I've always had a duck personality. Calm above water, feet going crazy below.
Mainly, I hope to inspire honesty. We live in a space where so much can be manipulated, and so much is expected to be manipulated - curated, contrived, edited. I think that's a real detriment to self expression and happiness in a lot of ways. In my mind, honesty and vulnerability is the way forward.
My dad was a serious alcoholic, and ultimately, that's why he died. When you're a child of someone who struggled with things like that, you look for the common thread. Is there a pattern? Is there an inheritance of pathology in some way? That haunts me.
There's only so many variations on the basics of human relationships. To me, it's all about the detail and how you tell the story. How you say, 'I love you.'
I'm intrigued by people who are super adept at manipulating their own image. We all do it to a certain extent.
When I was growing up, I wasn't in bands, and had really no intention of ever doing music. I went out to California for college, and kind of on a whim started making music really as a joke, and over the course of the next five years started playing a lot of shows, and music became this really integral part of my identity.
When I first signed to RCA, I was sort of excited and shocked that it was happening. But over the next couple of years, it really started to feel like that game you play when you're a little kid - the one where you put your nose on a bat and then spin around and try to walk.
My dad played guitar, and he taught me enough to play some Beatles' songs. But primarily, I was a bookworm. I loved reading and still do. My whole family does. It was part of the family culture. Accomplished literacy was a value.
I don't put a ton of time into my on-stage style, largely because I'm dumb about clothes. But I have friends who are very smart about clothes, and they teach me things. For the show, I'm mainly concerned with feeling comfortable, being able to jump around and get wild.
A friend of mine encouraged me to try rapping, so I started experimenting with it, writing verses, seeing if I could fit an extra word or syllable into each line without tripping myself up.
I studied psychology and sociology. I think my assumption was that I would go to graduate school, and I don't know what I was going to do after that.
What's become a big theme in my music is my dad as a narrative character. I never had the opportunity to understand our relationship in a more adult capacity. The unknown is great material for any creative outlet.
I think a part of me thought that I might be interested in academia because I really do love school. I mean that on all levels - I like educational environments; I like being part of that community of learning and exploration. And I like to talk.
The more time passes in your life, I think the greater you understand perspective. So I'm happy that I've had experiences that have reminded me that most exciting things might not feel so exciting later, and the most disappointing things might not be so disappointing later, either.
A college degree is not essential, but if you're already in college, and if it's at all possible, you should definitely try to finish. In college, you have a very supportive community right there, and it can give you opportunities to try out new things.
Even successful musicians have had periods where people say they suck and no one likes them, even after they've had periods of great success. So I think it's like you just gotta do you and try to stay motivated. Until, you know, you decide to stay home and make spaghetti all day.
I hope people describe my music as lyrically driven, cross genre. Kind of alternative, kind of indie, kind of rap, kind of everything.
I'm having this disbelief and dissatisfaction with an establishment that feels like it's moving backward, and I think there's a similar feeling with everyone of my age and in the world of music and artistic stuff. Art is an important way those feelings get expressed and help people process their feelings and opinions.
A good sign for me, that I'm a good spot mentally, is when I'm super prolific. And I just wake up every day excited to make or replicate music in some way. That's really nice.
A constant goal of mine is to try to put myself back in the place when I wrote something - not just to perform it on a surface level, but to re-enter that headspace, that emotion. That's the point of a live show - for it to feel immediate and present and a little bit unpredictable.
