GRAMMYs

Blakk Soul

Photo: Mia K.

News

Rising R&B Phenom Blakk Soul Means Business

Facebook Twitter Email
The former aspiring lawyer talks to the Recording Academy about his soulful debut LP, what he learned from the likes of Dr. Dre and Prince and how learning the infrastructure of the music business benefits artists
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Jun 16, 2020 - 10:14 am

In many ways, Blakk Soul (born Eric Mercer Jr.) accomplished more before releasing his debut album than many music makers do in their entire career. For starters, the Tacoma, Wa., R&B artist's first job in L.A. was working as an engineer for Mike & Keys, who executive produced Nipsey Hussle. Then, he landed management with the highly influential Rapper Big Pooh of Little Brother, and he's already written, sang or co-produced on records from the likes of Playboi Carti, Jake One, Macklemore, Anderson .Paak and Dr. Dre, who gave him a "master class in the whole song creation process" for a solid year and a half. 

With all of his credentials, it should come as no surprise that Blakk Soul's debut LP, Take Your Time, arrives as such a complete package by such a well-rounded artist. He sequenced all the songs and mixed and mastered the album himself with stunning results, landing at No. 24 on the iTunes R&B charts. The album also features guest vocals from Joell Ortiz of Slaughterhouse, Amaal, Cocoa Sarai, and Nana plus multi-platinum producers Wyldfyer, J. LBS, DrewsThatDude, and Symbolyc One. 

While the cascading vocal production and varied themes of personal freedom, strong mental health and a heavy dose of sensuality on Take Your Time reveal an artist with a swagger all his own, the work he put in under Dre's tutelage is abundantly clear in his command for the craft, especially the attention to detail.

"I always like to believe I'm a pretty detailed person, but being around [Dre] and hearing in his ear and the way he doesn't miss anything," he says. "I was like, 'Oh. It gets deep. It can get deeper than this.'"

The Recording Academy went deeper into conversation with Blakk Soul over the phone to hear more about his hot seat experience with Dr. Dre, the making of Take Your Time, his thoughts on the country's current climate of racial injustice, the importance of artists understanding the business side of music, what playing sports has to do with making better records and more…

Coming into your career, was there a moment when you said to yourself, "Music is not only what I want to do with my life, but I think I can make this my livelihood"?

I started off as an athlete. That was my main focus. Along the journey I had some musician friends that really saw a career in music for me before I did, but the ball was live so I was like, "Nah, I want to stay focused on this route." But some things just don't work out like we plan for them to, so it was about my sophomore year in college, I really had to sit and think, "What am I naturally gifted at, that if I were to hone those skills I could probably turn it into something?" And it was always music.

Sure. Was there any crossover there, between sports and music? Did you use any of those skills when you started writing songs?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Even in sports I was always a gym rat. I think the same type of discipline crosses over to my music career. I'm always constantly recording, constantly researching techniques, constantly trying to improve. When I made it into some of the rooms that I've made it in with some of the amazing people that I've been blessed to share space with, that's one of the common denominators I've noticed for everybody that's achieving at a high level, is their ability to eliminate distractions and to lock in and get the task done. I definitely feel like some of those same disciplines crossover.

I love that, from gym rat to studio rat.

Right, exactly.

GRAMMYs

Can you talk about how the relationship with Big Pooh and Little Brother kick-started and ultimately really shaped your career path?

Well, Pooh is really like a big brother. I got to actually work with him first before I met him in 2011. I was, at the time, working with another brother of mine, Kuddie Fresh. He used to be a part of the production group, Tha Bizness. I had just met him at the time and was doing a bunch of demo references. He had went out to a conference in New York and the old manager of Little Brother, Big Dho at the time, was also present at this conference. He got a chance to hear some of the work I had been doing, word got back to Pooh through him. Pooh was working on his Dirty Pretty Things album at the time. Dho basically told them, "This is this kid at Tacoma I heard. Man, I really think we should reach out. He might be what you're looking for sound wise for some of the records for the album." The crazy part about all of that is that first of all, he reached out to me via Twitter.

Now, me being a fan of Little Brother already, I didn't even think it was real at first. He had DM'd me, sent me his number. We had a conversation and gave me an opportunity to do a hook. I ended up doing a hook to the song called, "Free." Then I had to wait a few months to know if it was going to make the album or not and it did. Then the backstory for it was crazy. He was on tour for that album and I got to perform with him in Portland. As we were prepping for that performance we got to talking about the record and he told me he had never actually heard me sing a note before reaching out to me. He was totally going off of the trust and relationship he reportedly had with Dho. That blew my mind. I was just like, "I could have been terrible for all you knew." He said, "Yeah, pretty much."

When I found that out I was like, "That's pretty crazy." And we've just been working since.

And it was through you were connected with Dr. Dre, right? How did you get in the room with him?

I was actually back in Tacoma at the time working on my Never See EP. I ended up running into a producer that told me that he was working with Anderson .Paak on his album, but he wasn't aware that I knew people that we could verify to know if that was a real thing or if it wasn't. That's what sparked the conversation initially. The A&R at the time of Aftermath was also a previous road manager of Little Brother. Pooh reached out to him to get confirmation on whether the situation was legit. It wasn't. But in that conversation the A&R started asking about me. I was fresh off of landing the Macklemore placement, or, the two Macklemore placements on the GEMINI album, and then he had told them I was working on my EP. So he asked him to send him three of what he felt were my strongest records so he can play them for Dre and see what Dre's thoughts were.

Two hours later he calls back and said Dre loved them and wanted me to come down, so I was on the next thing smoking back to L.A. to session up. Excited, all kinds of emotions running high, trying to map out my next move. By the time I got to L.A., he went on vacation for a week so I was on standby. Then one random night while I was at a friend's house, we got the call to come in the studio. I ended up coming to the studio and as I'm walking in the front, he was walking through the back. They introduced me as a songwriter and he was like, "Oh, you write?" And I was like, "Yeah, I do." He was like, "Okay, we going to see you tonight." And he just walks off. I was like, "Oh. Well, okay. Okay. All right. This is interesting."

I had done my research about the Kendricks and 50 Cent and The Game. I've heard their stories about the infamous hot seat. That's essentially where you try to put your skills to the test. He sees if you can create a song from scratch, figure out the concept, and then build it up. I didn't know that that was going to be my night for the hot seat but it turned into that fast. It went well though.

You always got to be ready, right?

Yeah, you got to stay ready. I successfully passed my hot seat experience. Everybody left the room and it was just Dre and I talking and he told me that he really felt that I had a special gift. Man, after that, I worked with him for about a year-and-a-half and just learned. It was like a master class in the whole song creation process. From getting the instruments for the musicians in there to build up the track, the writers, everything all the way down to the mixing. I learned so much. He taught me how to mix on the SSL board.

GRAMMYs

Where did you see the biggest improvement in yourself and in your skills coming out of that year-and-a-half with Dre?

I think I saw the biggest improvement in my attention to detail. I always like to believe I'm a pretty detailed person, but being around him and hearing in his ear and the way he doesn't miss anything, I was like, "Oh. It gets deep. It can get deeper than this."

And also patience. One of the things I learned from working with Dre is if there's a bar that hasn't been delivered right, maybe the vocal inflections aren't right or they're missing the timing, the average person over enough takes is just going to move on like, "We'll just, we'll come back to this." He'll ... if it takes eight hours to get that one bar right, we're going to sit there for eight hours until that bar is right before we move on.

I think that's a testament to the quality of his mixing, the quality of his work, is because his attention to detail and his commitment to making sure that it's right is next level. I definitely took that with me and started applying that to my own processes, and definitely this project for the Take Your Time album. I feel like that was a definite growth in terms of sound, in terms of content, in terms of delivery from my Never See EP to the Take Your Time album.

When did this group of songs for Take Your Time really start to come together? Was it during that time with Dre?

Some of them were during the time, towards the end of that, of my time there. They were just all over. Some I created back home. Some I created in L.A. Really just went off a vibe and whenever I got the music in and try to really take my time and make sure that the conversations were authentic to me. Because I'm a songwriter also, sometimes you can get caught up in just doing generalized content or song structures because you want them to be shoppable. But the beauty of being able to work on your own thing is these stories are true to you, these experiences are true to you, and you can deliver them how you see fit.

I saw on Twitter you wrote, "Mixing my own record is therapeutic," and you mastered the album, too. Can you talk more about the choice to handle the entire process like that as an artist, and tell us what specifically you find therapeutic about mixing?

I started learning how to mix out of necessity. At first, I didn't want to do any of that heavy lifting, but early on when you don't have a budget, it's spending. Before I really had a method or a rhythm to my recording process, I was spending a lot of money making it in the studio and not being really satisfied with the product.

And so I took a vested interest in trying to make sure that I understand what I'm doing, understand the sound that I'm trying to achieve. Then I just told myself from there that I'm probably just going to stick with it until I don't have to. But now, the reason why I posted that is I don't know if there's going to be a time where I feel like I don't want to be that hands on on the project. I feel like now it's just become a part of my creative process because I've been doing it so long this way. And then, not to mention, the gems that I was able to take away from working at Dre's studio is like, it only makes me more excited to really try to achieve the best sound possible. And who better than to practice with than yourself?

That reminds me of how Prince made his records. I saw the tribute you posted on what would have been his birthday and I love what you wrote: "He really advocated for understanding the music business and owning your own material." But that can be daunting for artists, so how were you able to do that in your career, to gain an understanding of the industry that surrounds the music you're making?

I know that the business side is definitely a turnoff for a lot of creatives. I think for me, personally, the business side has always been my thing because even prior to doing music whole-heartedly or full-fledged, I was on road to becoming a lawyer. I was a pre-law student. I majored in philosophy and minored in international business, but that was all in process of pursuing a law degree.

And so business has always been my interest and ethics have always been in my interest. I don't necessarily detach the two. I'm just as interested to learn about the infrastructure of the music business as I am on learning how to put a great song together.

I know it's not like that for everyone, but I'm definitely an advocate for it because that was one of the things that I drew to from Prince. I remember, Prince spent 23 years of his life fighting for his masters and advocating the importance of understanding publishing and owning your material. Even more recently, Nipsey Hussle, I was privileged with the opportunity to work with Mike & Keys who executive produced Nipsey's whole album and did a lot of his previous Mixtapes. That was my first job when I moved to L.A., was engineering for them.

"I'm just as interested to learn about the infrastructure of the music business as I am on learning how to put a great song together."

Just being around these great people that all advocate for ownership, they advocate for understanding of the infrastructure of the business and being vertically integrated in your brand, these are all things that I took away and that I felt privileged to be able to be in the spaces to learn this information and apply it. I just have a high respect for people that could create that because I see so many people get taken advantage of just because they don't choose to take a vested interest in the business of their own career. It's like, "I get it. I know we're all creators," but that's the thing. If you're going to take it from being a hobbyist to making it a career, you've got to understand both. You have to have a healthy working knowledge of both.

Right now, the fight against police brutality and racial injustice is at the top of the music community's minds and hearts. From your perspective how you describe the current situation and what does change look like for you?

In terms of describing feelings about it, it's a wide range of emotions trying to process all of the things going on because it's happening in real time. I think it's definitely a marathon and not a sprint. I think it's amazing though that it's transitioned from just being a fight that you would only see Black people fighting for to, everybody is tired of this archaic system that's been oppressing people for so long. I think that speaks to just how bad it was.

For a long time it was only people of color and Black people that were fighting for this equality and then that there were so many people that just didn't understand it or, because based on how they grew up or who they grew up with, there was a disconnect. Now I feel like with technology being the way it is, being able to see what was hidden for so long because of media agendas and whatnot, now it's become a world issue and everybody's taking a vested interest in breaking this system down.

I know it's going to be a long fight but I think so much amazing is going to come from this, like amazing art. I know people, as creatives, we feel obligated to try to put something out right now in the middle of the time, but at the end of the day we're all human. We're still processing everything that's going on, we still have our loved ones. We're still in the middle of a pandemic while all of this is going on and dealing with ramifications of that.

2020 has been a wild time. It's been nonstop chaos, but some of the most beautiful things grow after the storm. I think some of the art is going to be amazing that comes from this. I think people are becoming more engaged in the political process, whereas [before] a lot of things were swept under the rug or bypassed because a lot of people never took a interest in understanding how politics work or understanding infrastructure and how they fit in the pie. But now, everybody's looking at everything with a microscope. I think overall, it's going to be to the betterment of the culture and climate. Not just creatives, but I mean everybody.

GRAMMYs

Where do you turn to make sure that you're emotionally rested and healthy during such chaotic times?

Man, I think music is that for me. Music is definitely my therapy, is definitely my release. When I'm creating music, when I'm sitting focused on mixing music, it's like my escape for that little portion, a couple hours of work from everything that's going on.

I think it's important because I think some people feel the fight for justice has to be a 24/7, 365 thing, but it's important to take breaks because you're not going to sprint a marathon. It's important to find your stride. It's important to take those breaks and make sure that your energy stays centered because it gets overwhelming. Life in general gets overwhelming. With a lot of the things that we've been seeing it's been a lot of sensory overload. When I start feeling like that, man, I just put Pro Tools on and try to figure out something to create. That usually gives me peace of mind for the day.

You have so many different experiences and talents, and as the cliché goes, "You got your whole life to make your debut album, and just two years or whatever to make your sophomore album." But you could really take your career in any direction you want. What you're thinking about doing next and long term.

Definitely more music on the way. I've been working on another project that's almost done already, actually. I'm working around the clock.

I think my short-term goals is I want to be a successful artist to create a platform that will allow the funneling of information in regards to the music business to make sense for people. A lot of people, it depends on how they see you to be willing to receive the information. You can hear the right information from somebody that you're unfamiliar with, and it may strike you differently if it's somebody you are familiar with. I just understand how that goes and with all the things that I advocate for, I understand that my platform has to be a little bigger for it to really resonate and to stick with the massive. That's my goal.

GRAMMYs

My goal has never really just been to be rich and famous. I just want to be comfortable. I want to make sure my family's taken care of. And then the biggest part of this pursuit is leaving a legacy that impacts people after me, that's always been my thing. I want to create opportunities. I want to create pipelines for independent artists who want to pursue a major situation or who want to eventually stay indie, but understanding what each of those roles come with and understanding what things they need to have in place to make sure that they're handling their business well-roundedly and successfully.

And then being an engineer. Mixing engineer, master engineer is my long-term thing. I can do that until I'm old. When being an artist is no longer a pursuit of mine, I just want to be the guy behind the scenes getting all the cables out, going through the process and mixing all the records.

Grammys Newsletter

J. Ivy Talks Making Music For Social Change, Leading With Love & The Importance Of Supporting Black Artists

Donnie Simpson

Donnie Simpson

Photo: Aaron Davidson/Getty Images

News

Radio And TV Legend Donnie Simpson On The Key To His Decades-Long Career: "I Don't Have To Be Great––I Just Have To Be Me"

Facebook Twitter Email
In honor of his recent induction into the Radio Hall Of Fame, GRAMMY.com highlights the broadcasting icon's celebrated career, his impact on media and culture, and his ongoing advocacy for Black representation in radio and TV
Eliza Berkon
GRAMMYs
Jan 6, 2021 - 3:43 pm

About five years ago, Washington, D.C., DJ Donnie Simpson emerged from retirement after a little coaxing from his wife, Pam.

"She framed it really [nicely]. She said, 'Donnie, everywhere you go, all you hear is how much people love you and they wish you'd do something else. And God has given you a gift that you should be sharing with people,'" Simpson tells GRAMMY.com over a Zoom interview. "That's what she said, but what I heard was, 'Get out.'"

The affable radio and television icon ultimately returned to the airwaves in 2015. Five years later, he received one of the highest accolades in the radio industry: Last October, he was inducted into the Radio Hall Of Fame, an honor recognizing his contributions to the radio medium over the last half-century. 

The honor is the culmination of the legend's celebrated, decades-long career in radio, which launched in the '70s when a teenaged Simpson got his start on the Detroit airwaves. At the time, he looked to a handful of local DJs as mentors, including the high-spirited Ernie Durham. 

"I did not adopt his on-air style, but I try very much to adopt his off-air style. He always carried it with class," Simpson said of Durham. "And that was the example to me: to always be kind to people, to look people in the eye, no matter who they were."

It wasn't until Simpson left Detroit, in 1977, and logged his first few years at WKYS 93.9 in D.C.––a station he would reformat and lead to No. 1 as program director––that he found his stride on air, he says. 

"It's something I always say, and it's so true: I don't have to be great––I just have to be me," Simpson says. "Being you always works because that's the spirit that connects us. That's the thing that makes you real to people; they feel you when you are you. When you're trying to be something else, they know that, too."

Simpson says he's long avoided listening to recordings of himself for fear that the inevitable analysis would disrupt the "magic" of what he'd helped create. That approach also extended to his TV career, which started—not counting a role he now laughs about on a short-lived dance show in Detroit—when he served as backup sports anchor for WRC-TV in the early '80s. Not long after, he began hosting a relatively new show on the then-burgeoning BET network. Simpson had concerns about whether the show was the right fit for him.

"BET, in its infancy, wasn't a very pretty baby. The quality wasn't there. I've always been protective of image, because that's all I have," Simpson says. "But after thinking about it for two days, I decided this: This is our first Black television network. If you have something to offer it, you have to do it."

The two-hour show, "Video Soul," which spotlighted Black artists at a time when MTV was almost exclusively focused on white musicians, became BET's highest-rated program at one point.

Jeriel Johnson, executive director of the Recording Academy's Washington, D.C., chapter, remembers watching "Video Soul" as a teen in his Cincinnati home. Simpson, he says, was a "steady presence of Black excellence."

"He was the face of BET," Johnson says. "He was just a staple, and he had such a calming voice and he was super smooth. I just looked up to him as a young, Black kid who loved music ... And I remember seeing him and being like, 'Wow, I could be on TV, too. If he can, I can.'"

On the program, Simpson interviewed artists who were already riding the waves of success or were well on their way: Jodeci, SWV, New Edition, En Vogue, Mariah Carey, Take 6, Whitney Houston. Regardless of the star who graced the couch each night, Simpson took the same approach.

"For every guest I ever had on 'Video Soul,' they would bring me a bio with all this information on the artist … I wouldn't even read it," Simpson remembers. "That's the point of the interview, for me to get to know you."

Elise Perry, a producer and the president of the Recording Academy's Washington, D.C., chapter, worked behind the scenes on "Video Soul" in the '90s, a pivotal decade for both R&B and hip-hop, she notes.

"All of these different subgenres of R&B really started to have an uptick in the '90s, and the fact that BET was present visually at that time, representing Black music in that way—it was a very special time," Perry says. "There were a lot of Black folk there, and it was just like a party. It was where I got my 'master's degree,' I call it. Everybody was family … It was just like a mecca."

Read: Meet The Recording Academy D.C. Chapter's First Black Female President, Elise Perry

Simpson treated the crew like family and has continued to provide unparalleled support for the D.C. community over the years, Perry, a D.C. native, says.

"He's our family. He's our brother. He's our uncle. He's that dude next door. He's our neighbor. He's our friend," she says.

"Family" is also how GRAMMY-nominated producer Chucky Thompson describes Simpson, who had a big impact on him when he was growing up in D.C.

"I've learned so much about people from him, just the way that he's been excited about their careers," he says of Simpson. "It transcends to you. It's like, 'Wait a minute, Donnie's excited? Now I'm excited.'"

For Thompson, who helped craft hits for Faith Evans, Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige in the '90s, "Video Soul" was formative.

"It was almost like another version of what 'Soul Train' meant," Thompson says. "But [Simpson] got even more personal with you because he was able to talk to the artists and give you a little bit of insight on what their journeys were … He gave me a lot of information on how to make it in this business."

"Donnie Simpson is the standard," Joe Clair, comedian, radio personality, on-air veteran and host of "The Joe Clair Morning Show" on WPGC 95.5 FM in Washington, D.C., adds. "My mom and dad loved him, my siblings love him and people from a generation after me love him. That is a testament to who he is as a broadcaster and what he means to us as a voice for our community. I've worked with him throughout  the years, and he's given me valuable advice both for career moves and for negotiating my worth. He is a shining example for a life in radio and television on your own terms."

Yet becoming successful in the business, including achieving financial success, wasn't an easy journey for Simpson. The DJ has been vocal about the need for equitable pay for Black DJs. In recalling his own path to multimillion-dollar contracts, Simpson turns to a lyric from Elton John's "I've Seen That Movie Too": "It's a habit I have / I don't get pushed around."

"I've walked out [on deals], because you're not going to get me for half [the] price because I'm Black; those days are over," Simpson says, adding that in Detroit, he made one-fifth of what white DJs were making. "That was a very significant part of my career, to be able to be a part of changing that narrative, to letting them know you have to pay Black talent."

Simpson has also advocated for stations to put more of the DJ back into DJing. In the past few decades, he notes, many DJs have watched their curated playlists and airtime drift away due to technological advances and the consolidation of station ownership.

"So much of its personality has been stripped from it," Simpson says of the art of DJing. "I play whatever I want to play every day, but that's the magic of it to me … I don't want a computer programming music for me, because every day feels different. And I like to be tapped into that feeling."

In 1974, Simpson played Elton John's "Bennie And The Jets" on his show in Detroit, a decision he says he fretted about because "Black folks didn't know Elton John." He played the song twice that evening and got an overwhelming response from callers. John himself was soon on the phone with Simpson to discuss the record's success in Detroit; he handed Simpson a gold record for the single six months later.

"It's music that you wouldn't traditionally associate with Black radio; it's Elton. But that was a lesson to me," Simpson says. "It's all music to me; I don't care who made it. I just care what it sounds like [and] if it fits what I'm doing."

The fact that most DJs no longer have the latitude to craft their own playlists is a big loss for radio, Simpson says.

"You have young people out here with great ears that will never get the chance to express themselves musically because it's all programmed for them," he says. "I used to love it when wheels would touch down in Atlanta or New Orleans [or] L.A.—wherever it was. I couldn't wait to pull out my little transistor radio and hear what they were doing in that city, because it was always different."

After Simpson learned he'd be inducted into the Radio Hall Of Fame this year, he took a look at its roster of honorees over the past three decades. When he didn't see New York DJ and “Chief Rocker" Frankie Crocker and other Black radio icons on the list, the announcement gave him pause.

"These are voices that you should know about, some great talents through the years ... legends that have gone largely ignored," he says. "But I also, in my acceptance speech, acknowledged that the [Radio Hall Of Fame] is trying to correct that. You look at the list of inductees this year, with Angie Martinez, The Breakfast Club, Sway Calloway and me––man, it's like #OscarsTooBlack. It's a lot of people of color that went in this year. So they have recognized that, and I applaud them for that."

At a time when systemic racism and police brutality against Black people have come to the forefront of the national dialogue, Simpson says he feels compelled to speak out.

"If I were not on the radio, if I didn't have a microphone, I think I would still feel that responsibility to whatever people I encounter that I could talk to, to tell them how important this moment in history is for us," Simpson says. "I am so honored that I have had a platform for, now, 51 years to allow these voices to come on the radio or on TV and talk about these matters that make a difference to our community."

In 2010, Simpson retired from WPGC, where he'd hosted a morning show for nearly two decades, after contending with a "toxic" environment. But five years later, he was back at the other end of the dial on D.C.'s WMMJ Majic 102.3. Now, another retirement seems like the furthest thing from his mind.

"What's there not to love about it? I sit there kicking it with people I love. We have all the fun we can stand," Simpson says.

As praise continues to roll in from industry A-listers for his Radio Hall Of Fame induction, Simpson has advice for the many artists and listeners who now look to him for guidance as he once looked to his own mentors: "Be kind."

Each morning, Simpson takes a walk or run beside the Potomac River. While he says there's a health benefit to the ritual, he's got an additional reason to step out of his door.

"What I'm really doing is collecting smiles," Simpson says. "That's kind of my purpose: to bring warmth and joy."

Tune in for a special Up Close & Personal conversation discussing Donnie Simpson's career and life in broadcasting. Moderated by Jimmy Jam, the event premieres Tuesday, Feb. 9, at 4:30 p.m. PST/7:30 p.m. EST via the Recording Academy's official Facebook page.

Beyond The Beltway: A Closer Look At Washington D.C.'s Vibrant Music Community

Grammys Newsletter

GRAMMYs

Terra Lopez of Rituals Of Mine

 
 

Photo: Jeffrey LaTour

News

Rituals Of Mine's Terra Lopez On The Grief & Growth Behind 'Hype Nostalgia'

Facebook Twitter Email
How traveling back past the heaviness of loss led to light and hope on the act's sophomore LP
Danielle Chelosky
GRAMMYs
Sep 27, 2020 - 3:00 am

Terra Lopez—the mastermind behind the thoughtful R&B project Rituals of Mine—is familiar with grief. When she was five and her brother was four, the two almost died in a garage fire. "I always think back about that," she shares over the phone on a peaceful Wednesday afternoon, "because it was literally a split moment where if I didn’t wake up in time, we would’ve died."

She is not afraid of her past, though; she’s well-acquainted with nostalgia, so much so that she thinks it’s the meaning of life. She loves to reminisce, because "that’s when I really learn about what matters, what connects, and what I have gained or lost in life," she explains.

Her forthcoming album Hype Nostalgia, whose title came from her old Tumblr blog, follows a timeline that begins all the way at her childhood and ends in present time. And a lot happened in between, including the recent deaths of her father and her best friend.

Hype Nostalgia arrives Sept. 25 via Carpark Records, and Lopez and her bandmate Adam Pierce have launched a podcast called "Hype Nostalgia TV." They interview their favorite artists—from Tegan & Sara to the Deftones—about what nostalgia means to them.

Read our interview with Lopez about her experience with grief, her desire for resiliency, and her healing process.

The press release for this album obviously caught my eye—especially with the first line: If you could recreate a time before you experienced the most extreme grief of your life, would you do it? I thought this idea of mapping out your trauma was interesting. How did you come up with this, and what was the process like?

While recording this album, I experienced two really extreme losses. My father died by suicide, and six months later my best friend drowned. I was just engulfed in this grief that I had never experienced before; this level of grief was really traumatizing. For a while, I lost my voice due to it. I didn’t want to create a sad record, though. I was very aware that I was feeling sadness. So, how do you create an album that’s the complete opposite of that—or that’s not just that?

I really had to get into this mode of thinking of like, Okay, let me go back in time. Let me think about: How was I before all of this trauma happened? What did life feel like? What was I inspired by? This concept of pre-loss was something that I became really fixated on. I was [previously] fixated on how I was feeling post-trauma. I really wanted to flip the idea of that and think about how I could create from a source of pre-loss.

Where did you get that instinct to not make a sad record?

The first few songs that I wrote were so heavy and so sad. I guess I wanted to create a resiliency. Not to say that a sad record isn’t resilient, but, for me, I wanted to create something that was a bit more comprehensive. During all of these sad events that had happened, I was also experiencing such a duality. I was also experiencing joy. I was experiencing good days and moments, along with the sadness. I wanted to create an album that could hold both evenly—both joy and pain. That was something that—right from the start—I knew.

Do you think that joy was a gratitude?

Absolutely. Especially within the first year of all of that, I was very aware of life and the fragility of it and of those in my life. I wanted to make sure that I expressed myself and my love for all of [them] and just living every single day to the fullest I could because I had been near death in such extreme ways. I definitely felt [grateful], and very aware of time and how short [life] is.

As a result of your trauma, you didn’t sing for a year. What was that like?

It was really scary, honestly. It wasn’t until after my experience that I learned that trauma can actually affect your body and can affect your voice in different ways. But I was so inside my head that I truly [freaked] myself out and felt like I couldn’t sing any longer. It was a very isolating experience, and I was really worried. I didn’t know if I would be able to sing again or perform again.

Luckily, I had an opera singer—who was my friend—in my life, and I started taking lessons from her. It wasn’t to start singing in that kind of way; it was more of a vocal health lesson and a mental health lesson. Getting more comfortable again with the act of singing, and less about technicality and more about regaining my confidence.

You went to a psychotherapy called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Can you explain what that is and how your experience was there?

It was a couple of years after all of this. I was really—for the first time in my life—taking care of my own mental health. Losing my father the way that I did really forced me to look inward and look at how I was taking care of myself—or not taking care of myself. I decided to finally get on medication and then it was about a year and a half later I decided to try talk therapy for the first time and then EMDR shortly after.

During this time, I discovered that trauma can have physical effects on you. It can actually change your brain chemicals. I found that to be fascinating, but I also found it to be terrifying because I had all of these cognitive abilities that were impaired after these losses. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t really articulate how I was feeling—I’m slowly gaining that back actually. I just felt slower, in all of the senses. I wanted to go to EMDR to see if I could move past [this] by using this very scientific way of triggering traumatic events so that you could have physical sensations to them and then move past them instead of getting stuck.

The song "Come Around Me" reckons with the way you’ve been taken advantage of in the music industry as a gay woman of color. Do you want to speak about that experience?

I think we’re at a really exciting time where we are finally starting to look inward, as a music industry, at abuse and how women have been treated. I have had a number of experiences with men, but also with women, with fellow artists who have done things that have jeopardized my career or have put me in weird situations—who have just been abusive. I wanted to create a song that reconciled that so that I can move past it, not hold this resentment or anger, and just let people know that there’s no hard feelings about it. Moving forward, I’m a lot older now, and I can see through people’s intentions. [I was really trying] to create a song that’s like, If you’re going to be in my life, this is what I demand.

Do you have any advice for others going through a healing process?

My biggest piece of advice would be to go through it. I learned very early on that you could try to run away from these uncomfortable feelings but it always catches up to you. Unless you address them head-on and really do the work of going through it, it really will affect you in such harmful ways.

I would recommend folks to allow themselves to feel the feelings in the moment. To accept that grief is not a one-time feeling, not a linear feeling, and that has been the hardest thing for me. Some days I’ll wake up and be like, Oh cool, that was three years ago! I’m totally fine now because three years is a long time! But that’s not how it works. Grief is something that might be there forever. It’s something that you have to live with and you have to learn how to carry. It does change you, but allow it to change you. I’ve learned a lot of incredible lessons from it.

Amy Allen Debuts Divine Single “Heaven” to Raise Awareness for National Recovery Month

Grammys Newsletter

GRAMMYs

Jacob Collier

Photo: Dyan Jong

News

Jacob Collier Decodes The Magic Behind 'Djesse Vol. 3,' Talks Working With Tori Kelly, Daniel Caesar & More

Facebook Twitter Email
The GRAMMY winner dives deep into the latest piece of his ambitious and awe-inspiring quadruple-album puzzle
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Sep 17, 2020 - 6:03 pm

Anyone who knows anything about him, knows: Jacob Collier is on another level. The prodigious British musician, composer and arranger extraordinaire has notched tens of millions of YouTube views and four GRAMMYs with his effortless command of the medium of music. And even though, traditionally, transparent geniuses are hard to come by, Collier shares his heart and mind for music quite openly, leading in-depth workshops and Logic session breakdowns of his songs and his process. Yet, in speaking with him – even for all of the gobsmacking talent and insanely cool theory wizardry – his dominant trait manages to be his reverence for human instincts.

"The thing about when I make music," Collier told GRAMMY.com, "is that a lot of the decisions that may feel quite technical are basically based in feelings. It's based in an emotional decision."

Most recently, Collier has been channeling those decisions into an epic quadruple album, releasing its latest puzzle piece, Djesse Vol. 3, just last month complete with top-notch features from the likes of Tori Kelly, Kiana Ledé, Tank And The Bangas, Daniel Caesar, Jessie Reyez, T-Pain and more. The album shows off not only Collier's approachable, but his remarkable vision for what music can do and how it can connect people across the world, even during a pandemic. Feeling all of this from an artist who just turned 26 years old last month produces a hope we need more than ever right now.

We tapped into Collier's fascinating world, catching him over the phone from his increasingly famous music room in his home in North London to talk about Djesse Vol. 3 and its stunning collaborations, what he's learned during lockdown, his process of sharing his abundant musical knowledge and even what he does to unwind. Enjoy...

A quadruple album is an ambitious undertaking, and I read somewhere you said you're treating it like a big puzzle. How does Djesse Vol. 3 fit into that puzzle for you?

So this whole quadruple album thing was something I dreamed up about three years ago, two or three years ago now, I suppose. The goal was how can I build bridges between all these different musical faculties that I've been listening to and loving for all these years, and get them all to make sense within each other's contexts? I've been an avid listener of all these different kinds of music for so long. I was brought up on Bartok meets Beck meets the Beatles. And then you've got Björk, and you've got Joni Mitchell and you've got Stevie Wonder and Prince and Earth, Wind & Fire. All these styles and different languages and different parts of the world and different histories converged for me as a teenager.

I just became fascinated with the idea of making it all make sense with each other, so combining different elements. I made this album, I suppose, about five years ago called In My Room, which is my first album. I made it in this room I'm currently in, in my home in North London. And that was really the first time I'd ever written songs. It was good fun.

After that album came out and I toured it about, and I really wanted to do something a little more epic. I set about this four album process delegating my musical ideas as they came out into these different rooms, different boxes. So Djesse Vol. 1 is the birth of the whole thing, the gestation of the sound world. And it's very large. It's a big, expensive work. There's an orchestra present, they are choirs present, the acoustic space taken to great heights, that was the space. And I collaborated with the incredible called the Metropole Orchestra on that record. Djesse Vol. 2 is still acoustic, it's still in the real acoustic sounds world, but it's a much smaller space. So more about songwriting and folk music, world music, a little bit of jazz thrown in, and some music from Portugal, music from Mali, Africa, all sorts of things. So that was a smaller acoustic space.

And Djesse Vol. 3 was always the one I was most excited about because it enabled me the space to explore a lot of the negative space type sounds, sounds made in the digital sphere, electronic stuff, which I suppose lends itself to hip-hop and R&B, and you've got soul music in there, and you've got funky music in there. And pop as well. I always wanted to explore those things.

And the fun thing for me was bringing the aesthetics that I've have been creating and I've been fascinated by for the last 20 years and trying to invent these sounds that I loved listening to in my own terms. And then Djesse Vol. 4 it's going to be the culmination of all these different ingredients thus far.

There are so many great collaborations on Djesse Vol. 3. Does your ability to be so self-sufficient and play every instrument yourself help you when you work with someone?

Well, it's a blessing and a curse because on the one hand, when you've done things yourself for a long time I think it's easier to fall into your own habits and to come into any situation with a preconceived notion of how you'd like it to go and how you'd imagine it could go. In my brain... For example, walking into the room with Tori Kelly, it's like, well, I could go many directions with a voice like Tori's, because Tori's voice is like this kind of music acrobatic machine. It can do so many wonderful things, emotive things.

And so in some ways that stuff is not helpful baggage because it just gets in the way of the present moment. And so with Tori, it was one of the first times really in my musical life where I walked into a room, and I discarded all of my previous ideas. I didn't have a song that I'd written for her. I didn't have an idea, a framework for something I wanted her to be a part of. We walked into them cold and we just started jamming. And so that process to me has proven to be really quite fantastic. And actually, sometimes more effective than when I walk into a room feeling like this is the entire song, can you just sing the melody? Which also can work quite well.

I think for me, it's always about trying to make room for somebody else's musical intelligence and not let my own experience of creating stuff just get in the way, because everyone has their own standpoint. And I think the thing I'm most interested in with all these different collaborators is that some of their standpoints are crazily different from mine. Someone like Jesse Reyez or T-Pain, both of whom are on a song on Djesse Vol. 3 called "Count the People." They come from really different times, different generations of music making. And they have very different reaches in terms of who listens to their music and have very different experiences. And they have totally different voices, but for me I was pretty excited by the idea that these two different musical entities could exist within the same breath.

And same goes, for example, on Djesse Vol. 2. There's a song where Steve Vai, the rock guitarist, is playing in harmony with Kathryn Tickell, who's a Northumbrian pipes player from the North of England, and some of the language is quite similar. I love finding these ways of joining these flavors together. So the Daniel Caesar song was another example where I hadn't planned too much of it and we walked into the room, and Daniel's very natural process of coming up with words, lyrics just fell right into the pocket of this groove that I've been working on. We ran with it and that felt really cool.

Wow. What strikes me about your approach to all this is your awareness. You're not short on talent or ideas, but your awareness is really the missing link. In this last six months, where we've all been on lockdown, can you tell us a couple of things that you've discovered or maybe even rediscovered about yourself musically?

Yeah. I think it goes without saying this is a time where a lot of people have gone back to square one or even pre square one. And it's like, "what is a square?" [laughs] And for me, I was so busy with touring and I was so busy with just scampering around the world, doing mad stuff. And if I wasn't touring I was trying to finish something or directing a music video or editing a music video, or trying to keep up with the social stuff or whatever. There's all these different elements. I think when a lot of these things slowed down, the cool thing was we had to take stock of what the hell is going on and actually what's important.

A lot of people that I spoke to, friends and musicians, I think realized that a lot of the stuff that feels really important is not important. And one of those things maybe is rushing and doing things fast and things having to be done now. And if it's not done now, it's going to be too late. It's always urgent. I really think urgency a massive construct. And I think it's been really nice in the last, couple of weeks since Djesse Vol. 3 has come out to remember that actually it's nice to not rush stuff. I finished Djesse Vol. 3 by the end of March, I was ready to go with my 10-week tour, which got thrown out the window when the pandemic hit. And I then spent four months making the album just so much better than it would have been otherwise. It's so much deeper and so much more sonically satisfying.

I'm really grateful for the time, but honestly, I haven't really stopped in quarantine because I've been challenging myself to all these different kinds of things. I mean I've been teaching master classes from home. I performed on TED. I did a Tiny Desk from home. I made a video for Jimmy Kimmel Live. I made a video for Jools Holland in the UK. I made a video for Stephen Colbert. And on top of that, I was mixing my album and producing that. I was directing the videos and I was editing the videos and all this stuff too.

I think for me, it's been a really interesting period of time. Without being able to actually be with people, how do you get stuff done that's collaborative at all? And one fun solution I found is best explained through a song on Djesse Vol. 3 called "In Too Deep," which featured Kiana Ledé. I actually mailed Kiana a mic and I installed this program called Source Connect on her computer, which meant that I could move her mouse around on her laptop. So far as to install Logic Pro. I taught her how to put the mic in and stuff, and she was super brilliant at that. She sang her tracks and I could hear what she was singing in real time, and printed the tracks into her computer. And then I sent those tracks to myself at the Dropbox here. I continued mixing my song.

That was a really amazing moment where you think actually collaboration is completely enabled by the tech that is existing, but you have to be courageous enough to follow these things through and to be determined to find solutions to things that might feel weird. I think I've enjoyed being a bit of a problem solver in the last six months or so.

You mentioned the workshops. There's so much of what many people would call genius in your process, but there's also so much transparency. Can you talk about what the process means to you versus the result?

Yeah, it's funny because finishing stuff was something I was really bad at. For the whole of my teenage years I was really bad at finishing things. I wanted to get good at it. So the best way to get good at it was just to practice it. So I practiced finishing stuff. The four-album project was like, this is going to make me shed finishing stuff. I'm going to have to get good at this because otherwise I'm going to suck. The fun thing I think for me is learning how to step away from your ideas when you can. But the last year, or four or five months or so, I rediscovered the joys of going right to the very deepest corners of your process having officially finished the song. It's like, how do you get the song to spring off the page, as it were, and feel alive?

A lot of the purpose of doing that is, for me, even more interesting than what some of it ends up sounding like… And also, I love explaining it because I think by explaining it to others, I explain it to myself, and I've realized the connections that maybe I don't realize just by sitting and doing it all day long.

I fell in love with that process a couple of years ago. And I've since really enjoyed just taking apart my Logic session. So I did one for this track called "All I Need," and I did one for "Sleeping On My Dreams." And in the past I did one for "Moon River," which was the arrangement that won a GRAMMY, I guess earlier this year, which is weird that things are still in this year. Also, "All Night Long."

It was fun just to think about, how do I present this as something that people can maybe understand at a broken down level? The thing about when I make music and how it feels to me is that a lot of the decisions that may feel quite technical are basically based in feelings, it's based in an emotional decision. I want gravity to come here or I want it to feel like you're twisting here, or deepening here, or some unconscious awareness that a breath will lead to another breath, or whatever. And these things I think, they're fun to take apart and think about in active terms.

Can you give us any clue on maybe what's to come for Djesse Vol. 4?

Djesse Vol. 4 is something I've almost deliberately not planned too much. But one thing I will say for sure is that I think it's going to be very centralized around the human voice. It's my favorite instrument of all instruments, my voice. I started as a singer, really. I started singing all the instruments before I could even play instruments, like the piano or the bass or the guitar. I was singing all those parts. I want to come back to my roots in that way. I want to do that, but obviously with human voice there's so many directions you can go.

One idea I have for the album, that is if I can go on tour within the next two years so I really hope I can, is to begin to use some of my audiences as instruments even more than I have been. In the last year or so I've been... When I was on the road last year I really enjoyed the concept of the audience singing harmony. I would split my audience into three or four or five parts and get them singing these notes, and we'd improvise these chords. So up and down arrows spontaneously dictates it to different parts of the room and it would be this ever changing chords, omnichords. It really inspired me to think about the voices.

I think maybe somewhere between the audiences of my live shows and the choirs that I love so much around the world and have built relationships with, and also some of my favorite musicians and artists in the world, who I guess I can't reveal too much of right now, but there was some extraordinary singers, vocalists, and people who I've been in touch with for a long, long time who are going to be involved in Djesse Vol. 4. I think it's really a celebration of all these different languages. Because for me, I think at this point with Vol. 1, 2 and 3, I've covered a fair few genres, but I think that it's about bringing it home to where it all started for me, which is the voice, and is the voices of the world.

And I think it's such an important time for people to use their voices in so many ways, right? As people and politics in the world and musically, I think a lot of people feel like their voice sometimes is not important, or that it's difficult to use their voice or raise their voice in certain situations. But I think for me it's like the keys to the castle. If you're able to sing, if you're able to speak, and you're able to be honest within that space, it feels like a really good starting point for the whole world of expression. And to me, I think if there's one thing Djesse Vol. 4, it's definitely intended to be, right now, it's to celebrate that, celebrate the voices that make us human.

That's beautiful, Jacob. It's high concept, but it's also rooted in basic human connection... I know that it's a tough time to be planning a tour, but maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you have in mind for the next time you hit the road?

Yeah, so this is a whole new idea that I was talking to this amazing company called Lyte about recently. We've unveiled this thing, which is kind of a new concept, but it makes sense to me. The idea is, I'm saying I'm going to go to these 91 cities, minimum of 91 cities, at some point in the coming years, and fans can RSVP to these gigs. They can basically reserve their place on the wait list for tickets. So no venue are announced, there's no dates announced because nobody knows when it's going even to be possible, but the moment that things are possible the gigs will go on sale and the people who've reserved tickets will get their tickets.

The coolest thing to me as an artist is that, that means whenever I do go on tour that the fans can dictate the sizes of the venues that we play, which is actually a foreign concept, because normally as a musician, you say, "Oh, I'm going to go play a gig out at the Wiltern and I just hope it sells out. But it might not. Or maybe it will be way too small and there'll be way more people, but we all got to squeeze it in. And it's difficult to move other gigs around on the tour because they're all confirm." So the cool thing now is that however many tickets we reserved in these markets over the next year or so, even if we're not on the road, we can still be planning and thinking and building relationships with venues and thinking how does it make sense to route this and stuff? So, yeah, obviously the exciting thing is the people can go on jacobcollier.com and they can reserve tickets to those gigs, even though we don't know when they're going to happen, there's still something that I can look forward to.

Definitely. Ok, last question. What are some of your interests outside of music?

Good question. Right before you called for this interview I was really deep on YouTube watching videos about Fourier transform and quantum mechanics, which actually is not something I'd normally do just to chill out. I like going deep on some of the concepts that make up our universe. That makes me happy and quite excited. And on a completely different axis, I also enjoy a good game of badminton.

Where Songwriting Meets Innovation: Cliff Goldmacher Puts His Work & Wisdom Into Words

Grammys Newsletter

 

Kiana V

Kiana V

Photo Courtesy of 88rising

 
 
News

PARADISE RISING: How 88rising's New Label Is Pushing Filipino Music And Culture To The Forefront

Facebook Twitter Email
GRAMMY.com caught up with 88rising founder Sean Miyashiro and Filipino artists Kiana V and Leila Alcasid to talk about how PARADISE RISING is spotlighting the blossoming music scene in the Philippines
Anjana Pawa
GRAMMYs
Aug 30, 2020 - 7:00 am

From the start, 88rising was always a passion project, with founder Sean Miyashiro at the forefront of a dream. In 2015, he started the company, which takes its name from the Chinese symbol for "double luck and fortune," hoping to create a label that could represent and showcase the talent of underground Asian artists. Fast-forward five years later, and 88rising has become a global brand, bridging the gap between Eastern and Western pop culture and representing some of the most fervent Asian acts in the music industry. But was it really "double luck" that propelled them to the top?

Regularly collecting millions of views per video on their YouTube channel, 88rising has launched multiple newcomers into superstardom, in turn creating a space for Asian rappers, singers and artists to thrive in music. The company's roster includes Rich Brian, the Indonesian-Chinese rapper/singer behind the 2016 viral song and video "Dat $tick"; Chinese hip-hop quartet Higher Brothers, who have been revered for bypassing several censorship regulations in their homeland with their lyrics; and Indonesian R&B songbird NIKI, who, at 21, has opened for Taylor Swift, Halsey and other major stars on tour. 

88rising artists have also secured high-profile collaborations with some of the biggest names from the East and West, including Hong Kong-native rapper and K-pop idol Jackson Wang, Korean rock/pop group DAY6 and former EXO member Kris Wu as well as rap giants likes 21 Savage, Playboi Carti and Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah.

Both the artists and the mass media company itself have grown cult-like followings via their groundbreaking music and the globally inclusive multimedia world they've created, which collectively celebrate Asian and Asian-American culture and identity. 88rising's annual Head In The Clouds Festival, dubbed the "Asian Coachella" by Rolling Stone, emphasizes the importance of representation, one of Miyashiro's main goals behind the label. (Head In The Clouds was due to debut in Jakarta, Indonesia, this past March before it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 88rising was scheduled to host its Double Happiness event series at this year's Coachella before the festival was postponed in June.)

"88rising is a culture that people want to get behind," Miyashiro explains to GRAMMY.com via email. "It's the type of movement that makes people wanna get tattoos of the logo on their bodies. That doesn't just happen to any media company or record label. We mean something intangible to people."

Now, the collective is expanding into Southeast Asia with the launch of its new sister label, PARADISE RISING. 

In July 2020, 88rising partnered with Globe Telecom, the Philippines' biggest telecommunications company, to create PARADISE RISING, a label focused on highlighting Filipino artists and culture. The imprint's inaugural mixtape, semilucent, released last month (July 31), spotlights the rising artists putting the island country on the music map, including Jason Dhakal, Leila Alcasid, Massiah, Fern., and Kiana V. Collectively, semilucent embodies the individual artists' Filipino heritage and culture.

GRAMMY.com caught up with 88rising founder Sean Miyashiro and Filipino artists Kiana V and Leila Alcasid to talk about how PARADISE RISING is spotlighting the blossoming music scene in the Philippines, the rising influence of Asian artists in R&B and hip-hop, and the ongoing journey toward "true Asian representation in pop culture."

How did 88rising start?

Sean Miyashiro: 88rising started with a small dream in a parking lot in the Bronx. That's what makes it so crazy. We had no idea what we would become. We're still a small team, and it's always been DIY for us. Being small and scrappy has allowed us holistic creative control of our brand, our vision and our future. We put out things into the world that we believe in. 

You have a very wide array of artists who are given the freedom to express themselves as they see fit. Has this always been your vision with the label?

Miyashiro: We're all family. We provide our artists the space and creative freedom to do what they want. At the end of the day, what we want is the same: to make dope music while trailblazing the way towards a future with true Asian representation in pop culture. 

88rising has collaborated with many artists who are already so successful in the East, including Jackson Wang and Kang Daniel. How do these collaborations come to fruition? Do you think this helps blur the lines that might exist between artists from the West and the East?

Miyashiro: Everything that happens has been serendipitous and natural. We never force anything, but when we see an opportunity, we put our whole hearts behind it. And in the process, if it brings more people together, then we've done our job—and more.

Read: K-Pop Phenom Eric Nam Talks New Mini-Album 'The Other Side' And Life As One Of Korea's Biggest Stars

What prompted the creation of PARADISE RISING? 

Miyashiro: It really just made sense for us. The synergy with Globe was there. With their local expertise paired with 88rising's global infrastructure, PARADISE RISING brings talented emerging Asian artists to the forefront of global youth culture. We're just continuing to do what we do best. 

The label's debut EP, semilucent, highlights the broad diversity of Filipino artists and styles. Is there something about the Philippines, in particular, that led you to explore the artists and music from there? 

Miyashiro: The Philippines has such a vibrant music culture, and there are so many young talented artists who are emerging. We want to amplify this on a global scale. 

What parts of your Filipino culture and heritage do you bring into your music, lyrics and songwriting?

Kiana V: I'd say being a Filipino, we're very passionate people, and you hear that in our music; [whether it's] songs that are lively, our ballads or in our folk music, the vulnerability stands out. That's something I definitely bring into my music. 

Leila Alcasid: I always pay attention to my process; Filipinos always want to give every part of themselves. The way that this translates in music is that we're very vulnerable. If you look at the music that we listen to, it's really all to do with digging deep and having music that relates to the human condition ... I guess I'm trying to be as vulnerable as possible, trying to open myself up. 

Who are your biggest musical influences?

Kiana V: I was always drawn to Solange. When she was able to break away and do her own thing, I followed her immediately. I'm a huge fan of her storytelling and her way of writing. I grew up listening to a lot of Brandy, JoJo and Aaliyah, too. [Laughs.] Oh my God, I'm such a millennial. A lot of R&B and jazz artists. I'd say those are my main musical influences. 

Alcasid: Different aspects of my music are informed by different artists. Norah Jones, a lot of Nelly Furtado, that's an example of who I look to on how to approach my vocals. I'm not a belter, I'm a lot more relaxed when I sing, and I think that was heavily influenced by those artists. From 88rising, I am so inspired by NIKI. I think she is such a talented writer. Her lyrics are so witty, but they're also incredibly poetic; I'm a huge fan. 

Between 2017 to now, which is the bulk of when I started learning how to write songs and figuring out what my sound was, I started listening to a lot of Korean music. There was a point when I was obsessed with BTS, and I feel like my love for BTS was a big part of why I attempted to string a narrative through everything in my first EP. A lot of their work is very narrative-heavy, and I was inspired by that. I wanted to do that for my EP, and it kind of even happened and continued in "Clouds," my song on semilucent.

Read: BTS Talk Inspiration Behind "Dynamite," New Album, Gratitude For ARMY & More

The sounds on semilucent are mainly R&B and hip-hop. Can you speak a bit on the rising influence of Asian artists in this space? 

Kiana V: R&B and hip-hop has been a growing sound in the Asian community. I believe it's always been there. With technology and social media, people have been given a space to grow their own platforms, and these talented artists are finally being able to shine in their own space. As far as evolution is concerned, I think there's just room for so much growth and a burst of more and more artists.

Alcasid: There's such a huge collective of people here [in the Philippines] that focus on those sounds. I wasn't very aware of the hip-hop scene here, but as I've been here longer, I'm noticing that the one thing they're really informed by is politics. I feel like on one end, it can be a bit risky. But on the other, it's a way to express yourself in a way that's very honest and runs historical. 

I learned a lot about how Filipinos are approaching hip-hop through my boyfriend, who's a rapper here. It's been interesting to see what inspires hip-hop and how they're influenced by the West. They're tying in the sounds of the West, but it's still authentically them as possible ... In all different parts of Asia, we're influenced by the West and what's already been done, but you can identify the styles and the way in which they're transformed to become inherently Asian. 

What does the future look like for 88rising and PARADISE RISING? 

Miyashiro: We have a few super-exciting [artist] signings on the way and more mixtape drops incoming. 

Naeem Talks New Album 'Startisha,' Creativity In Quarantine And The Need For Change In America

Grammys Newsletter