How did the deal with Decon come about?
Abdullah is my manager along with this other lady named Erika. I’ve been working with them for the last two years now I think…I don’t know…I can’t even keep track really, it’s been a blur this past couple years. They kind of took my music to the next level. They helped me organize a lot of my ideas. I’ve always had ideas and means to putting my ideas to fruition, but they’ve helped keep them in the order they needed to be in. Through that I was able to finally start making an impact on an industry level. Instead of when I put out music only my fans and a little following of people paid attention to it, people in the industry started paying attention to it.
Jason Goldwatch was really into some of the music he was hearing. He’s one of the co-founders of Decon. He’s actually a really epic video director. He’s the director of the “A Breathtaking Trip” music video that I put out recently. Yeah, they had expressed interest and then the other owner of Decon, Peter Bittenbender made his was out to Los Angeles and made it a point to meet up with me over here. It all fit. They got where I wanted to go creatively and they offered me the means to be able to do it and still be able to maintain the artist integrity that I really care about at the end of the day. It never a matter of money or anything. It was really just a matter of somebody providing me the means to do what I want creatively.
What labels were looking at you before Decon came along?
It was just a bunch of various labels…not necessarily indie labels, but a bunch of various labels and not necessarily rap labels. It’s really just a random list of folks that I was meeting up with and talking with, but Decon was the one that was very persistent and they really understood the vision beyond just seeing my name on a blog or something. They understood the music. It was beyond the hype they’d heard from other people.
Let’s talk about A Breathtaking Trip to That Otherside (January 29th, 2013 release). Tell me about the project.
The project is…Let’s see, when did I start working on this? [laughs] It feels like I started it a long time ago. February of 2011 I released an instrumental project Mansions. That got some pretty cool acclaim via the internet and it kind of put me on the map for a lot of people due to the fact that people didn’t know I was a self-produced artist.
At that time I started conceiving and conceptualizing the title and overall theme of the album that eventually became A Breathtaking Trip to That Otherside. At that time it was honestly…I’m not going to say a dark time in my life, but I was taking a lot of mushrooms, getting fucked up all the time, you know, really pushing the limit. Literally it was for the sake of trying to spark some creative muse or something, trying to spark some sort of creative juices I had inside of me. In the midst of that I really tapped into a sound that I’m very, very, very comfortable with and proud of that I continue to do with my music even beyond this album–this feeling of just warm, ethereal…I hate using the word trippy…but yeah, trippy, psychedelic hip-hop music. Psychedelic in the sense that sometimes it’s sonically psychedelic and sometimes it’s psychedelic, like, when you’re picking apart the songwriting and the lyrics and reading the music between the lines.
The album came together over the course of 2011 and I finished it towards the end of the year. It’s such a blessing that people are finally getting it. It’s kind of been like…you know a lot of artists that are trying to organize how they put out music, they end up putting out music that they’ve had on deck for a while. This is the first time in my career I’ve had to sit around and be patient enough to put out music after the fact of me having it on deck and facing the test of time. I’m still proud of the project, stoked and eager for people to hear it.
It’s a full-length album that I’ve self-produced with the exception of a couple tracks that were co-produced. It has some really awesome features on it…Action Bronson, E-40, Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, Alchemist, this singer-songwriter I produce for BAGO…I’m very passionate about making cohesive projects and this is by far the most cohesive project that I’ve put out to date.
What was it like working with Action Bronson, E-40, Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire…what that something that you did in studio or was it just send it back and forth…
Yeah, every one of those artists are on the craziest schedule. So, a lot of those were back and forth. But, the production, the co-production features were done in-studio.
Could you tell me a little bit about Caleb Stone? He’s a co-producer on the album and you worked with him in-studio. Is he as talented as he seems?
Yeah he is. He’s crazy talented. I can’t tell you his exact backstory, but he used to live a boat for a bunch of years. So, I don’t know what that says about him, but it says something for sure. I know it means something. Somewhere along the lines of him living on the boat he became a very creative kid. I met him through taking mushrooms [laughs]. I met him through a mutual friend, we all got fucked up one time, ate shrooms. I paid dues…yeah, he came along because he works at a weed dispensary that I go to. He was homies with one of my homies there. We all ate shrooms together and then after that I found out he made beats. He played his beats. I got stoked on his beats and now we make beats together.
He definitely looks like a dude that works at a weed dispensary.
Yup. He definitely doesn’t look like a dude that makes the beats that he does. But, nowadays nobody looks like they make the beats that they do.
Nicely done man, big fan of Spit
‘Preciate it Oz!
So ill! Great read Seth!