I make hiphop music as a producer/emcee based in Fort Collins, Colorado, originally from Los Angeles with deep roots in Bristol, England. I came up on punk, new wave, and experimental labels like Ghostly and Constellation, but hip-hop—especially A Tribe Called Quest and Wu-Tang—brought it all together for me. I started out drumming for punk bands and eventually found my way to drum machines, samplers, and the mic. After producing for a five-man hip-hop group in the early 2000s, I stepped out front as an emcee—and never looked back.
I fell in love with the beat on this track and then chopped it all to hell once I got it out of the Polyend Tracker and in to Logic Pro. This is the first track I’ve ever done where all the lyrics were written with a specific concept in mind. For this, it’s about finding yourself and believing in what you find.
The production of this music was kinda storied… I originally made this beat on my Polyend Tracker. It was one of the first joints I made on that machine, and I loved how fun it was to chop the samples. It was probably early 2022 or something… that’s how long I sat on this beat. But I’m learning that as soon as I pull stems into the DAW I gotta start mangling. It is the way. Or at least MY way. Now it’s thicker, more polished, and of course, saucy (sorry, had to). I met Sauce.K because he was always showing up at every NoCo hiphop event I was at. We got talking and built a connection through our mutual love of the hustle and hiphop. I’m a big fan of his flow, and inspired by his work ethic.
Dawningale wrote and performed an incredible chorus for this track. I was so excited to finally work with her. A lot of time, energy and collaboration went into this, and I hope ya’ll love it as much as we do!
Here’s my third release, team. “Must Be Me”. This track is loosely about mental health, because it’s a journey I’ve been on for years, now. But it’s only been the last few years that I’ve begun to recognize the depth of how my own mental health has affected every area of my own life.
This track was never supposed to be my second release… Bad Actors was. But I fell back in love with this beat in the middle of working with Dawningale on Bad Actors… so here we are. Most of you know that I started in music as a producer—not an emcee. I’ve always been a music-first artist and I think this track really shows that. The track was originally created on my beloved Synthstrom Deluge groovebox/synthesizer—all the way down to the arrangement. Then, I chopped it up and rearranged it and mastered with vocals in Logic Pro X. (Making ONE song from A-to-Z is a huge journey!) I’ve spoken before about how I codename all my songs using a random work generator… but since most of my music ends up being pretty abstract, the names often stick. That’s where this title comes from. I made the track artwork using a combination of Bing Image Creator and Pixelmator Pro. That was fun.
My first publicly-released single, ever. That’s why I’m so proud of this song… because I made it through the journey to get here. It means so much to me, and I hope you love it.
The music for this song was originally created on my Roland MC-101, and then chopped & rearranged in Logic Pro. The simple, bouncy groove really spoke to me, and I knew pretty quick that I would include it in my first album. But I didn’t know it would be my first single.
When I first sent this song in for mixing & mastering, the final chorus you hear did not exist at all—it took me some soul-searching before I decided I wasn’t happy with it. That was difficult because, honestly, I was TIRED at that point. The road to get there had been so long, and I felt like I just wanted to push it out the door and move on.
But I knew it needed to be better.
So I just kinda went back to the drawing board with the song. I took a step back to get a wider view. I gave myself that weirdly-necessary SPACE to forget about the song, and then remember it all over again.
That’s when the chorus groove came to me. And once it did, I pulled in Cat Rap & Kitty Nap (both my kids, 9 & 12 at the time), and they laid down their backing vocals in a single take. I liked the rough, DIY feel to it. I laid down my own final chorus vocal, and then the arrangement kinda just fell into place after that.
I learned SO much in the process of making this song. I’ll never forget it.