It’s only a matter of time until Alex Wiley reaches widespread critical and commercial acclaim.
Chicago is an exciting place for hip-hop right now, and this is largely due to the fact that many new rappers hailing from the Chi are not traditionalist rappers but true artists who push boundaries, never afraid of experimentation. While good friend Chance the Rapper is currently leading the way with the April release of Acid Rap, Wiley, with his magnetic mic presence, is not far behind.
The (jokingly) self-professed black cousin of Andy Milonakis summoned a whole lot of depth and creativity for his recent project, Club Wiley, and the result is a stunning collection of tracks which paint an exciting picture infused by the powers of drugs, adolescence, and life itself.
After the recent collaborative project between Potholes In My Blog and Closed Sessions, an influential Chi-based indie label that has the good fortune of being able to call Wiley one of their artists, I had the chance to shoot some questions over to the promising young star in-the-making.
Potholes expects nothing less than big things from Wiley. Begin reading our interview with the rapper below.
PIMB: Only to serve as an introduction, we’ll start with a typical interview question: For those who have yet to hear your music, who is Alex Wiley?
Alex Wiley: Andy Milonakis’ black cousin.
PIMB: You just put out your official debut project, Club Wiley (which is fantastic, by the way). Can you shed a little light on your journey before that process? What was your life like, and what kept you entertained?
Alex Wiley: I dropped out of high school at 16. I basically was at the crib for a year watching the Maury Show and Jim Rome is Burning everyday. That’s when I would wake up. I would stay up til 6 a.m. on Facebook and not wake up til 2 or 3 in the afternoon. And then I’d do that five days a week, at home all day watching bullshit TV and not doing nothing. Fridays and Saturdays me and my friend Akeem would go to parties, and I basically did that for a full year.
Then my friend Kembe started rapping and I was going to the studio with him. Our group of friends would go, 4 or 5 of us. He was rapping kind of serious at the time. It was illmatic influenced stuff over MF Doom beats and shit. That’s what Kembe was on. He’d record his serious song, and because we would be coming from so far away, our ride would be coming at a set time everyday and we’d have extra time in the studio. It was our homie Roper’s cousin Justin Famous’s cri. So we’d make these joke songs. We’d make a huff ass beat. That was the point, they just sounded funny. They were huff ass beats and we’d make a funny song. We went by the name Swag Village (look us up on youtube). That’s when I first started rapping.
Take us through a typical day in the life of Alex Wiley in 2013. How are things different and how are they the same?
Now I keep pretty busy, recording and rehearsing, doing shows. It’s still the same cause I randomly have a day when I’m just at the crib chilling. It’s cool getting recognized in the streets sometimes or where ever we are, and somebody will recognize me. That’s really cool.
It doesn’t take much to tell that the aesthetics of your songs are incredibly layered, musical, and eclectic. I think the song “Earfucked” is a solid example of this, with its Arctic Monkeys sample. What qualities do you believe make someone not just a “rapper,” but rather a “hip hop artist”?
When you incorporate more than just rap into your songs, I think you become something more than a rapper. That’s the simplest way to put it.
How has your perspective changed on what it means to be an artist?
I’m not sure that it has. I knew at the beginning it was going to take a lot of work, it’s a grind. It’s a marathon, it’s something you have to work at everyday. I knew it would take a lot to do it. And I still feel that way.
After you playback your recent free album, where do you see yourself taking your sound for future releases? In what areas are you looking to improve yourself?
Well, the new sound is brighter and it’s a more high-octane type of style of music. It’s the other side of the coin from Club Wiley. Where Club Wiley was slow and kind of dark at times, this is going to be the other side of that. It’s more personal, but it’s about the things I’ve experienced since I made the first project. It’s about what my life is like now. It’s more personal and it’s more current.
Some moments in Club Wiley were reflective of my past, and this is very about my right now. I’m writing most of it my first time hearing the beat with what I’m thinking about in the exact moment. Putting together stuff that rhymes and how I’m feeling about things in the exact moment that I’m writing.