, but you need a team. You need people to support you.
So when you and I were working together on that, that basically was the label.
You guys are supporting. Teresa was supporting.
(28:50):
Tilla was still around in that point in time, even though we weren't really making music together.
He was still helping with a lot of the design and things.
In a way, it's still a label. There just wasn't really any money behind it.
And that's always the difference. When I think of a label, I think of like funding.
You know, it just costs a lot of money to get your music out there.
People don't realize like how little we get paid for how much you have to put into it.
(29:13):
A minimum budget major labels have is really astronomical compared to the amount
of money somebody really independent is putting into their music.
It's kind of a shame, like all this great music, but nobody has any money to put behind it.
So advice for somebody who's coming up, you're probably not going to make your
money back unless you're hitting the road. Is that what you're saying here?
(29:34):
Well, there's a lot of ways to
make money, but no, you shouldn't expect to make a lot of money at first.
I don't think that has anything to do with it being 2024 or a lot of digital
stuff. Now it's, I think that's how it's always been.
You really have to hang in there and it can literally take a solid 10 years
before you start making money like a normal person.
And that's if you, that's if you ever make money. Cause even when you do make
(29:58):
money, a lot of times it gets split off into so many different directions.
If you have a label, they're going to get their cut. If you have a band of five
people, everybody gets their cut. If you have a manager, they have their cut.
Lawyers, everything. So I wouldn't suggest going into being a musician to make money.
I would say going to be a musician because it's something that makes you happy.
You have to really deal with a lot of politics. And so what's left?
(30:20):
Just your passion for it.
That's all there is. That's something
I've had a lot of conversations with friends that are artists about.
If you're not focused on how much you love the process of creating,
it's not going to be worth it.
If you're going in to be famous or to be rich, you're not going to get there
and you're going to be miserable trying to get there.
(30:41):
But if you're doing something because you love it and it's all you could think
to do, even if you had a day job, you're working nine to five,
you'd still be coming home at the end of the day and making music.
If you're not that in love with it, then it's not worth trying to pursue a career in. No, not really.
I think you could say the same thing for anything, but especially music.
I have met people that take more of a professional approach,
(31:03):
and that's more songwriters.
They're like, okay, I'm a songwriter. This is my job. I go and I write songs
and I write things specifically for an artist that's looking for a song and
I write it in a way that will help that artist be successful.
And I play a part in the machine. That's my job. And I respect that.
That's a hard job and people do it and they have great careers doing it.
(31:25):
I just never been that person.
I definitely fall on more like, well, I'm just going to make art.
I don't even know if you'll call my music art, but I do just because it's me
being creative and expressing myself.
And I have no expectations that anyone's going to like it.
I release it in the hope and a prayer that people will listen and will be received
well, because I just don't think about that stuff.
And like you said about the process, I love the process. That's my favorite thing.
(31:49):
Once the song's done, a lot of times I really struggle with finished songs.
I listen to them and one day I'll really like them.
The next day I won't. And I never really know if I like stuff a lot of times.
But the process, I love the process.
There's another old quote that I love. I had always thought it was a Tom York
quote, but I think it's actually like goes back to Leonardo da Vinci or something.
(32:09):
And I just heard it from Tom York.
So I always just accredited it to him. The process of making art belongs to the artist.
Once the project is done, it belongs to the world. So once it's out there,
it doesn't matter. It's not yours anymore.
It's everyone's. So you can't really judge it because when you're looking at
it, at the end of the day, you're so intimately aware of it that you're always
(32:30):
going to hear something that you wish was different or that you could have been
better or maybe hear like something that's even the slightest bit off.
No one notices that this is off but me, but I notice and it's going to bug the
shit out of me every time I listen to this song for the rest of my life.
Do you think any of that has to do with imposter syndrome or anything?
Anything man i just always been so disconnected in
(32:51):
so many ways that i don't feel a part
of any specific thing so i wouldn't
say that i have imposter syndrome necessarily because i just don't feel like
i'm trying to be anything i wish i was yeah sometimes it's hard to market the
music that i do because i don't even know what i'm doing the first question
people ask you is well how would you describe yourself as an artist and i'm
(33:12):
like i really don't know to this day i i have no idea. But I do love the process.
Once you release a song, there's so many opinions and people will listen to
it for like 30 seconds and just never listen to it again.
Or people will listen to it a hundred times and you're just curious why somebody
would even listen to it a hundred, a thousand times, why they like it so much.
(33:33):
It's just all so confusing. But when you're in the process, it's a lot of fun.
It's like solving a puzzle, you know, this, this vocal is cool,
but I think it could be cooler. Let me rework that. You're just retouching things.
You're You're making structures different. It's really fun.
But like you said, once it's out there in the world, it stops making sense again. Yeah.
There's no more breakthroughs, no more puzzle pieces that you could put together and make it fun again.
(33:56):
So that's the artist side of it. But if somebody is looking to make a career
as a producer now, what advice would you give them?
I always say start locally because that's what we did. I had a group in high school.
Tilla had a group when he was in college with his roommate. We were all making
records and we were releasing them. That's how we got to know each other.
Basically how everyone's sort of connected together.
(34:18):
The DJs that we worked with in Cleveland, the artists, we all just worked together
and we made really good music to the point where it started getting noticed
outside of our little local city.
I mean, there's always, you can email people and you could hit people up on DMS and stuff like that.
I don't know if that's necessarily the route to go. Like I would still work locally.
Or move to Los Angeles, move to New York at some point if you can.
(34:42):
You just have so much more access to potential opportunities.
It's a lot of luck that's involved with it too, unfortunately.
But if you make good music, it's going to get noticed eventually.
And now more so than ever because the algorithm is so tuned in to what people are listening to.
As long as you're consistent and you make some really cool music,
just keep releasing stuff.
It's very possible that the algorithm will just grab it and just throw it to a whole bunch of people.
(35:05):
Now you have the exposure that you could never have
gotten in the past the technology aspect of things is really
helping independent artists for sure just being able
to post promo videos and again the algorithm taking it and showing it to new
potential listeners that never existed before from a technical perspective then
as a producer are you using a lot of the more current technology or do you kind
(35:28):
of have the process and everything that you like that you've always liked and
that's the world you stick in? I let it creep in.
I'm not the first guy to adopt technology.
I'll admit that. But over the years, things get included into what I'm doing into my workflow.
I like technology. I am kind of traditional, though. I tend to play all the instruments.
I really work on things in a way that if this was 10, 20, 30 years ago,
(35:51):
that the song really wouldn't be made that differently.
The equipment's a little bit modern, whether it's a laptop or stuff like that.
But I guess I'm kind of old school in that sense. But if there's something technology
wise that can help, I don't know, the AI stuff is cool. I think we've always dealt with samples.
We've dealt with that for a long time. And now you can create music using AI,
(36:13):
different orchestrations that sound pretty damn good.
You could take those compositions, resample those,
it solves a lot of problems for us, you're only going to have certain opportunities
to make money, in my opinion,
you might have a good opportunity to have a sink in a show or something like
that or maybe one of your beats gets picked up by a bigger artist and if you
use an actual sample that has people who own the copyright and the publishing
(36:36):
they're gonna take a huge chunk of that.
That might have been your big break. That might have been your like million dollar moment.
And now everybody else gets the money for your work. So having the AI generating
music for you, there's like good things you can do with that to help you be creative.
Even a friend of mine, Randy Nichols, actually made a good point.
Music production has always used AI. We just didn't call it AI.
(36:59):
So like Beat Detective or Auto 2, that's all AI. That's artificial intelligence.
We just didn't call it artificial intelligence. Now people are more up in arms
about it because it's a hot button issue, but it's always kind of been in the process for years now.
It's true. Yeah. And every time a new tool comes out, everybody sort of gets
up in arms about it like, oh, you know, and then it becomes normal and everybody
(37:22):
just starts incorporating it into their workflow.
And then the new thing comes out and everyone's angry at that.
It's the process. I do have my particular workflow that I stick to.
It just works for what I do.
So it It doesn't include a whole lot of technology at the moment.
For instance, I've never used autotune. All my vocals, I just sing them until they're good.
(37:43):
But funny enough, for people who are audio engineers who are maybe listening, I'll punch in on things.
There was a point in time where even being able to punch in on things like vocals
or guitar takes or whatever was seen as bad.
That was ruining the music industry.
There was even the first technology that
people got crazy about that was ruining music was the
(38:06):
click the click track people thought when people
started playing music to a click that you were ruining the performance music
is supposed to ebb and flow and and you know and the click was gonna ruin that
yeah well i i've talked about this with a lot of people because i am an advocate
of using AI as a tool in your tool belt.
(38:28):
I don't think that things like Suno or Yudio are going to replace actual music,
like a lot of people are afraid of. But I do think that tools like that.
Can be helpful for a producer and artist, especially say you're an up and coming
singer songwriter, you have bigger visions than you can create.
Like you said, maybe you write your songs on an acoustic guitar and maybe you
can use AI to help build drum tracks below it to give you something that you're not as good at.
(38:54):
I'm a big advocate of it. I always have this conversation.
People said radio was going to stop people from going to see live music.
Same thing with when hip-hop came out, people were so pissed off because it
was sampling other people's music and not paying them.
So it was stealing gigs from session musicians.
People avoid change at all costs. It's hard. People don't like change.
(39:15):
They just don't. Society does not like change. One thing I'll say about AI is
that I would use it for that I think would be cool is just finding ideas.
The hardest thing about music and even like a puzzle, if you want to call it
that, is getting it started.
Sometimes you don't have an idea. So like you said, if you're a singer,
songwriter, and you're just having writer's block or whatever,
(39:35):
maybe using an AI generator narrator will create something. It's like,
wait a second. Okay, that's cool.
I like that little note there. And it just gives you a starting point.
That's all you really need sometimes.
And now you're off and you're being creative. And now you've opened up the creativity
again. So stuff like that is really cool.
But as far as music being replaced by AI, it's not going to replace music.
(39:56):
People have come up to me and they're like, are you worried about your job?
And I'm like, I've been worried about my job. I'm waiting for AI.
Never stop worrying about, yeah.
That's part of being an artist or a creative is worrying about your job.
Worry about my job every day.
So just is what it is. I think it comes down to budgets.
And whenever there's absorbent budgets for things, somebody's going to come
(40:16):
in and provide a way for you to make something cheaply.
That's essentially what happened with technology in this case is producers are expensive.
So AI came in and it's like, hell, here, anybody can produce things.
They've been doing that for years, though.
Companies like Native Instruments create software, plugins, even keyboards,
(40:36):
things that are at a consumer price so everybody can get involved.
Everybody with a meager budget can start producing music.
That's been going on forever because before then, you actually had to go to
the studio, like you said, way back in the beginning. It's expensive.
The average person can't afford to do it. AI is just another piece of that puzzle, if you ask me.
It's just providing another low-cost option for people.
(41:00):
Yeah, it levels the playing field. For every opportunity it takes away from
creators in that particular field, it's
it opens other doors for them. So it's just a matter of if you want to go and
find them. AI art, for example, is the same thing.
You can go and you can generate some like cheap art, make covers or whatever.
If you need a poster for your show, whatever, you could do that.
(41:21):
Because obviously it's better if you have an artist, but I've had conversations
with artists where I was really excited.
Like, yeah, I mean, it would be so cool if I could do a rollout with this artist.
You get the budget back and they're looking for $5,000 for a cover and a couple social media things.
And it's like, yeah, okay, charge your money, get your bag, you know,
do your thing, but I need a cheaper option. Yeah.
(41:42):
Yeah. Your new EP turns to gold. I always love what you do, but I really love this EP.
And one of the things that I was drawn to with it, because it makes me think
that you are happy and you're my friend, which I want you to be happy and I
don't get to speak to you that much.
Most of the older kick drums had this almost like moodiness.
And this This EP seems really just happy and shimmery. You know what I mean?
(42:04):
And it still has that ethereal nature.
So I know you've been there for a while now, but has your move to Spain made you happier?
Is that kind of shining through in your music? Or is that just wishful thinking
when I'm listening to this EP saying, this is great. I think Alex is happy.
I am really happy. I am really happy. I think Spain definitely,
I love living here. It does influence me in a lot of ways.
(42:25):
I think it's just where I am in my life right now. Just really content. tent.
I've always wanted to do something that's more pop-ish, but I can't really do it though.
Like you said, I always end up going to the dark side a little bit,
making something more melancholy. And so I really just let myself be free.
And it's the first time that I've actually been able to do that.
I think sometimes I've made some more poppy music just by accident,
(42:47):
but this time was more so just let it go.
Just do it. Don't be scared. There's a lot of fear there as an artist as well,
doing something that could be perceived as too happy, too pop.
So I was kind of terrified. There's a couple songs on that EP.
One's called Brand New. I was just like, this is so pop.
What if people hate this? And this EP is going to just continue rolling out.
(43:08):
It's going to turn into an album that's coming out October 4th.
The next song I'm putting out is so poppy, but I really love it because it really
tells the story about how I feel right now, about how I am as a songwriter,
about how I view music and what I'm trying to do as a musician.
Feels like new territory and that that's exciting it's fun it's scary again
like what if people don't like it but i like it though yeah it's funny i was
(43:31):
thinking about this the other day about how as a creator it's easier to talk
about how you're sad it's easier to be melancholy because you're
When you put yourself out there in a positive light, it's a different kind of
vulnerability to show happiness or to show positivity.
It's like, oh, this person's faking it. They're just trying to get on the radio
(43:52):
or get a million streams or get a bunch of likes on their Instagram posts.
It's a different kind of vulnerability.
And for some reason, when you're trying to do something in that world,
it feels like you think people are going to think you're corny for doing 100%.
And it's interesting that you said that.
(44:36):
Say, the most people have to say is, oh, you know, this isn't something that
I would typically listen to, which that's fine. I'm really happy with the response.
I do think that the amount of time and effort and just passion that I put into
it shows through at the end of the day.
Even if, again, if somebody is like, this isn't something that I would typically
listen to, it's just a little too poppy for me. I respect that.
(44:56):
But they're like, it's good though. No, I told you, man, I have good up here
and a lot of playlists of my own. And that's been a go-to for me.
Nice. Thank you again so much for doing this.
It was good to see your face and hear your voice, man. It's been way too long.
But is there anything else you want to say in closing?
Any advice for young artists trying to make it? Anything about what you're promoting?
(45:17):
Yeah. Well, thank you as well. Great talking to you. And thank you for having
me on your show, on the podcast.
I have an album coming out October 4th. There's one more single that's coming out August.
So just keep your ears, eyes open for the releases. And then any advice for
artists would just be just be true to yourself.
And it's just a process. So just stick to it. The longer you stick with it,
(45:38):
the more results that you're going to get.
Music.
Music.
(00:54):
Once a week, we reminisce about the old days or like he tells a story from back
in Cleveland or something.
So I feel like you're still currently someone that I talk to a lot because I
hear about you so much from Till all the time.
But yeah, it's been like two or three years, I think, right?
Yeah, I talk to Till all the time too.
But Matt and I have never really stopped working together in a sense.
(01:15):
Things have just been more sporadic. So I go one direction, he goes the other
direction. And then when we cross paths, we cross paths.
It's like every single year we've always managed to kind of collab on something,
whether it was him maybe doing some art for me or me doing something music wise for him.
And then recently we've been working on some new beats together.
So that's exciting. Everything that I've done recently, it's still beat based,
(01:38):
but I don't do a lot of music that is hip hop music, at least recently.
I try to, I want to. I did some stuff with Ari the Rugged Man.
And there were some really cool tracks in there because some of the features
on some of the stuff, you know, bucket list features like Atmosphere,
for example, or like Jedi Mind Tricks, these people that I really liked when I was growing up.
(01:58):
So it was cool to do music with them.
But that's really the only thing that I've done that's been like hip hop.
Everything else just has elements of that sort of production.
And that's obviously really popular right now that everybody wants to kind of
have that bedroom producer sound, that sort of hip hop sound,
or at least that sound that used to be exclusive to hip hop and now is permeated through everything.
(02:20):
I've always been good at that, too, branching out from hip hop,
but still never leaving it completely in the past. But working with Tilla,
even the video stuff that he does, it's really based in the world where we grew up.
I don't know what you would even call it, to be honest.
It's almost like mainstream hip hop or something, right?
Like, what would you call that genre? It's like rap? It's mainstream hip hop,
(02:41):
but it's almost like conscientious mainstream hip hop.
Because when I think of you, I think of like Chip the Ripper, Kid Cudi, even Wu-Tang.
Wu-Tang is the forefathers of all that. And I think of when we first met,
you guys were doing something with RZA.
And did some stuff for Wu-Tang. So I think of you guys being a key moment of
that time period where hip hop went to this experiment a little bit more and
(03:04):
bubbled from that really cool pivot that you guys were at the forefront of.
I can see that. I think that's the combination of the two of us because we definitely
come from more of like a conscious hip hop background.
But then Tilla's a DJ, so he knows if he goes to a certain club and he's DJing,
he can't just put on like conscious records.
There's certain records you got to play for certain crowds. And then there's
(03:27):
me, I like all types of music.
So if you put it in front of me and let me work on it, I tend to turn it into
something that's a little bit less commercial, but will have a nice polish to it.
So when you put all these things together, it does create a really unique sound.
And if you happen to put somebody really famous on it, it's going to attract a lot of attention.
(03:47):
It's funny that we're starting here on you and Tilla, because one of the things
that I really wants to get into is just how you kind of got started and what
Cleveland was like when you guys were coming up, how you met Matt,
the artist that you were working on when you guys started to really break through.
Yeah, I started working on hip hop because I grew up playing music,
instruments, whatever.
And I was playing in some sort of bands, if you want to call it that when I
(04:10):
was really young, like seventh, eighth grade, freshman year of high school,
just playing covers or just messing around and stuff like that.
But I ended up moving high schools and I didn't have any of those friends anymore.
So I didn't know how to make music by myself. And somebody told me they're like,
Oh, you know, you could just make it on your computer.
And this was like a long time ago. Now it's obvious. But back then,
this was kind of new technology.
(04:31):
And so sat down and I started making music on the computer.
And it was all just weird electronic music. Honestly, sometimes it sounded hip hop.
And sometimes it sounded almost like drum and bass, just really weird stuff.
But one day, one of my friends came up to me and he goes, Hey,
I heard you kind of make like beats or instrumentals or something.
I'm like, no, I don't know, whatever.
He's like, well, I've been writing some rhymes. Do you think you can make something for me?
(04:55):
I was like, yes, of course. Why not? So we started working on stuff and he had
some other friends that he brought in from the outside and we ended up forming a group.
It was like a four guy group where I was the main producer and we started doing
shows in the Cleveland area when we were 17, 18 years old. and Matt grew up
in the town over from me and he was doing the same thing.
(05:17):
Him and his roommate at Kent State University made an album EP,
like a short album. And I remember hearing it
and thinking like, oh, this is good. I really liked it. His production style is very Tilla.
It's like very sample based, very MPC, you know, hitting the pads, hip hop, right?
Which that's what we really like. I didn't grow up listening to very much mainstream rap music.
(05:41):
Like you said, I listened to more Wu-Tang Clan, Outkast, Mobb Deep.
And that's what that four man group was making. But anyways, I heard that album.
I'm like, man, I got to meet this guy. So apparently he had had heard some music
that I was doing too and felt the same way.
We ended up linking up and it took a little while, but eventually we had like
a production team of like six people.
We were working with those people for a little while.
(06:04):
We did maybe one or two projects where everyone was contributing tracks and
it was a little hard to get everybody in the same place at the same time.
So at some point, Tilla and I just decided, let's just go off and do our own thing.
And we ended up making beats together and having a fair amount of success for
at least eight or nine years.
When you were still in Cleveland before you moved
to New York that's when you guys hooked up with like Cuddy and
(06:25):
Chip the Ripper and everybody yeah Chip the Ripper for example I
wouldn't say we like put him on but we were the first production team to make
music with him that I know of our friend Joey had brought him to the table because
at the time we had some really big records we had a couple platinum songs so
we were the go-to guys in the city but we lived there so we were looking to
(06:46):
work with somebody local,
trying to take advantage of what was going on in our career.
And Chip was the guy that Joey brought to us like, this dude,
you got to work with this dude.
But at the time, as far as I know, Chip didn't really have any music.
He maybe had something, enough that Joey was looking at him.
So we made a whole album with him. A couple of the songs got really big.
(07:07):
One was called Get It Girl.
They just had the DJs in Cleveland had a pool.
Where they voted on the top club records since the 2000s up till now.
And Get It Girl was number four, I think.
So to this day, people still talk about that music.
It is crazy. It's wild to me because I love that music, but I didn't realize
(07:28):
at the time when we were making it that it would have such an impact.
That song particularly wasn't even just impactful in Cleveland.
It was all over the place. I met this one girl, Devo9, who's a singer,
and I was producing some songs for her.
She's from where's Notre Dame based out of like South Bend right South Bend
Indiana yeah she's from there and she was like yeah no I know your music it
(07:50):
was what the first moment when someone was like my mom loved Chip the Ripper
get it girl and I was like oh you know what I mean.
Yeah this girl was like 21 years old you know what I mean but so that song actually
was a Midwest phenomenon and do you remember and it doesn't have to be like
a eureka like one second you were just local. One second, you felt bigger.
(08:13):
But do you remember what it was like when you guys started actually getting
more attention for what you're doing?
Not just in your home city of Cleveland, but it kind of started to feel like
what you were doing was a little bit bigger than that.
Actually, there is one moment in particular.
I was engaged and I got married to a girl in Cleveland. And at the wedding,
(08:33):
this was all around that time.
At the wedding, her whole family was There's this big Italian family and I got
to know all of it. And her cousin came up to me and we were just having a random
conversation, but she, her response to something we were talking about was,
yeah, but you know, you're famous though.
And I've still, I've never forgotten that where I was like, what are you talking
about? She said, it's a matter of factly.
(08:55):
And so just like, yeah, you know, but you're famous, though.
And I was like, oh, wait, people actually think that because I just don't.
I just don't think it's never occurred to me, even even now.
And after stuff like that happening so many times and we're seeing because,
you know, how the Internet, everyone's in contact with you.
So they send you messages or there's comments and stuff.
So I get it. But I still don't. I don't understand it. What point in your career
(09:19):
did you guys then move to New York?
When was the breakthrough where you started working with 50 Cent,
John Legend, doing all those high profile remixes and everything like that.
50 Cent was actually while we were still in Cleveland. And John Legend,
one of the first guys we worked with, Chip the Ripper.
Oh, sorry. Ray Cash. He was working on a second album.
And the guy who was his A&R at Sony had John Legend, who was he was down to
(09:43):
sing a hook. So we had a beat.
I sing a hook on it. And Ray Ray had written a verse, and then John Legend re-recorded
the hook that I'd written and sang or whatever.
The 50 Cent thing actually happened before that. Believe it or not,
the 50 Cent song was probably one of the first things that happened.
That was the big moment that broke us out because we had some really good moments
(10:05):
before that. We were doing a lot of cool remixes.
We obviously had the local stuff that was getting a lot of attention.
But the 50 Cent thing was like, okay, that sealed the deal.
That's when it started really taking off. Yeah, 100%. Because at the time,
50 Cent was one of the biggest artists in the world.
He's still such a big, influential guy. But back then, he was only a musician.
(10:25):
How did you get on 50's radar? That was Tilla. I remember making it just randomly,
and I knew it was really good.
And it got just fit into either a zip file of beats.
Or even back then, there were just physical CDs with instrumentals on it.
And he gave it to somebody, and that person gave it to an engineer.
It just passed through some hands until...
(10:46):
Eventually 50 Cent heard it somehow and they recorded to it.
And I don't even think they asked for the multi-track.
I think they literally just recorded to the beat, put it to mastering, and that was it.
Yeah, I mean, that was kind of his style back then. He was one of those first
rappers to really break from the mixtape game. And that was just going over the beats.
You know what I mean? That wasn't super high production value or anything.
(11:08):
It was just finding a sick beat.
What was behind the move to New York? The move to New York was...
So around that time, around the Kid Cudi, Chip the Ripper time,
I started working on some more singing stuff.
That's when I really started diving into that. Truth be told,
the only person that did support me was Tilla because we were doing really well as a production team.
And everyone was like, why in the world right now would you start singing a
(11:32):
completely different genre?
Try to promote this like this makes no sense. But Tilla was like, this is cool.
I like this. And that's why we always made a good team is neither one of us
think really in terms of we have to do something that's going to be successful.
I've met a ton of people in the music industry and a fair amount of them are
very focused on being successful.
I don't think we've ever done that. We just focus on what we like.
(11:54):
So he would send me some ideas.
I would send him some ideas. And we started making songs when I was singing.
And it took a couple of years, but we started getting better at it.
At some point, this sort of magical moment, we hit on combining the hip hop
sounds with me singing and my vocals are very sort of English.
I don't know why, but they always come off sort of Tom Yorkish or like Blur
(12:16):
or something like that. Right.
And the combination was really cool and it worked really well.
And back in the blog era, I put out a couple of songs and they just did really well.
Everyone was listening to the songs. They're really well received.
And I did an album in like a month till it sent me a bunch of ideas.
I did a bunch of ideas myself. And like, boom, just put together 10 songs.
In a month probably the fastest i've ever done any music in
(12:39):
my life and it took off when we started getting calls from
record labels universal flew us to new york
a bunch of people were interested in managing us like all these really cool
new york people were like yo i want to manage you so i knew i had to move i
picked up everything and moved to new york and till it followed maybe six months
later i don't know it was cool i mean new york still feels like a second home
(13:01):
to me i spent a lot of time there. I don't know, it's weird.
I haven't been there in about seven years and I don't necessarily miss it,
but I still feel like the love, you know what I mean?
I feel like if I came here tomorrow, I would feel like, oh, I didn't even skip
a beat. I'm just back in New York.
I know exactly what you're saying. Even on a lesser level of that,
from when you lived here and we were tight and we were hanging out all the time.
(13:23):
I used to be in the city five, six days a week, even though I live on Long Island
because my office was there and I work in the music industry,
I was going to, you know, five shows a week, six shows a week anyway.
So I was even coming in when I didn't have to go in the office.
But ever since pandemic, I haven't really been going into the city that often
when people are like, oh, let's meet up in the city. No part of me is excited.
(13:45):
I'm always like, can we do a phone call? Can we do a zoom, something like that.
But then when I do go in, I'm happy I'm there.
And I still have that feeling of I don't want to take the subway because I want
to walk because I like walking in the city.
You know what I mean? I still have that love for it. I'm still super proud of
being a New Yorker, but I don't need to be there every day anymore. No.
(14:05):
One of the main things I miss about New York is riding my bike everywhere.
I love that. I loved riding it through Brooklyn, especially on a nice summer
day or riding into the city.
People who've never done that in New York, they're like, that's crazy.
Why in the world would you ride a bike in New York City? It's dangerous. And I'm like,
I never felt in danger ever. It was just free. It was like the most freeing thing ever.
(14:29):
I live in Spain now and there's nowhere to ride a bike. It's so congested.
It's crazy because speaking of New York, everyone is always like,
oh, I'm a New Yorker. You know, I know congestion.
I know this and that. That's because the United States is so spread out and
the cities aren't really walkable necessarily.
You only have a couple of walkable cities and obviously New York is one of them.
But like every city here is like that. There really aren't any equivalent to the United States here.
(14:55):
So no matter where you go, it's all like New York.
Where I live in Malaga, it's just thousands of people walking everywhere all the time.
And you're bumping into people and you're like, oh my God, the tourists are
all in the wrong place and moving slow. It's the same thing.
And that's why I used to ride my bike in New York because you could get around all that.
You just whisk through the whole city. But here you can't do it.
(15:17):
There's nowhere to ride.
There's no space. face maybe it's because like the pictures you've sent
me have all been like up on a cliffside overlooking the
water i'm picturing you in like a spanish villa up in
the mountains sipping sangria eating beautiful food like all day long every
day that's like what i think your life is and then you just go in and you record
a couple of beats and then you're like okay well that was work for today and
(15:38):
you're sitting on the back porch taking a siesta so it sounds like i have a
very incorrect correct view of how your life is right now?
No, I mean, that's actually not that far off. The only difference is I don't
know how luxurious my life is or anything.
I just live in the city. So it's the same as like living in Brooklyn or something,
but just the Spanish version of it.
I mean, there is a piece of me at this point that I think it would be cool to
(16:01):
live a little bit outside maybe, but I don't know.
There's something about, I have everything, whatever I need,
I can just walk to it or I could go to five different grocery stores,
whatever, just right there. I have a bunch of all the corner stores.
They don't call them bodegas here, but it's the same thing. And I'm just not ready to give that up.
Even at my age, I'm just like, I can't do it. Can't live the life where you have to get in your car.
(16:25):
And go to the grocery store. I just don't want to do it. And when we're talking
about you living in Spain, every time I tell somebody, oh, my friend Alex picked
up and moved to Spain, they're all like, I want to do exactly that.
So I just, I want you to tell the story. Yeah, so I came here in 2018.
I was working on a project. I had really nothing time in New York. I was single at the time.
(16:45):
I was here recording with a friend for three months, a little less than three months.
And during that time, I met some people here. we were traveling around this
part of south of Spain. That was in Cadiz. So it's provinces here.
I live in Malaga and the neighboring province is called Cadiz,
but it's not that far away.
It's kind of like counties in the United States, like the size of a county.
(17:06):
I had met people that had a school here and they were looking for people to
teach classes or like just music production, basically.
And so I did a masterclass for them and they invited me to come in and sort
of be a part of that if I wanted to.
And at the time, I'd been doing music for so long. And I'd seen so many other
people make the transition from being a producer or a musician to start teaching
(17:29):
at maybe universities or developing a course or something.
And I thought, maybe that's something that I would be interested in doing.
I didn't really have a direction at that time in my life of what I wanted to
do next with music. All I knew is that I wanted to make a change.
And I knew I didn't want it to be Los Angeles.
99% of people that I know moved to Los Angeles, which is totally fine.
Like I do like it there a lot. But at that time, I just wanted something completely different.
(17:53):
And so fell in love with it here, had this opportunity to do some teaching and thought, okay, I'll go.
Once I was here, I just took it upon myself. I just really wanted to be a part
of what was going on here.
I worked really hard to learn the language, you know, started dating, made friends.
It just slowly but surely developed. And I was learning like everything here
(18:13):
when you first get here is a little bit different it's all the same but it's
just a little bit different so.
You almost do have to relearn a lot of things, just dumb things,
you know, like even their front doors here don't work like our front doors work
there. The grocery stores are set up differently.
You can't go into the grocery store and just buy the things you want to buy.
You have to reestablish, say, like cooking or whatever your recipes because
(18:35):
the same ingredients aren't here.
Everything's a little bit different. So after a year or so, I just became really
comfortable and just I haven't really thought about going back since.
And then with all the political turmoil and everything that happens in the United
States, I was really happy to sort of be away from that.
I was there for 2015, 2016, and it was just like not a good feeling.
(18:57):
And now it's just home. Now I don't even really think twice about it.
I'm going back to Ohio to visit my family in September.
And that's cool. But I don't really go back that often.
Everything is so remote now. And you're able to collab with all types of people.
You don't have to be in the studio. Would I like to be in the studio from time
to time? Yeah, of course.
I think it has its benefits for sure, but it's just not necessary like before.
(19:19):
And that is another thing that you mentioned earlier that I think kind of set
you up really well for this move too, is you had the right mentality.
You were one of the first wave that I'm aware of, of what you would call like
a bedroom producer, where you were making music at home that was high quality.
Now, being that you're in Spain and most of the artists you work with are in
(19:39):
North America, you have a great understanding of what it takes to work remotely.
So it doesn't matter if you're in Spain or Japan or Brooklyn,
you know how to manage that process.
I love doing that. I just did a project with my friend in Los Angeles,
and it's called Oh Bummer, and we did two EPs together, about 12 or 13 songs.
(20:00):
And we just put out the last one, maybe last March or something.
And yeah, we were texting back and forth. Dude, we did all of this without ever
being in the same room together.
And it's pretty complex. The music is more poppy and stuff, but it's still complex music.
You can do really artsy, inspired music and you don't have to be in the same room together.
(20:20):
I think you just have to have a connection with somebody that's willing to meet
you halfway because that's the main thing.
If you're sending stuff back and forth and you send your part back and the person
thinks we should do something else, then it's not going to work.
You need that synergy with someone where you send them something,
they're excited. They send you something, you're excited.
Everybody's just excited all the time. And then it's like, you can do whatever
(20:41):
you want. The world's your oyster.
So how do you figure out how the collaboration is going to go?
Do you do playing stuff for people over Zoom or is it all just sending demos
back and forth and discussing them after?
Zoom has never worked for me. I've tried to do Zoom writing sessions during
the pandemic, there was just never any way to get the sound to match up to where it was effective.
(21:01):
It was just frustrating the whole time. So typically what you do is somebody
sends an idea of something they have.
Typically it's like a batch, somebody like this Obama project,
for example, he had probably hundreds of little ideas that he recorded just on his laptop.
The sounds are very, you talk about like bedroom producer, like that's a real
bedroom producer, just, you you know, little sounds but cool songs.
(21:23):
So I would say send me the breakdown.
Give me all the stems of that.
And I would start reworking it. A lot of times I would just solo out the vocals
and remake something altogether and then send it to him and be like,
hey, what do you think? Do you like this direction?
Because I would totally mess things up. He would send me something that was
really slow and I would send it back to him like two times as fast,
(21:44):
totally different feel.
Take it from like a hip hop tempo to almost like a house tempo or something.
So it gives you a lot of freedom, but you're just demoing things out.
You're just testing ideas, trying to find what makes
the song pop because there's always that kind of
eureka moment where you're working on something and it
goes click and you're like that's it that's the melody
(22:05):
or that's the tempo or whatever and once
you have that it's pretty easy so now you have that demo that you know is good
and you just start producing it making it sound good and then they'll cut the
vocals in their part of the world send it over to me i'll put the vocals in
and we'll mix it all together so it's a lot of back and forth but But it's just
building and building and building until you have the song.
(22:28):
Do you feel like there's like ever loss of that kind of chemistry that you would
get if you're working in a physical studio together?
I don't know. I like the idea of everyone works on their own timetable.
So there's a lot of people who prefer to work at night. There's people that
prefer to work during the day. Like I work during the day personally.
Everybody has their workflow or whatever. So when you're alone.
(22:50):
You're able to do whatever you want.
You're able to screw up. You're able to make mistakes.
And sometimes you don't have that same comfort level when you're in the studio
with someone. And sometimes you just don't have the time either.
You don't have the luxury to sit there for 12 hours.
That's what I'll do when I'm working on something. I'll work on it for days
and days and days, messing around with it.
Imagine how crazy that would be for somebody I'm collaborating with that to
(23:13):
sit there and be patient, you know, and same for them, you know,
they could be writing lyrics or working on whatever they're working on and I'm
there breathing down their neck.
So I think there's actually advantages to not working together.
The advantage of working in the same studio with someone is,
and I've had this happen with someone like Duckworth,
is that you can have these magical moments where you're really playing off each
(23:36):
other, where what that person does well influences what you do well.
And you're just, it's really exciting.
You're both just almost like running around the studio, excited,
playing the instruments, cutting some extra vocals, you know what I mean?
Just bouncing ideas and so it's definitely cool
to be in the studio but it's not necessary finishing the
music and are you better to be in the studio that's for sure because the
(23:57):
finishing of songs is the thing that's the hardest to do
when you're separated i swear you could finish a song in a couple hours the
final touches right if you're in the studio with someone but when you're alone
and you're just sending stuff to them they're like no no no actually i meant
could you put this dub back in and then take this one out and it's like, okay.
(24:18):
Bring up the session, take the dub out, put the other dub back in center.
Oh, wait, actually, now I'm hearing that this needs to come,
you know, and it could take forever.
It'd be like a week going back and forth just to do two or three things that nobody hears only us.
And is there a studio around you that you go and work out of ever?
Is it always just from home?
I always work at home. I don't, I've never had a studio that I go to that.
(24:40):
I remember I was in talks with one studio in Brooklyn when I was going to produce for a couple bands.
I was going to go in there and use them sort of exclusively.
But I never even ended up doing that. I mean, it's necessary if you're working
with a band, if you have to do all the instruments.
But I typically don't work with artists like that. I work with just multi-instrumentalists,
singer-songwriters, people who are looking to play maybe guitar on the song or whatever.
(25:04):
Or if we need drums, we just outsource it to somebody.
That type of production. Yeah. I'm sure that was also a benefit for you as well.
Because as we've said here a couple of of times, you have your own creative
direction that you wanted to pursue.
You were able to take more risks because your expenses weren't as high because
you weren't paying for expensive studio time.
(25:24):
You're doing it all yourself. So you could take those risks and keep going.
I do want to backtrack to a specific moment that I remember when you and I first
started working together, when I was working for the Stevenson's and they were managing you.
It was when you and Tilla were still together too. And you put out that Coachella mixtape.
And I just remember the entire blog world just exploding around that. That was all Tilla.
(25:48):
Like I said, Tilla's a DJ. So those are type of promotional things that he was really good at.
I think he had discussed doing that with Rob Stevenson as well.
So I'm not totally sure if it was 100% Tilla's idea or if Rob had been like,
hey, why don't you try this?
But whatever it was, at the end of the day, Tilla put that all together.
And that was right around the time that we were doing an album with
(26:10):
Last gang so we also
put out another mixtape called the ghost
tapes that was 20 original songs
a lot of features and the
reason i say that is because we were putting all this out like coachella mixtape
ghost mixtape and then we had an actual album and the label was like whoa like
(26:32):
what are you doing why are you putting all this stuff out like you're ruining
the release or whatever but But then it got so much positive attention,
both of those projects, that the album did really well.
So they slowly calmed down and were like, oh, okay.
I mean, sometimes putting out too much is bad, but in that case, it worked.
(26:53):
It's funny, too, because that was kind of ahead of its time as well.
Because now you look at it now, if you're on the come up trying to break through...
You have to be able to put something out like month over month over month,
even if it's just one song per month, because the way people's listening habits
are now it's all streaming.
Anything they could ever want to listen to is at the tip of their fingers.
So it's like, if you don't keep putting stuff out, you're going to fall out of people's minds.
(27:18):
So now labels are saying the complete opposite to artists.
You guys are kind of doing that right at the turn of that, which is pretty cool.
Yeah, it was a good time for music back then.
I'm not really sure if you would say it was a better time or
it's strange everything is just kind of relevant but that was
the game back then is put out as much music as you can
i do see people doing that now who is it grizelda do
you listen to them at all yeah just massive amounts of projects you're talking
(27:42):
about grizelda records right yeah yeah yeah and even someone like yeah just
puts out yeah a ton of music just keeps it moving more just music yeah music
that's how you got to do it you really got to know yourself and that's always
going to be the hardest thing about music is who am I as an artist?
If you identify as an artist that only puts things out one album a year,
and then you spend the rest of the year on the road, or you spend the rest of
(28:03):
the year promoting that music, and you got to be true to that and figure out
how to make it work for you. But it's super competitive now.
So many people are making music. And I don't know, I think I definitely fall
more into the range of I like to do a lot of things. I like to do collaborations.
I like to do original music. I like to do different genres. And so I'm just
always going to be releasing music.
You had the record on Last Gang, then you put out a follow-up on Hopeless a few years later.
(28:29):
And then after the Hopeless release, you took your career kind of back into
your own hands and you started releasing more independent.
So what was that process like? Was it freeing for you?
Yeah, it's freeing in a way, but you need a team. You need people to support you.
So when you and I were working together on that, that basically was the label.
You guys are supporting. Teresa was supporting.
(28:50):
Tilla was still around in that point in time, even though we weren't really making music together.
He was still helping with a lot of the design and things.
In a way, it's still a label. There just wasn't really any money behind it.
And that's always the difference. When I think of a label, I think of like funding.
You know, it just costs a lot of money to get your music out there.
People don't realize like how little we get paid for how much you have to put into it.
(29:13):
A minimum budget major labels have is really astronomical compared to the amount
of money somebody really independent is putting into their music.
It's kind of a shame, like all this great music, but nobody has any money to put behind it.
So advice for somebody who's coming up, you're probably not going to make your
money back unless you're hitting the road. Is that what you're saying here?
(29:34):
Well, there's a lot of ways to
make money, but no, you shouldn't expect to make a lot of money at first.
I don't think that has anything to do with it being 2024 or a lot of digital
stuff. Now it's, I think that's how it's always been.
You really have to hang in there and it can literally take a solid 10 years
before you start making money like a normal person.
And that's if you, that's if you ever make money. Cause even when you do make
(29:58):
money, a lot of times it gets split off into so many different directions.
If you have a label, they're going to get their cut. If you have a band of five
people, everybody gets their cut. If you have a manager, they have their cut.
Lawyers, everything. So I wouldn't suggest going into being a musician to make money.
I would say going to be a musician because it's something that makes you happy.
You have to really deal with a lot of politics. And so what's left?
(30:20):
Just your passion for it.
That's all there is. That's something
I've had a lot of conversations with friends that are artists about.
If you're not focused on how much you love the process of creating,
it's not going to be worth it.
If you're going in to be famous or to be rich, you're not going to get there
and you're going to be miserable trying to get there.
(30:41):
But if you're doing something because you love it and it's all you could think
to do, even if you had a day job, you're working nine to five,
you'd still be coming home at the end of the day and making music.
If you're not that in love with it, then it's not worth trying to pursue a career in. No, not really.
I think you could say the same thing for anything, but especially music.
I have met people that take more of a professional approach,
(31:03):
and that's more songwriters.
They're like, okay, I'm a songwriter. This is my job. I go and I write songs
and I write things specifically for an artist that's looking for a song and
I write it in a way that will help that artist be successful.
And I play a part in the machine. That's my job. And I respect that.
That's a hard job and people do it and they have great careers doing it.
(31:25):
I just never been that person.
I definitely fall on more like, well, I'm just going to make art.
I don't even know if you'll call my music art, but I do just because it's me
being creative and expressing myself.
And I have no expectations that anyone's going to like it.
I release it in the hope and a prayer that people will listen and will be received
well, because I just don't think about that stuff.
And like you said about the process, I love the process. That's my favorite thing.
(31:49):
Once the song's done, a lot of times I really struggle with finished songs.
I listen to them and one day I'll really like them.
The next day I won't. And I never really know if I like stuff a lot of times.
But the process, I love the process.
There's another old quote that I love. I had always thought it was a Tom York
quote, but I think it's actually like goes back to Leonardo da Vinci or something.
(32:09):
And I just heard it from Tom York.
So I always just accredited it to him. The process of making art belongs to the artist.
Once the project is done, it belongs to the world. So once it's out there,
it doesn't matter. It's not yours anymore.
It's everyone's. So you can't really judge it because when you're looking at
it, at the end of the day, you're so intimately aware of it that you're always
(32:30):
going to hear something that you wish was different or that you could have been
better or maybe hear like something that's even the slightest bit off.
No one notices that this is off but me, but I notice and it's going to bug the
shit out of me every time I listen to this song for the rest of my life.
Do you think any of that has to do with imposter syndrome or anything?
Anything man i just always been so disconnected in
(32:51):
so many ways that i don't feel a part
of any specific thing so i wouldn't
say that i have imposter syndrome necessarily because i just don't feel like
i'm trying to be anything i wish i was yeah sometimes it's hard to market the
music that i do because i don't even know what i'm doing the first question
people ask you is well how would you describe yourself as an artist and i'm
(33:12):
like i really don't know to this day i i have no idea. But I do love the process.
Once you release a song, there's so many opinions and people will listen to
it for like 30 seconds and just never listen to it again.
Or people will listen to it a hundred times and you're just curious why somebody
would even listen to it a hundred, a thousand times, why they like it so much.
(33:33):
It's just all so confusing. But when you're in the process, it's a lot of fun.
It's like solving a puzzle, you know, this, this vocal is cool,
but I think it could be cooler. Let me rework that. You're just retouching things.
You're You're making structures different. It's really fun.
But like you said, once it's out there in the world, it stops making sense again. Yeah.
There's no more breakthroughs, no more puzzle pieces that you could put together and make it fun again.
(33:56):
So that's the artist side of it. But if somebody is looking to make a career
as a producer now, what advice would you give them?
I always say start locally because that's what we did. I had a group in high school.
Tilla had a group when he was in college with his roommate. We were all making
records and we were releasing them. That's how we got to know each other.
Basically how everyone's sort of connected together.
(34:18):
The DJs that we worked with in Cleveland, the artists, we all just worked together
and we made really good music to the point where it started getting noticed
outside of our little local city.
I mean, there's always, you can email people and you could hit people up on DMS and stuff like that.
I don't know if that's necessarily the route to go. Like I would still work locally.
Or move to Los Angeles, move to New York at some point if you can.
(34:42):
You just have so much more access to potential opportunities.
It's a lot of luck that's involved with it too, unfortunately.
But if you make good music, it's going to get noticed eventually.
And now more so than ever because the algorithm is so tuned in to what people are listening to.
As long as you're consistent and you make some really cool music,
just keep releasing stuff.
It's very possible that the algorithm will just grab it and just throw it to a whole bunch of people.
(35:05):
Now you have the exposure that you could never have
gotten in the past the technology aspect of things is really
helping independent artists for sure just being able
to post promo videos and again the algorithm taking it and showing it to new
potential listeners that never existed before from a technical perspective then
as a producer are you using a lot of the more current technology or do you kind
(35:28):
of have the process and everything that you like that you've always liked and
that's the world you stick in? I let it creep in.
I'm not the first guy to adopt technology.
I'll admit that. But over the years, things get included into what I'm doing into my workflow.
I like technology. I am kind of traditional, though. I tend to play all the instruments.
I really work on things in a way that if this was 10, 20, 30 years ago,
(35:51):
that the song really wouldn't be made that differently.
The equipment's a little bit modern, whether it's a laptop or stuff like that.
But I guess I'm kind of old school in that sense. But if there's something technology
wise that can help, I don't know, the AI stuff is cool. I think we've always dealt with samples.
We've dealt with that for a long time. And now you can create music using AI,
(36:13):
different orchestrations that sound pretty damn good.
You could take those compositions, resample those,
it solves a lot of problems for us, you're only going to have certain opportunities
to make money, in my opinion,
you might have a good opportunity to have a sink in a show or something like
that or maybe one of your beats gets picked up by a bigger artist and if you
use an actual sample that has people who own the copyright and the publishing
(36:36):
they're gonna take a huge chunk of that.
That might have been your big break. That might have been your like million dollar moment.
And now everybody else gets the money for your work. So having the AI generating
music for you, there's like good things you can do with that to help you be creative.
Even a friend of mine, Randy Nichols, actually made a good point.
Music production has always used AI. We just didn't call it AI.
(36:59):
So like Beat Detective or Auto 2, that's all AI. That's artificial intelligence.
We just didn't call it artificial intelligence. Now people are more up in arms
about it because it's a hot button issue, but it's always kind of been in the process for years now.
It's true. Yeah. And every time a new tool comes out, everybody sort of gets
up in arms about it like, oh, you know, and then it becomes normal and everybody
(37:22):
just starts incorporating it into their workflow.
And then the new thing comes out and everyone's angry at that.
It's the process. I do have my particular workflow that I stick to.
It just works for what I do.
So it It doesn't include a whole lot of technology at the moment.
For instance, I've never used autotune. All my vocals, I just sing them until they're good.
(37:43):
But funny enough, for people who are audio engineers who are maybe listening, I'll punch in on things.
There was a point in time where even being able to punch in on things like vocals
or guitar takes or whatever was seen as bad.
That was ruining the music industry.
There was even the first technology that
people got crazy about that was ruining music was the
(38:06):
click the click track people thought when people
started playing music to a click that you were ruining the performance music
is supposed to ebb and flow and and you know and the click was gonna ruin that
yeah well i i've talked about this with a lot of people because i am an advocate
of using AI as a tool in your tool belt.
(38:28):
I don't think that things like Suno or Yudio are going to replace actual music,
like a lot of people are afraid of. But I do think that tools like that.
Can be helpful for a producer and artist, especially say you're an up and coming
singer songwriter, you have bigger visions than you can create.
Like you said, maybe you write your songs on an acoustic guitar and maybe you
can use AI to help build drum tracks below it to give you something that you're not as good at.
(38:54):
I'm a big advocate of it. I always have this conversation.
People said radio was going to stop people from going to see live music.
Same thing with when hip-hop came out, people were so pissed off because it
was sampling other people's music and not paying them.
So it was stealing gigs from session musicians.
People avoid change at all costs. It's hard. People don't like change.
(39:15):
They just don't. Society does not like change. One thing I'll say about AI is
that I would use it for that I think would be cool is just finding ideas.
The hardest thing about music and even like a puzzle, if you want to call it
that, is getting it started.
Sometimes you don't have an idea. So like you said, if you're a singer,
songwriter, and you're just having writer's block or whatever,
(39:35):
maybe using an AI generator narrator will create something. It's like,
wait a second. Okay, that's cool.
I like that little note there. And it just gives you a starting point.
That's all you really need sometimes.
And now you're off and you're being creative. And now you've opened up the creativity
again. So stuff like that is really cool.
But as far as music being replaced by AI, it's not going to replace music.
(39:56):
People have come up to me and they're like, are you worried about your job?
And I'm like, I've been worried about my job. I'm waiting for AI.
Never stop worrying about, yeah.
That's part of being an artist or a creative is worrying about your job.
Worry about my job every day.
So just is what it is. I think it comes down to budgets.
And whenever there's absorbent budgets for things, somebody's going to come
(40:16):
in and provide a way for you to make something cheaply.
That's essentially what happened with technology in this case is producers are expensive.
So AI came in and it's like, hell, here, anybody can produce things.
They've been doing that for years, though.
Companies like Native Instruments create software, plugins, even keyboards,
(40:36):
things that are at a consumer price so everybody can get involved.
Everybody with a meager budget can start producing music.
That's been going on forever because before then, you actually had to go to
the studio, like you said, way back in the beginning. It's expensive.
The average person can't afford to do it. AI is just another piece of that puzzle, if you ask me.
It's just providing another low-cost option for people.
(41:00):
Yeah, it levels the playing field. For every opportunity it takes away from
creators in that particular field, it's
it opens other doors for them. So it's just a matter of if you want to go and
find them. AI art, for example, is the same thing.
You can go and you can generate some like cheap art, make covers or whatever.
If you need a poster for your show, whatever, you could do that.
(41:21):
Because obviously it's better if you have an artist, but I've had conversations
with artists where I was really excited.
Like, yeah, I mean, it would be so cool if I could do a rollout with this artist.
You get the budget back and they're looking for $5,000 for a cover and a couple social media things.
And it's like, yeah, okay, charge your money, get your bag, you know,
do your thing, but I need a cheaper option. Yeah.
(41:42):
Yeah. Your new EP turns to gold. I always love what you do, but I really love this EP.
And one of the things that I was drawn to with it, because it makes me think
that you are happy and you're my friend, which I want you to be happy and I
don't get to speak to you that much.
Most of the older kick drums had this almost like moodiness.
And this This EP seems really just happy and shimmery. You know what I mean?
(42:04):
And it still has that ethereal nature.
So I know you've been there for a while now, but has your move to Spain made you happier?
Is that kind of shining through in your music? Or is that just wishful thinking
when I'm listening to this EP saying, this is great. I think Alex is happy.
I am really happy. I am really happy. I think Spain definitely,
I love living here. It does influence me in a lot of ways.
(42:25):
I think it's just where I am in my life right now. Just really content. tent.
I've always wanted to do something that's more pop-ish, but I can't really do it though.
Like you said, I always end up going to the dark side a little bit,
making something more melancholy. And so I really just let myself be free.
And it's the first time that I've actually been able to do that.
I think sometimes I've made some more poppy music just by accident,
(42:47):
but this time was more so just let it go.
Just do it. Don't be scared. There's a lot of fear there as an artist as well,
doing something that could be perceived as too happy, too pop.
So I was kind of terrified. There's a couple songs on that EP.
One's called Brand New. I was just like, this is so pop.
What if people hate this? And this EP is going to just continue rolling out.
(43:08):
It's going to turn into an album that's coming out October 4th.
The next song I'm putting out is so poppy, but I really love it because it really
tells the story about how I feel right now, about how I am as a songwriter,
about how I view music and what I'm trying to do as a musician.
Feels like new territory and that that's exciting it's fun it's scary again
like what if people don't like it but i like it though yeah it's funny i was
(43:31):
thinking about this the other day about how as a creator it's easier to talk
about how you're sad it's easier to be melancholy because you're
When you put yourself out there in a positive light, it's a different kind of
vulnerability to show happiness or to show positivity.
It's like, oh, this person's faking it. They're just trying to get on the radio
(43:52):
or get a million streams or get a bunch of likes on their Instagram posts.
It's a different kind of vulnerability.
And for some reason, when you're trying to do something in that world,
it feels like you think people are going to think you're corny for doing 100%.
And it's interesting that you said that.
(44:36):
Say, the most people have to say is, oh, you know, this isn't something that
I would typically listen to, which that's fine. I'm really happy with the response.
I do think that the amount of time and effort and just passion that I put into
it shows through at the end of the day.
Even if, again, if somebody is like, this isn't something that I would typically
listen to, it's just a little too poppy for me. I respect that.
(44:56):
But they're like, it's good though. No, I told you, man, I have good up here
and a lot of playlists of my own. And that's been a go-to for me.
Nice. Thank you again so much for doing this.
It was good to see your face and hear your voice, man. It's been way too long.
But is there anything else you want to say in closing?
Any advice for young artists trying to make it? Anything about what you're promoting?
(45:17):
Yeah. Well, thank you as well. Great talking to you. And thank you for having
me on your show, on the podcast.
I have an album coming out October 4th. There's one more single that's coming out August.
So just keep your ears, eyes open for the releases. And then any advice for
artists would just be just be true to yourself.
And it's just a process. So just stick to it. The longer you stick with it,
(45:38):
the more results that you're going to get.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.