D.R.A.M. might be the happiest guy alive. If you've crossed paths with his runaway Latin-tinged hit "Cha Cha," you know why. It's an ear-to-ear grin of a song, and captures the same blissed-out vibes D.R.A.M. brought to the FADER office for this installment of Everything You Need To Know. The rapper formerly known as Drama J talks learning about rap from the musical Annie, the lack of Dominicans in Virginia, and how one super-producer might be supernatural.
Showing posts with label Fader. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fader. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
D.R.A.M. | Everything You Need To Know
D.R.A.M. might be the happiest guy alive. If you've crossed paths with his runaway Latin-tinged hit "Cha Cha," you know why. It's an ear-to-ear grin of a song, and captures the same blissed-out vibes D.R.A.M. brought to the FADER office for this installment of Everything You Need To Know. The rapper formerly known as Drama J talks learning about rap from the musical Annie, the lack of Dominicans in Virginia, and how one super-producer might be supernatural.
Friday, February 20, 2015
Tink | FADER | Issue 96
By JENNA WORTHAM Photographer BEN GRIEM
Meet Tink, A New Voice For Proudly Imperfect Women
A no-bullshit teenage feminist is Timbaland's new protégé. But what can he teach her that she doesn't already know?
Tink is standing some 1,000 feet in the air, practically nose-to-glass with the windows that wrap around the Signature Room, a restaurant as tony as it is touristy, nestled on the top floor of downtown Chicago's John Hancock Center. It's unusually clear and sunny for December, which, according to the Signature's website, means that nearly 60 miles of city are visible from her vantage. Two of her friends, Necey and Squeak, and her fresh-dressed and dreadlocked boyfriend, Don Marley, inch away from the vertigo-inducing view. But Tink, petite in a tropical print sweater, jeans, and Doc Martens, moves forward, even stepping over a barrier installed precisely for the purpose of keeping people from getting too close.
When traffic cooperates, the Signature Room is roughly 40 minutes from the suburb where 19-year-old Tink—whose real name is Trinity Home—grew up. Gazing down at Chicago's bounty, a terrarium of skyscrapers and turquoise Lake Michigan, she is pure Daenerys Targaryen: surveying the boundaries of her realm, plotting which territory to conquer next, daydreaming about the day she'll be crowned queen.
Tink glances back at her crew. "Y'all scared?" she asks, in a voice that is the sonic equivalent of running your hand over impossibly soft velvet. "I'm not."
"I'm brown. I don't have a big ass. My lips are full. I'm not the ideal pop star, not what you see on TV. I look like your best friend." —Tink
As an artist, Tink is refreshingly resistant to categorization. She comes off like Foxy Brown's kid sister when she raps, and her soul-baring ballads convey a vulnerability that brings Frank Ocean to mind. By the time she graduated high school, she had released five mixtapes. Coming a couple months apart in 2012, her tender debut, Winter's Diary, and its tougher follow-up, Alter Ego, showcased the contrast between her yearning singing voice and elastic flow, and the ease with which she flexes both.
The self-released tapes stoked the internet's nostalgia for long-gone '90s acts like Aaliyah, TLC, Monica, and Brandy, while positioning Tink as a potential successor to Nicki Minaj. Collaborators spanning the spectrum flocked to work with her, including crossover R&B star Jeremih, avant-garde production collective Future Brown, and hi-fi rock duo Sleigh Bells. Her biggest collaboration yet will be with Timbaland, who recruited her as a protégé in 2014 and will release her debut album this year on his Epic imprint, Mosley Music Group.
Still, for all of Tink's experimentation with different sounds and producers, she has so far managed to preserve the thing that makes her Tink: the ruthless precision with which she dissects her personal life in her music. Tink is a teenage girl growing up in America, and she mines material from her experiences to create relatable composites. Her peers know what it's like to find incriminating text messages on their lover's phone, about crushes that feel like rolling on molly, the despair of wanting to feel love, or the loss of friends who are gone too soon. Tink has created a trustworthy soundtrack for a generation raised on self-documentation, their lives captured in hastily written tweets, emo Facebook posts, and late-night snaps. For her audience, part of the pleasure is watching her come into her own.
"I caught a lotta hate… It got to the point where I dreaded going to school. I didn't go to prom or homecoming."
Because Tink spends a lot of time in her videos mean-mugging and looking untouchably cool, I was unprepared for how low-key she is in repose. When I visit her at the modest, two-story home where she grew up and still lives with her parents, she answers the door in soft, ripped blue jeans, a Crooks & Castles "Killafornia" sweatshirt, and black socks printed with electric purple weed leaves. Even though it's after noon, she looks like she just rolled out of bed. Inside, there's the warm scent of greens that have been on the stove all day. Tink later explains that her mom is making her favorite foods as a welcome home treat after several long weeks on the road. She daintily holds a can of Minute Maid pink lemonade with a straw in it and leads me to the basement, where we talk as a Family Matters marathon plays quietly on an oversized television screen in the background.
Tink has always been Tink—she was christened that by friends in elementary school. These days, it's what everyone calls her, all the time, except her parents, who insist on using her government name. Renae and Thomas Home met when they were both Chicago postal workers. They fell in love on the job, married, then moved south to Calumet City, a safe, predominantly black, and middle-class neighborhood. Tink describes her upbringing as "right in the middle"—not spoiled but not deprived either. Her parents pushed her to do well in school and encouraged her interest in music, which flourished in the church where she sung as a child. For now, Tink's parents remain a grounding force. They haven't seen her perform yet, but they support the best they can.
The basement, with its wood-paneled walls and oversized black leather couches, is full of keyboards, guitars, and mixing equipment. Tink points out a glass cabinet, stocked with cassettes and CDs, and says she grew up dancing and singing SWV songs to her reflection on its door, harmonizing and matching key changes. It's also where she starting testing out her rapping abilities, at age 15, spitting along to Nicki Minaj's early mixtapes, which she says were a kind of model for her, their ferocity and lyrical deftness mingling with a sexiness that conveyed power and control.
Until 2014, all of Tink's songs were recorded in this basement with the help of her father, a hobbyist who plays guitar and piano and occasionally works as a producer for aspiring musicians. The beats were sometimes sourced from YouTube, and if her dad objected to her choice of topics, he never mentioned it. Tink's mom had a different reaction. "It would have been different if I was a boy," Tink recalls. "But to be a female so young and saying some of the things I was saying, she just didn't have a taste for it. She hated it. We almost had a falling out," Tink recalls. "The house was so cold."
In 2011, when she was 16, Tink's brother uploaded a clip of her freestyling over Clipse's "Grindin" to Facebook, and Tink emerged as a known entity in her neighborhood. She performed in talent shows at Wentworth Elementary and later at Simeon Career Academy, a vocational high school, where she crossed paths with other local rising stars like rapper Spenzo and basketball player Jabari Parker. She borrowed money for a stylist from the owner of Exclusives, a phone and apparel store, and held the release party for her 2012 mixtape Blunts and Ballads in his shop. But her local celebrity alienated her from the kids she was going to school with. "I caught a lotta hate," she says. "I didn't know who to trust, and as I got more private, people took that as, 'She's conceited.' It got to the point where I dreaded going to school. I didn't go to prom or homecoming."
On weekends, Tink made a point of showing up at Adrianna's, a nearby nightclub that has played host to locals like Chance The Rapper and passing-through acts like Young Thug and Waka Flocka. On Sundays, the ballroom had an open mic night, and Tink vied to be the last performer of the evening so she'd have the rowdiest crowd. "I knew I had something," she said. "People give up when they aren't sure, but I knew it was just a matter of time."
Meanwhile, Chicago was giving birth to drill, a brutally exuberant brand of rap known as much for its raw depictions of violence as its pulverizing beats. On some of Tink's early songs, like "Bad Girl," she played a ride-or-die badass, a role that may have been exaggerated but probably wasn't entirely made up. In Calumet City, she points out the high school she dropped out of before finishing her diploma online, and a church where she had to do community service after acting up—though she won't spill details. Looking back now, she describes herself as a follower. "I'll admit it: I was piggybacking off the drill movement," she says. "It wasn't really me. But to get the ear, I had to appeal to the crowds." Drill's aggressive, forward-marching sound was not engineered to convey complex emotions, and Tink now says that she made a conscious break from the scene because she wanted to become "a positive, realistic vision of female empowerment."
"I had to cut off calling myself 'bitch.' And I cut out some of the songs where I was degrading myself. When people do that, of course it's seen in a fun way, but at the same time it's sending the message to everybody else to look at you as a bitch. I want to dig deep into bad relationships, molestation, racism, and not feeling pretty," she says. "I want to get under people's skin." That Tink can be so heartfelt and precocious at once is her main appeal and most marketable asset.
According to Jasmine Andrews, a 20-year-old accounting student who lives in Dolton, Illinois, and is one of Tink's top annotators on Rap Genius, Tink's music is an opportunity to recognize herself in pop. "I downloaded all her mixtapes and listened to her music, and I was like, 'Wow, she's dealing with stuff that we're dealing with,'" Andrews said. "She has songs about being in Chicago, partying, and stuff that I can relate to because that's what I do. The emotional stuff doesn't pertain to me, necessarily, but to people I know and their situations."
"I had to cut off calling myself 'bitch.' And I cut out some of the songs where I was degrading myself. When people do that, of course it's seen in a fun way, but at the same time it's sending the message to everybody else to look at you as a bitch." —Tink
As Tink prepares to release her first label-backed single, "Ratchet Commandments," to radio, she hopes to make a home in the rare league of artists who are known both for their inimitable skills and the loyalty they inspire among fans. "I'll never change up as Tink," she says in the basement, chewing on her bottom lip thoughtfully. "It may take longer, but the name Tink is gonna hold weight. You can't just have a normal track with Kendrick Lamar on it, or a regular track with J. Cole. I want my name and my presence on songs to be the same way."
But there's a big gap between the challenges that male musicians like Cole and Kendrick face and the double standards and gender inequalities that pushed Nicki Minaj to make her now-legendary "pickle juice" speech, where she said: "When I'm assertive, I'm a bitch; when a man is assertive, he's a boss."
"There's a broad range of male rappers, so if they're going out on a limb and they sound different, it's okay because we have twenty other rappers doing what the radio wants," Tink says. "As far as females, there aren't as many, so if you want to compete, you have to sound just like this because that's the only thing hot right now. If you want to compete, you have to look like this."
She's aware that she's entering into a business that isn't always looking out for its female players' best interests. Angel Haze, for example, leaked her own album in frustration, a year and a half after signing with a major label. Azealia Banks also made an unceremonious break from her label in 2014, after two-plus years in limbo. Banks was able to self-release an excellent album, but tends to get less attention for that than for her outspokenness about the erasure of black culture from black music.
Tink doesn't shy away from speaking her mind, either. "I'm definitely a feminist," she says. "The industry made me that way. I had to grind so hard to be taken seriously, had to work twice as hard to get here." In identifying as such, Tink might serve as a voice for women who call themselves feminists but don't identify with the 24/7 flawlessness of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé or see themselves among the cast of a Lena Dunham show. "I'm in my own little lane, doing just me." Here, she does a cute little body roll in her chair. "I don't have to fit in."
Tink and I agree that her beauty should be irrelevant to how she's assessed as an artist, but she's aware that swipe-right-if-you-like visuals hold power. "Having to deal with social media is both good and bad," she says with a heavy sigh. "I'm brown, I don't have a big ass, my lips are full. I'm not the ideal pop star, not what you see on TV. I look like I could be your best friend." As much as anyone can, she's done her best to make peace with the haters, which mostly means she's stopped reading comments. "I would rather impress you with my storytelling than with the size of my waist and my hips," she says.
During our interview, Tink is present in a way that's difficult for people her age, and even most adults, to sustain. She barely looks at her phone. When she does, it's to check on the progress of marches against police brutality and to answer a call from her manager, whose name is saved as "SB!!!"
Late last year, Tink fired her previous, longtime manager. She demurs on details but says the former manager wasn't handling herself professionally, and leans in close to say: "When people around me don't get it"—it being her dedication, her plans for her future—"it causes friction. You can never get comfortable in this game. My philosophy is that I've never done enough. I want my team to have that same agenda. We can never get comfortable or let up. I had to readjust things so everyone is on one chord."
"There were a lot of girls out there before Lauryn. But there's only one Lauryn. There were a lot of girls out when Beyoncé came out. But there's only one Beyoncé." —Timbaland
Timbaland is both the coolest and most confusing thing Tink has going for her as she prepares to leave her parent's basement and go pro. Before she signed with his Mosley Music Group label, she was fond of saying that she didn't need a deal to make great music. So it's not immediately clear why she's chosen to tie herself creatively to a powerful male producer. But Tink says Timbaland's star power can transform her from someone who makes promising tapes into an internationally known name and a better artist. "Before I met Timbaland, I didn't have a specific sound," she says. "I was just fishing for beats in my email, picking out things I liked. With Timbaland, it's a bit more organized."
The pair met in April 2014, after the production duo Da Internz played him "Don't Tell Nobody," her duet with Jeremih. The song's a perfect, melodramatic vehicle for Tink's emotional range. She burns her man for cheating, admits to her hunger for vengeance, and lays bare her inability to get over it, sometimes doing it all in one run: You sorry, pathetic, and far from authentic/ You liar, you fronter, you just like these other niggas/ As much as I hate you/ I still wanna date you.
"I was on the couch, looking around, not paying attention," Timbaland tells me over the phone from Miami, where he is usually based. "But as soon as her voice came on, how she flows, I was like, 'Who is that?'" Timbaland flew Tink out to his studio to see "what she wanted to do and what she knew about music." He describes her as a "breath of fresh air" with a measure of parental pride.
Tink's dad coached her before she met Timbaland—"He told me that when you talk to a legend, have respect," she says—and read through everything before her deal with Mosley became official this past October. Throughout 2014, Tink had taken meetings at other labels. She'd hoped to charm executives but says the meetings felt impersonal and stiff. By contrast, she says, "me and Timbaland really had a heart-to-heart. Timbaland views me as a person, not a product. He told me, If you fail, we're still going to the studio." That impressed her enough to say yes. Now, she says he's like her "music dad." They're both introspective Pisces, who pick up on each other's cues. In the studio, "we don't have to say it, we think it," she says.
As a duo, the two are now finishing up what they hope will be a classic album. Timbaland is in full mentor mode: he's promised to take Tink to see his buddy Justin Timberlake perform in New York, and he recently made her download Lil Kim's biggest album, The Notorious K.I.M., which she hadn't heard. "He laughed at me," she says. "I was born in '95!" For her part, Tink tells me she bought a journal over Thanksgiving to better retain and process her ideas, instead of freestyling them like she's always done. She assures me more than once that the new stuff "doesn't just sound like old-school Timbaland."
Working with Timbaland—the guy who helped bring Aaliyah and Nelly Furtado into the mainstream, and has since kept Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake on their toes—is a huge leveling up for Tink. But it's an exchange that benefits him, too. "She's making me new to her generation," says Timbaland. "I've been in this game for almost 30 years, and 2015 is a new era." When I ask Timbaland what Tink gets out of working with him, a man who is more than twice her age, he pauses. "That's a fair question," he replies gamely, not put off. "It's not about me being a man. I'm a producer," he continues, citing the relationship of Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. "Quincy was 50 years old when he made Thriller. To me, this is like making Thriller."
Prioritizing Tink has already gotten Timbaland in some trouble—Rick Ross complained after Timbaland added her to "Movin Bass," a song Ross made with Jay-Z for his album Hood Billionaire. "Me and Jay created the original version," Ross told MTV in November, after Timbaland went rogue and released a version of the song that included Tink. "I was like, I see what you did, but chill," Ross said. "I was disappointed in homie on that."
It might be easy to write off Timbaland's excitement as requisite hype for a mogul in need of a breakout artist to help goose sales for his label. But at least he and Tink seem to be on the same page about what makes her special. "She is real," he says. "Foolishness doesn't sell. Feelings sell." Still, it's hard not to wonder whether Timbaland and the label will end up ironing out the endearing messiness that made Tink so approachable in the first place. Timbaland says Tink is still "tapping into who she wants Tink to be," but he's certain she has what it takes to stand out. "There were a lot of girls out there before Lauryn," he says. "But there's only one Lauryn. There were a lot of girls out when Beyoncé came out. But there's only one Beyoncé." That's a hopeful statement, and I want to believe him. Because if Tink can't make it, who can?
"You can never get comfortable in this game. My philosophy is that I've never done enough." —Tink
Before I leave Illinois, Tink takes me on a driving tour of her hometown. She's with a rep from Epic and SB, who are actively discussing her recording and touring schedule for 2015. Tink tunes most of it out until she spots someone on the side of the road selling sweatshirts scrawled with "I Can't Breathe," the sad last words of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who died in a police chokehold last summer. We stop, but they don't have a small-enough size, and Tink sinks back in her seat, dejected.
SB gets a call from someone, possibly an editor, who's looking for feedback on Tink's video "Around the Clock," which is slated to go live in a few days. SB tells them the audio isn't syncing properly around the 3:15 mark, and Tink, who's been quietly browsing Twitter, pipes up from the backseat. "3:20," she corrects, without raising her voice. SB catches it anyway and relays the information. Then Tink reminds him to talk to Twitter to get her account verified before the video comes out, and he busies himself on his iPhone, apparently trying to make that happen.
Later, after a few more unsuccessful tries to find an Eric Garner sweatshirt, it gets dark and cold, and we drop Tink off at home. The car falls silent as she walks up her driveway until she's safely in the door, her tiny frame silhouetted by the car's headlights. I ask SB and the label guy if they feel that Tink's youth means she'll require more careful handling than other artists they've worked with. They pause and glance at each other, then decide: No, not at all. They say Tink has her shit more together than most artists, young or not. She doesn't act like a brat.
The following afternoon, her entire team, save her handsome and stocky bodyguard, gets thoroughly twisted at brunch on Rémy and Patrón margaritas and shots. Everyone's so crunk that it makes the group's afternoon plans of going bowling seem impossible to fathom, although it does happen, eventually, with the girls playing against the boys, everyone punch-drunk except Tink, who lands strike after strike and spare after spare, never dropping her game for a minute.
Pre-order a copy of Tink's issue of The FADER now. The issue hits newsstands March 3rd.
A no-bullshit teenage feminist is Timbaland's new protégé. But what can he teach her that she doesn't already know?
Tink is standing some 1,000 feet in the air, practically nose-to-glass with the windows that wrap around the Signature Room, a restaurant as tony as it is touristy, nestled on the top floor of downtown Chicago's John Hancock Center. It's unusually clear and sunny for December, which, according to the Signature's website, means that nearly 60 miles of city are visible from her vantage. Two of her friends, Necey and Squeak, and her fresh-dressed and dreadlocked boyfriend, Don Marley, inch away from the vertigo-inducing view. But Tink, petite in a tropical print sweater, jeans, and Doc Martens, moves forward, even stepping over a barrier installed precisely for the purpose of keeping people from getting too close.
When traffic cooperates, the Signature Room is roughly 40 minutes from the suburb where 19-year-old Tink—whose real name is Trinity Home—grew up. Gazing down at Chicago's bounty, a terrarium of skyscrapers and turquoise Lake Michigan, she is pure Daenerys Targaryen: surveying the boundaries of her realm, plotting which territory to conquer next, daydreaming about the day she'll be crowned queen.
Tink glances back at her crew. "Y'all scared?" she asks, in a voice that is the sonic equivalent of running your hand over impossibly soft velvet. "I'm not."
"I'm brown. I don't have a big ass. My lips are full. I'm not the ideal pop star, not what you see on TV. I look like your best friend." —Tink
As an artist, Tink is refreshingly resistant to categorization. She comes off like Foxy Brown's kid sister when she raps, and her soul-baring ballads convey a vulnerability that brings Frank Ocean to mind. By the time she graduated high school, she had released five mixtapes. Coming a couple months apart in 2012, her tender debut, Winter's Diary, and its tougher follow-up, Alter Ego, showcased the contrast between her yearning singing voice and elastic flow, and the ease with which she flexes both.
The self-released tapes stoked the internet's nostalgia for long-gone '90s acts like Aaliyah, TLC, Monica, and Brandy, while positioning Tink as a potential successor to Nicki Minaj. Collaborators spanning the spectrum flocked to work with her, including crossover R&B star Jeremih, avant-garde production collective Future Brown, and hi-fi rock duo Sleigh Bells. Her biggest collaboration yet will be with Timbaland, who recruited her as a protégé in 2014 and will release her debut album this year on his Epic imprint, Mosley Music Group.
Still, for all of Tink's experimentation with different sounds and producers, she has so far managed to preserve the thing that makes her Tink: the ruthless precision with which she dissects her personal life in her music. Tink is a teenage girl growing up in America, and she mines material from her experiences to create relatable composites. Her peers know what it's like to find incriminating text messages on their lover's phone, about crushes that feel like rolling on molly, the despair of wanting to feel love, or the loss of friends who are gone too soon. Tink has created a trustworthy soundtrack for a generation raised on self-documentation, their lives captured in hastily written tweets, emo Facebook posts, and late-night snaps. For her audience, part of the pleasure is watching her come into her own.
"I caught a lotta hate… It got to the point where I dreaded going to school. I didn't go to prom or homecoming."
Because Tink spends a lot of time in her videos mean-mugging and looking untouchably cool, I was unprepared for how low-key she is in repose. When I visit her at the modest, two-story home where she grew up and still lives with her parents, she answers the door in soft, ripped blue jeans, a Crooks & Castles "Killafornia" sweatshirt, and black socks printed with electric purple weed leaves. Even though it's after noon, she looks like she just rolled out of bed. Inside, there's the warm scent of greens that have been on the stove all day. Tink later explains that her mom is making her favorite foods as a welcome home treat after several long weeks on the road. She daintily holds a can of Minute Maid pink lemonade with a straw in it and leads me to the basement, where we talk as a Family Matters marathon plays quietly on an oversized television screen in the background.
Tink has always been Tink—she was christened that by friends in elementary school. These days, it's what everyone calls her, all the time, except her parents, who insist on using her government name. Renae and Thomas Home met when they were both Chicago postal workers. They fell in love on the job, married, then moved south to Calumet City, a safe, predominantly black, and middle-class neighborhood. Tink describes her upbringing as "right in the middle"—not spoiled but not deprived either. Her parents pushed her to do well in school and encouraged her interest in music, which flourished in the church where she sung as a child. For now, Tink's parents remain a grounding force. They haven't seen her perform yet, but they support the best they can.
The basement, with its wood-paneled walls and oversized black leather couches, is full of keyboards, guitars, and mixing equipment. Tink points out a glass cabinet, stocked with cassettes and CDs, and says she grew up dancing and singing SWV songs to her reflection on its door, harmonizing and matching key changes. It's also where she starting testing out her rapping abilities, at age 15, spitting along to Nicki Minaj's early mixtapes, which she says were a kind of model for her, their ferocity and lyrical deftness mingling with a sexiness that conveyed power and control.
Until 2014, all of Tink's songs were recorded in this basement with the help of her father, a hobbyist who plays guitar and piano and occasionally works as a producer for aspiring musicians. The beats were sometimes sourced from YouTube, and if her dad objected to her choice of topics, he never mentioned it. Tink's mom had a different reaction. "It would have been different if I was a boy," Tink recalls. "But to be a female so young and saying some of the things I was saying, she just didn't have a taste for it. She hated it. We almost had a falling out," Tink recalls. "The house was so cold."
In 2011, when she was 16, Tink's brother uploaded a clip of her freestyling over Clipse's "Grindin" to Facebook, and Tink emerged as a known entity in her neighborhood. She performed in talent shows at Wentworth Elementary and later at Simeon Career Academy, a vocational high school, where she crossed paths with other local rising stars like rapper Spenzo and basketball player Jabari Parker. She borrowed money for a stylist from the owner of Exclusives, a phone and apparel store, and held the release party for her 2012 mixtape Blunts and Ballads in his shop. But her local celebrity alienated her from the kids she was going to school with. "I caught a lotta hate," she says. "I didn't know who to trust, and as I got more private, people took that as, 'She's conceited.' It got to the point where I dreaded going to school. I didn't go to prom or homecoming."
On weekends, Tink made a point of showing up at Adrianna's, a nearby nightclub that has played host to locals like Chance The Rapper and passing-through acts like Young Thug and Waka Flocka. On Sundays, the ballroom had an open mic night, and Tink vied to be the last performer of the evening so she'd have the rowdiest crowd. "I knew I had something," she said. "People give up when they aren't sure, but I knew it was just a matter of time."
Meanwhile, Chicago was giving birth to drill, a brutally exuberant brand of rap known as much for its raw depictions of violence as its pulverizing beats. On some of Tink's early songs, like "Bad Girl," she played a ride-or-die badass, a role that may have been exaggerated but probably wasn't entirely made up. In Calumet City, she points out the high school she dropped out of before finishing her diploma online, and a church where she had to do community service after acting up—though she won't spill details. Looking back now, she describes herself as a follower. "I'll admit it: I was piggybacking off the drill movement," she says. "It wasn't really me. But to get the ear, I had to appeal to the crowds." Drill's aggressive, forward-marching sound was not engineered to convey complex emotions, and Tink now says that she made a conscious break from the scene because she wanted to become "a positive, realistic vision of female empowerment."
"I had to cut off calling myself 'bitch.' And I cut out some of the songs where I was degrading myself. When people do that, of course it's seen in a fun way, but at the same time it's sending the message to everybody else to look at you as a bitch. I want to dig deep into bad relationships, molestation, racism, and not feeling pretty," she says. "I want to get under people's skin." That Tink can be so heartfelt and precocious at once is her main appeal and most marketable asset.
According to Jasmine Andrews, a 20-year-old accounting student who lives in Dolton, Illinois, and is one of Tink's top annotators on Rap Genius, Tink's music is an opportunity to recognize herself in pop. "I downloaded all her mixtapes and listened to her music, and I was like, 'Wow, she's dealing with stuff that we're dealing with,'" Andrews said. "She has songs about being in Chicago, partying, and stuff that I can relate to because that's what I do. The emotional stuff doesn't pertain to me, necessarily, but to people I know and their situations."
"I had to cut off calling myself 'bitch.' And I cut out some of the songs where I was degrading myself. When people do that, of course it's seen in a fun way, but at the same time it's sending the message to everybody else to look at you as a bitch." —Tink
As Tink prepares to release her first label-backed single, "Ratchet Commandments," to radio, she hopes to make a home in the rare league of artists who are known both for their inimitable skills and the loyalty they inspire among fans. "I'll never change up as Tink," she says in the basement, chewing on her bottom lip thoughtfully. "It may take longer, but the name Tink is gonna hold weight. You can't just have a normal track with Kendrick Lamar on it, or a regular track with J. Cole. I want my name and my presence on songs to be the same way."
But there's a big gap between the challenges that male musicians like Cole and Kendrick face and the double standards and gender inequalities that pushed Nicki Minaj to make her now-legendary "pickle juice" speech, where she said: "When I'm assertive, I'm a bitch; when a man is assertive, he's a boss."
"There's a broad range of male rappers, so if they're going out on a limb and they sound different, it's okay because we have twenty other rappers doing what the radio wants," Tink says. "As far as females, there aren't as many, so if you want to compete, you have to sound just like this because that's the only thing hot right now. If you want to compete, you have to look like this."
She's aware that she's entering into a business that isn't always looking out for its female players' best interests. Angel Haze, for example, leaked her own album in frustration, a year and a half after signing with a major label. Azealia Banks also made an unceremonious break from her label in 2014, after two-plus years in limbo. Banks was able to self-release an excellent album, but tends to get less attention for that than for her outspokenness about the erasure of black culture from black music.
Tink doesn't shy away from speaking her mind, either. "I'm definitely a feminist," she says. "The industry made me that way. I had to grind so hard to be taken seriously, had to work twice as hard to get here." In identifying as such, Tink might serve as a voice for women who call themselves feminists but don't identify with the 24/7 flawlessness of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé or see themselves among the cast of a Lena Dunham show. "I'm in my own little lane, doing just me." Here, she does a cute little body roll in her chair. "I don't have to fit in."
Tink and I agree that her beauty should be irrelevant to how she's assessed as an artist, but she's aware that swipe-right-if-you-like visuals hold power. "Having to deal with social media is both good and bad," she says with a heavy sigh. "I'm brown, I don't have a big ass, my lips are full. I'm not the ideal pop star, not what you see on TV. I look like I could be your best friend." As much as anyone can, she's done her best to make peace with the haters, which mostly means she's stopped reading comments. "I would rather impress you with my storytelling than with the size of my waist and my hips," she says.
During our interview, Tink is present in a way that's difficult for people her age, and even most adults, to sustain. She barely looks at her phone. When she does, it's to check on the progress of marches against police brutality and to answer a call from her manager, whose name is saved as "SB!!!"
Late last year, Tink fired her previous, longtime manager. She demurs on details but says the former manager wasn't handling herself professionally, and leans in close to say: "When people around me don't get it"—it being her dedication, her plans for her future—"it causes friction. You can never get comfortable in this game. My philosophy is that I've never done enough. I want my team to have that same agenda. We can never get comfortable or let up. I had to readjust things so everyone is on one chord."
"There were a lot of girls out there before Lauryn. But there's only one Lauryn. There were a lot of girls out when Beyoncé came out. But there's only one Beyoncé." —Timbaland
Timbaland is both the coolest and most confusing thing Tink has going for her as she prepares to leave her parent's basement and go pro. Before she signed with his Mosley Music Group label, she was fond of saying that she didn't need a deal to make great music. So it's not immediately clear why she's chosen to tie herself creatively to a powerful male producer. But Tink says Timbaland's star power can transform her from someone who makes promising tapes into an internationally known name and a better artist. "Before I met Timbaland, I didn't have a specific sound," she says. "I was just fishing for beats in my email, picking out things I liked. With Timbaland, it's a bit more organized."
The pair met in April 2014, after the production duo Da Internz played him "Don't Tell Nobody," her duet with Jeremih. The song's a perfect, melodramatic vehicle for Tink's emotional range. She burns her man for cheating, admits to her hunger for vengeance, and lays bare her inability to get over it, sometimes doing it all in one run: You sorry, pathetic, and far from authentic/ You liar, you fronter, you just like these other niggas/ As much as I hate you/ I still wanna date you.
"I was on the couch, looking around, not paying attention," Timbaland tells me over the phone from Miami, where he is usually based. "But as soon as her voice came on, how she flows, I was like, 'Who is that?'" Timbaland flew Tink out to his studio to see "what she wanted to do and what she knew about music." He describes her as a "breath of fresh air" with a measure of parental pride.
Tink's dad coached her before she met Timbaland—"He told me that when you talk to a legend, have respect," she says—and read through everything before her deal with Mosley became official this past October. Throughout 2014, Tink had taken meetings at other labels. She'd hoped to charm executives but says the meetings felt impersonal and stiff. By contrast, she says, "me and Timbaland really had a heart-to-heart. Timbaland views me as a person, not a product. He told me, If you fail, we're still going to the studio." That impressed her enough to say yes. Now, she says he's like her "music dad." They're both introspective Pisces, who pick up on each other's cues. In the studio, "we don't have to say it, we think it," she says.
As a duo, the two are now finishing up what they hope will be a classic album. Timbaland is in full mentor mode: he's promised to take Tink to see his buddy Justin Timberlake perform in New York, and he recently made her download Lil Kim's biggest album, The Notorious K.I.M., which she hadn't heard. "He laughed at me," she says. "I was born in '95!" For her part, Tink tells me she bought a journal over Thanksgiving to better retain and process her ideas, instead of freestyling them like she's always done. She assures me more than once that the new stuff "doesn't just sound like old-school Timbaland."
Working with Timbaland—the guy who helped bring Aaliyah and Nelly Furtado into the mainstream, and has since kept Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake on their toes—is a huge leveling up for Tink. But it's an exchange that benefits him, too. "She's making me new to her generation," says Timbaland. "I've been in this game for almost 30 years, and 2015 is a new era." When I ask Timbaland what Tink gets out of working with him, a man who is more than twice her age, he pauses. "That's a fair question," he replies gamely, not put off. "It's not about me being a man. I'm a producer," he continues, citing the relationship of Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. "Quincy was 50 years old when he made Thriller. To me, this is like making Thriller."
Prioritizing Tink has already gotten Timbaland in some trouble—Rick Ross complained after Timbaland added her to "Movin Bass," a song Ross made with Jay-Z for his album Hood Billionaire. "Me and Jay created the original version," Ross told MTV in November, after Timbaland went rogue and released a version of the song that included Tink. "I was like, I see what you did, but chill," Ross said. "I was disappointed in homie on that."
It might be easy to write off Timbaland's excitement as requisite hype for a mogul in need of a breakout artist to help goose sales for his label. But at least he and Tink seem to be on the same page about what makes her special. "She is real," he says. "Foolishness doesn't sell. Feelings sell." Still, it's hard not to wonder whether Timbaland and the label will end up ironing out the endearing messiness that made Tink so approachable in the first place. Timbaland says Tink is still "tapping into who she wants Tink to be," but he's certain she has what it takes to stand out. "There were a lot of girls out there before Lauryn," he says. "But there's only one Lauryn. There were a lot of girls out when Beyoncé came out. But there's only one Beyoncé." That's a hopeful statement, and I want to believe him. Because if Tink can't make it, who can?
"You can never get comfortable in this game. My philosophy is that I've never done enough." —Tink
Before I leave Illinois, Tink takes me on a driving tour of her hometown. She's with a rep from Epic and SB, who are actively discussing her recording and touring schedule for 2015. Tink tunes most of it out until she spots someone on the side of the road selling sweatshirts scrawled with "I Can't Breathe," the sad last words of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who died in a police chokehold last summer. We stop, but they don't have a small-enough size, and Tink sinks back in her seat, dejected.
SB gets a call from someone, possibly an editor, who's looking for feedback on Tink's video "Around the Clock," which is slated to go live in a few days. SB tells them the audio isn't syncing properly around the 3:15 mark, and Tink, who's been quietly browsing Twitter, pipes up from the backseat. "3:20," she corrects, without raising her voice. SB catches it anyway and relays the information. Then Tink reminds him to talk to Twitter to get her account verified before the video comes out, and he busies himself on his iPhone, apparently trying to make that happen.
Later, after a few more unsuccessful tries to find an Eric Garner sweatshirt, it gets dark and cold, and we drop Tink off at home. The car falls silent as she walks up her driveway until she's safely in the door, her tiny frame silhouetted by the car's headlights. I ask SB and the label guy if they feel that Tink's youth means she'll require more careful handling than other artists they've worked with. They pause and glance at each other, then decide: No, not at all. They say Tink has her shit more together than most artists, young or not. She doesn't act like a brat.
The following afternoon, her entire team, save her handsome and stocky bodyguard, gets thoroughly twisted at brunch on Rémy and Patrón margaritas and shots. Everyone's so crunk that it makes the group's afternoon plans of going bowling seem impossible to fathom, although it does happen, eventually, with the girls playing against the boys, everyone punch-drunk except Tink, who lands strike after strike and spare after spare, never dropping her game for a minute.
Pre-order a copy of Tink's issue of The FADER now. The issue hits newsstands March 3rd.
Friday, January 2, 2015
You can mix music using Qbert's vinyl record sleeve
You might end up playing with this record's packaging more than you end up playing the actual record. For his new release, the double LP Extraterrestria and Galaxxxian, DJ QBert has built a Bluetooth DJ controller into the albums' vinyl packaging that allows you to manipulate songs on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. The controller is a thin sheet of paper covered in printed electronics and styled to look like a traditional DJ setup, with a platter on either side, a fader in the middle, and a handful of other buttons around the edges. The controller syncs with Djay — a fun and relatively easy mixing app for amateurs — and lets you mix QBert's new album or anything else that you load into the app.
Vinyl has been making a comeback over the past few years, and we're now beginning to see artists try to imbue the format with novel features that can't be found on other formats. Last year, Jack White released a record that included a number of unusual features on vinyl, including a groove that ran backward, tracks that played at different speeds, and a hologram. Like the bonus features that you often find on CDs or digital downloads bought from certain stores, these features all give listeners more reason to pick up vinyl. So even though DJ QBert's album may be sending buyers right back into a digital world, it'll be with an experience that couldn't be included in a smaller format's packaging.
Unfortunately, if you don't already have an order in for Extraterrestria and Galaxxxian, it sounds like you won't be able to pick up the vinyl and DJ controller. The double LP was funded on Kickstarter last year and released digitally over the summer. At the time, the plan was to only release this interactive packaging to backers, and it doesn't appear that that plan has changed. For anyone who has backed it, QBert says that the vinyl finally shipped out a few days ago, so there should be a number of these floating around soon. Also, if you're wondering what albums with names like Extraterrestria and Galaxxxian are about, listen to QBert break them down and introduce you to the Galactic Skratch Federation in his Kickstarter pitch:
Monday, December 29, 2014
Alex Wiley ft Mick Jenkins | Own Man | prod by Odd Couple
Alex Wiley's new mixtape, Village Party, available now:
Download: www.bit.ly/villageparty
Friday, December 26, 2014
Behind The Scenes Of Chicago's Footwork Renaissanc | FADER
By ALEXANDER IADAROLA/FADER
Photographer Wills Glasspiegel shares his candid shots of the figures at the heart of Chicago's footwork community
Footwork, the bracing 160bpm dance music which grew out of Chicago house and juke music, has progressed from a long-established local scene into a worldwide movement over the past three or four years. Its rise is in part due to seminal releases by European labels such as Planet Mu and Hyperdub, the latter notably releasing the breakthrough LP Double Cup by the late DJ Rashad in 2013, and through tireless promotion of the sound by Lit City Trax here in New York.
Since getting his first taste of it five years ago, Chicago-born photographer Wills Glasspiegel has become tightly embedded in the scene: earlier this year he participated as a founding advisor in the creation of dance crew The Era, led by preeminent dancer Litebulb; he's worked with the Teklife family in documenting their musical history for a forthcoming film; and the photos he's taken over the past five years capture the figures at the heart of footwork's genesis.
This selection of pictures, published for the first time today, capture moments both prosaic and career-changing. There's Traxman, DJ Manny and Rashad blowing up NYC at one of J-Cush's Lit City Rave (pictured above), DJ Earl and Frost collaborating on a track in Earl's living room, and dancers Weezy and Murda Moma in the heat of the moment at Chicago's famed footwork dancing spot Battlegroundz. Below, Glasspiegel shares his story of being in the right place, at the right time, for one of the most important eras in dance music's history.
DJ Earl and footwork dancer Dre at Battlegroundz with the championship belt (2013).
WILLS GLASSPIEGEL: "The first I time I heard footwork was in 2010 from my friend Jamie, who goes by J-Cush and has a label called Lit City Trax. It was love at first listen. I was heading back home to Chicago for Thanksgiving and I had the opportunity to do a piece focused on footwork for NPR Music, which eventually turned into something for All Things Considered. That was the tip of the iceberg for me.WILLS GLASSPIEGEL: "The first I time I heard footwork was in 2010 from my friend Jamie, who goes by J-Cush and has a label called Lit City Trax. It was love at first listen. I was heading back home to Chicago for Thanksgiving and I had the opportunity to do a piece focused on footwork for NPR Music, which eventually turned into something for All Things Considered. That was the tip of the iceberg for me.
Footwork has definitely changed a lot. It's gone from a local thing to a global movement—a history that wasn't on the map in any way, shape, or form outside of this culture is beginning to be understood by people from all over the world. But at the same time, if you go to Battlegroundz on 87th Street in Chicago on any Sunday night, you're gonna feel some of that same energy that I felt originally upon becoming a part of the scene in 2010.
Murda Mommy, one of Chicago fiercest footworkers, in the circle at Battlegroundz (2014).
Japanese producer and dancer Weezy visiting Chicago and footworking for his first time to crowd approval at Battlgroundz (2014).
DJ Spinn and Lil JaBBA at Lit City Rave, 285 Kent (2012).
When Rashad passed, it was almost destined that we start The Era because it seemed like there was a real need for a dance wing to support what Teklife had been doing. Rashad had such a history with these guys—he'd known Litebulb for fifteen years—and they'd all grew together for so long. Something deep was there in terms of the role that we had to play as a crew, and I was just helping with organizing, with press, doing everything I could around that stage.
DJ Rashad and DJ Manny, one of Rashad’s key proteges, after a Teklife meeting on the west side (2012).
We gotta be real about it: because I come from the North Side of Chicago and a relatively well-to-do family, and I'm not black, I have access to a network and resources that these guys just don't have access to. Being honest about what people call privilege and trying to share that as much as possible, that's been a part of the dialogue. I try to offer as many resources as I have to offer when I'm working in the footwork scene, so sometimes that just means being a friend when you came to be a photographer.
Dancer Frost Da Boss and DJ Earl practicing in Earl’s basement (2013).
The Era dancers Chief Manny, Litebulb and P-Top practicing at Litebulb’s apartment in South Chicago (2014).
Footwork music and dance have long played a central role at the massive, summertime Bud Billiken Parade. Here's DJ Earl pictured on the decks on the float (2013).
We do a lot of things together. It's hard to classify what I do in terms of one role, or what any of those guys do in terms of one role. One memory is being at Earl's house, on the couch, somebody's making tracks, somebody's dancing, I'm taking photographs, and the night's going really well. That's always been what keeps me going: just chilling in somebody's basement, everybody's doing something creative, maybe somebody's doing animation or drawing. It's a real creative group of guys, and we keep it that way.
Teklife DJs and dancers outside DJ Earl's house in Roseland, South Chicago. From left: DJ Tre, DJ Earl, Frost and DJ Taye (2014).
DJ Clent and his daughter by the building where Clent grew up and produced number of iconic footwork mixtapes (2014).
Footwork originator RP Boo at home in Chicago, Sears Tower in the background (2013).
This idea that being a photographer allows you to see the world through other people's eyes—and see things that you would not have a chance to see, that's a major inspiration for my practice. Once you start picking up a camera and start seeing things through that perspective, and sharing that perspective with others, that can launch a beautiful life. I'm just following in the footsteps of my pictures."
Teklife business meeting with DJ Phil, DJ Rashad, DJ Manny and DJ Earl. (2013)
Traxman on stage at a Lit City party at 285 Kent.
(2013)
TMO throws up an L, the Teklife hand gesture, at the iconic Anish Kapoor bean in downtown Chicago (2012).
Photographer Wills Glasspiegel shares his candid shots of the figures at the heart of Chicago's footwork community
Footwork, the bracing 160bpm dance music which grew out of Chicago house and juke music, has progressed from a long-established local scene into a worldwide movement over the past three or four years. Its rise is in part due to seminal releases by European labels such as Planet Mu and Hyperdub, the latter notably releasing the breakthrough LP Double Cup by the late DJ Rashad in 2013, and through tireless promotion of the sound by Lit City Trax here in New York.
Since getting his first taste of it five years ago, Chicago-born photographer Wills Glasspiegel has become tightly embedded in the scene: earlier this year he participated as a founding advisor in the creation of dance crew The Era, led by preeminent dancer Litebulb; he's worked with the Teklife family in documenting their musical history for a forthcoming film; and the photos he's taken over the past five years capture the figures at the heart of footwork's genesis.
This selection of pictures, published for the first time today, capture moments both prosaic and career-changing. There's Traxman, DJ Manny and Rashad blowing up NYC at one of J-Cush's Lit City Rave (pictured above), DJ Earl and Frost collaborating on a track in Earl's living room, and dancers Weezy and Murda Moma in the heat of the moment at Chicago's famed footwork dancing spot Battlegroundz. Below, Glasspiegel shares his story of being in the right place, at the right time, for one of the most important eras in dance music's history.
DJ Earl and footwork dancer Dre at Battlegroundz with the championship belt (2013).
WILLS GLASSPIEGEL: "The first I time I heard footwork was in 2010 from my friend Jamie, who goes by J-Cush and has a label called Lit City Trax. It was love at first listen. I was heading back home to Chicago for Thanksgiving and I had the opportunity to do a piece focused on footwork for NPR Music, which eventually turned into something for All Things Considered. That was the tip of the iceberg for me.WILLS GLASSPIEGEL: "The first I time I heard footwork was in 2010 from my friend Jamie, who goes by J-Cush and has a label called Lit City Trax. It was love at first listen. I was heading back home to Chicago for Thanksgiving and I had the opportunity to do a piece focused on footwork for NPR Music, which eventually turned into something for All Things Considered. That was the tip of the iceberg for me.
Footwork has definitely changed a lot. It's gone from a local thing to a global movement—a history that wasn't on the map in any way, shape, or form outside of this culture is beginning to be understood by people from all over the world. But at the same time, if you go to Battlegroundz on 87th Street in Chicago on any Sunday night, you're gonna feel some of that same energy that I felt originally upon becoming a part of the scene in 2010.
Murda Mommy, one of Chicago fiercest footworkers, in the circle at Battlegroundz (2014).
Japanese producer and dancer Weezy visiting Chicago and footworking for his first time to crowd approval at Battlgroundz (2014).
DJ Spinn and Lil JaBBA at Lit City Rave, 285 Kent (2012).
When Rashad passed, it was almost destined that we start The Era because it seemed like there was a real need for a dance wing to support what Teklife had been doing. Rashad had such a history with these guys—he'd known Litebulb for fifteen years—and they'd all grew together for so long. Something deep was there in terms of the role that we had to play as a crew, and I was just helping with organizing, with press, doing everything I could around that stage.
DJ Rashad and DJ Manny, one of Rashad’s key proteges, after a Teklife meeting on the west side (2012).
We gotta be real about it: because I come from the North Side of Chicago and a relatively well-to-do family, and I'm not black, I have access to a network and resources that these guys just don't have access to. Being honest about what people call privilege and trying to share that as much as possible, that's been a part of the dialogue. I try to offer as many resources as I have to offer when I'm working in the footwork scene, so sometimes that just means being a friend when you came to be a photographer.
Dancer Frost Da Boss and DJ Earl practicing in Earl’s basement (2013).
The Era dancers Chief Manny, Litebulb and P-Top practicing at Litebulb’s apartment in South Chicago (2014).
Footwork music and dance have long played a central role at the massive, summertime Bud Billiken Parade. Here's DJ Earl pictured on the decks on the float (2013).
We do a lot of things together. It's hard to classify what I do in terms of one role, or what any of those guys do in terms of one role. One memory is being at Earl's house, on the couch, somebody's making tracks, somebody's dancing, I'm taking photographs, and the night's going really well. That's always been what keeps me going: just chilling in somebody's basement, everybody's doing something creative, maybe somebody's doing animation or drawing. It's a real creative group of guys, and we keep it that way.
Teklife DJs and dancers outside DJ Earl's house in Roseland, South Chicago. From left: DJ Tre, DJ Earl, Frost and DJ Taye (2014).
DJ Clent and his daughter by the building where Clent grew up and produced number of iconic footwork mixtapes (2014).
Footwork originator RP Boo at home in Chicago, Sears Tower in the background (2013).
This idea that being a photographer allows you to see the world through other people's eyes—and see things that you would not have a chance to see, that's a major inspiration for my practice. Once you start picking up a camera and start seeing things through that perspective, and sharing that perspective with others, that can launch a beautiful life. I'm just following in the footsteps of my pictures."
Teklife business meeting with DJ Phil, DJ Rashad, DJ Manny and DJ Earl. (2013)
Traxman on stage at a Lit City party at 285 Kent.
(2013)
TMO throws up an L, the Teklife hand gesture, at the iconic Anish Kapoor bean in downtown Chicago (2012).
Friday, December 5, 2014
Stream Afropunk's Public Unrest Mixtape
Afropunk launched a new monthly mixtape series this week with Public Unrest. This inaugural installment features 45-minute mix of grinding electronica, agitated punk, cathartic soul, and thoughtful interview interludes by Mykki Blanco, Neneh Cherry, Benjamin Booker, and many more. It's apt mood music for the civic strife and protests that draw on; stream it below, it feels good and right.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
FADER TV Bops Through Chicago's West Side With Sicko Mobb
By MATTHEW TRAMMELL/Fader TV
No matter the style, sound, or era, hip-hop lives and dies in the street. Kids taking in the sounds and spirit of their ten-block radius and spewing out art so seamlessly they don't even realize it's art? It's just another Friday night. Here at FADER, we've been obsessed with the dance culture pulsing out of Chicago's west side known as bop, an elastic whirlwind of elbows and knees that draws from uprock breakdancing, Black frat strolling, and genderless body rolls, all set to melodies so sugary that the most skilled practitioners do kids birthday parties as a side hustle. One of the movement's theme songs is Sicko Mobb's "Fiesta," so during a recent trip to Chicago, the FADER TV crew caught up with the duo to hear about the culture from the dancers living it. "When people think of the current state of Chicago rap, they are mainly fascinated with the culture of violence, drugs, and other negative stories associated with drill," FADER producer Shomi Patwary explains. "They wanna drill, we wanna party, and make some money," says Sicko Mobb's Lil Ceno. "That's all we about out West." For more, be sure to subscribe to FADER TV.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Interview with GoldLink | DC-born proprietor of “future bounce”
GoldLink Might Be the Wildest DMV Rapper Since Wale: “I could start a revolution”
STORY BY: DUNCAN COOPER
GoldLink is a rapper who immediately seems to have carved his own lane—”future bounce” as he somewhat imprecisely calls it, “dream rap” as I even more poorly first conceived it. Basically he’s rapping over pittering dance beats that you can’t always dance to. Born in DC and now based in Virginia, he’s got a weirdness that could make him the biggest DMV rapper since Wale; at the very least, he shares a refreshing left-field newcomer’s confidence to experiment. Download his debut album, The God Complex, and below, read what he has to say about discovering club music, linking up with Soulection and the excitement of not knowing what might happen next.
Where exactly are you from? I was born in DC. I was born in Columbia Hospital, not that that matters… I ended up in Maryland. My apartment burned down and then I lived in Cheverly. My mother wanted better for us, so we ended up moving to Virginia, then my mom got divorced, but I stayed there.
Where are you living now? A few places. Woodbridge is one. Alexandria. It’s aight. There’s not a lot of minorities, so everything’s kinda awkward, but it’s cool. We manage. We stay on the west side, it’s calm and quiet.
I saw you said used to go to Busboys and Poets “on the very low.” What were you like as a teenager? At 17, I was wild. I was really wild. I was really smart for my age, but I thought I knew everything. I was really hardheaded, but I couldn’t control my temper. I was really smart-mouthed. I was the opposite of everything I am now. I was super loud and annoying. I was 17, you know what I’m saying?
Were you recording and putting out music at that time? Not at 17, no. I was just chilling.
That was a few years before Wale started blowing up, and Baltimore Club was having a big moment too. Did you feel that excitement? Even though I was young, I remember it. Wale was cool. You know how you had that friend circle and out of that circle one guy gets everybody hip? I was that kid. So I was like, yo, Wale, you head 100 Miles of Running? I got hip to Baltimore Club music because I took somebody’s CD out of their car and it was a blank CD with nothing on it. I was like, ‘What is all this?’ He was like, ‘Oh, it’s Baltimore club music, all this red light district music.’ I remember I caught that riff. I was young but I was old enough to understand that there was something in the DMV going on.
When you came out, your sound was already really solid. Did that take time? Were you fucking around over Zaytoven beats a few years ago? No, that was the sound. I never crossed over like, trap is cool, I’m going to do this. This is what I started with. I heard Ta-Ku beat two years ago and I thought it was cooler than all the bullshit that was hot. I didn’t care what the fuck was hot. I thought that was cool. I didn’t get it when I was 18 at all, but I just rode with it. That’s why it’s so natural over the beats. I wrote to those beats to challenge myself, not knowing that this is the route I was going to take. I was like, ‘Man, this is weird. I know someone wouldn’t rap over this so I’m going to challenge myself.’ So I just did. I was never really influenced by anybody.
How did you link with the Soulection team? I know you’ve worked with Sango. A friend of ours introduced us through email. We ended up talking and I ended up sending him tracks that I did over previous beats to see if he liked them. He ended up loving them and became a fan and he started sending me beats. From there we built a friendship. We got each others numbers and started talking and we both did Broccoli City Festival. That was two weeks ago and we kicked it there and we kicked it the whole day. It was all through email at first, though.
There’s more in the pipeline coming with him? Yeah, maybe.
I was going to ask you about Broccoli City—Cam’ron and Kelela performed, and you’re kind of like midway between them, to me. I met Kelela. Cam’ron was really protected, so he was kind of in and out. He did his job. But the scene was cool. DMV is such a soul, neo-black city. So people accepted both. There were a lot of people there who liked soul and they liked Kelela and were singing along, and there was a lot of people from the hood because it was in Southeast, and Southeast is like “Oh it’s Cam’ron!”
How do you deal with the not-showing-your-face thing at shows? I did UStreet with a mask at the beginning and then I took it off. I guess it’s like a suspense thing, but I’m really into the music and not into the imaging and I don’t necessarily think we should put an image to the music. I’d rather just make music, and people like that. For performing it’s different, because you actually get to look people in the face—these people that have been following you for months or maybe a few days and you get to look at them. It’s really intimate. I don’t mind showing my face to people because they get to deserve it.
It’s funny that you mention not putting an image to music, because your videos are so striking. The beats are on a spacey, electronic thing, but the videos have a very real street feel. Is that an important tension, for you? I could see why you could say it’s tension, but I don’t think it is. I make it work. Even though the beats are really outlandish and wild, that bounce is really familiar. It’s really different, but it’s the same trap bounce, the same street bounce, the same hip-hop ruggedness, but it’s really new it’s really futuristic sounding. That’s why I feel like people can actually accept it. It’s at a fine line where it’s different, but it’s not so new that it’s annoying or trying too hard. I made it mesh and meet in the middle. Tasteful.
Have labels been reaching out? Is it at that point? I guess it’s at that point. I like what I’m doing and I think it can grow naturally because it’s been growing naturally to this point. I want to see how far it can go naturally. If it makes a complete 100 percent sense, then maybe I’ll consider a label, but right now I’m content with what I’m doing.
What most excites you about what you’re doing right now? Knowing that I don’t know where it’s going to go or how big it could possibly be. The unknown is really exciting. This could be big! It could be on the radio, and it could change what people think. It could change the way the music goes. It could change the BPM. Knowing that I don’t know that makes me excited. Knowing that kids could take this route and add something to it is cool. Knowing that I could start something and start a revolution is exciting. That’s the coolest part about what I’m doing. In my city there’s a lot of hate, but I don’t get any of it at all. I get so much love it almost doesn’t make any sense. Kids are changing up the music and starting to let that image shit go. They’re starting to make better music and clique up more. This is the best era for the DMV.
What else do you want people to know? I want fans to be like, ‘Damn, that nigga tight.’
GoldLink is a rapper who immediately seems to have carved his own lane—”future bounce” as he somewhat imprecisely calls it, “dream rap” as I even more poorly first conceived it. Basically he’s rapping over pittering dance beats that you can’t always dance to. Born in DC and now based in Virginia, he’s got a weirdness that could make him the biggest DMV rapper since Wale; at the very least, he shares a refreshing left-field newcomer’s confidence to experiment. Download his debut album, The God Complex, and below, read what he has to say about discovering club music, linking up with Soulection and the excitement of not knowing what might happen next.
Where exactly are you from? I was born in DC. I was born in Columbia Hospital, not that that matters… I ended up in Maryland. My apartment burned down and then I lived in Cheverly. My mother wanted better for us, so we ended up moving to Virginia, then my mom got divorced, but I stayed there.
Where are you living now? A few places. Woodbridge is one. Alexandria. It’s aight. There’s not a lot of minorities, so everything’s kinda awkward, but it’s cool. We manage. We stay on the west side, it’s calm and quiet.
I saw you said used to go to Busboys and Poets “on the very low.” What were you like as a teenager? At 17, I was wild. I was really wild. I was really smart for my age, but I thought I knew everything. I was really hardheaded, but I couldn’t control my temper. I was really smart-mouthed. I was the opposite of everything I am now. I was super loud and annoying. I was 17, you know what I’m saying?
Were you recording and putting out music at that time? Not at 17, no. I was just chilling.
That was a few years before Wale started blowing up, and Baltimore Club was having a big moment too. Did you feel that excitement? Even though I was young, I remember it. Wale was cool. You know how you had that friend circle and out of that circle one guy gets everybody hip? I was that kid. So I was like, yo, Wale, you head 100 Miles of Running? I got hip to Baltimore Club music because I took somebody’s CD out of their car and it was a blank CD with nothing on it. I was like, ‘What is all this?’ He was like, ‘Oh, it’s Baltimore club music, all this red light district music.’ I remember I caught that riff. I was young but I was old enough to understand that there was something in the DMV going on.
When you came out, your sound was already really solid. Did that take time? Were you fucking around over Zaytoven beats a few years ago? No, that was the sound. I never crossed over like, trap is cool, I’m going to do this. This is what I started with. I heard Ta-Ku beat two years ago and I thought it was cooler than all the bullshit that was hot. I didn’t care what the fuck was hot. I thought that was cool. I didn’t get it when I was 18 at all, but I just rode with it. That’s why it’s so natural over the beats. I wrote to those beats to challenge myself, not knowing that this is the route I was going to take. I was like, ‘Man, this is weird. I know someone wouldn’t rap over this so I’m going to challenge myself.’ So I just did. I was never really influenced by anybody.
How did you link with the Soulection team? I know you’ve worked with Sango. A friend of ours introduced us through email. We ended up talking and I ended up sending him tracks that I did over previous beats to see if he liked them. He ended up loving them and became a fan and he started sending me beats. From there we built a friendship. We got each others numbers and started talking and we both did Broccoli City Festival. That was two weeks ago and we kicked it there and we kicked it the whole day. It was all through email at first, though.
There’s more in the pipeline coming with him? Yeah, maybe.
I was going to ask you about Broccoli City—Cam’ron and Kelela performed, and you’re kind of like midway between them, to me. I met Kelela. Cam’ron was really protected, so he was kind of in and out. He did his job. But the scene was cool. DMV is such a soul, neo-black city. So people accepted both. There were a lot of people there who liked soul and they liked Kelela and were singing along, and there was a lot of people from the hood because it was in Southeast, and Southeast is like “Oh it’s Cam’ron!”
How do you deal with the not-showing-your-face thing at shows? I did UStreet with a mask at the beginning and then I took it off. I guess it’s like a suspense thing, but I’m really into the music and not into the imaging and I don’t necessarily think we should put an image to the music. I’d rather just make music, and people like that. For performing it’s different, because you actually get to look people in the face—these people that have been following you for months or maybe a few days and you get to look at them. It’s really intimate. I don’t mind showing my face to people because they get to deserve it.
It’s funny that you mention not putting an image to music, because your videos are so striking. The beats are on a spacey, electronic thing, but the videos have a very real street feel. Is that an important tension, for you? I could see why you could say it’s tension, but I don’t think it is. I make it work. Even though the beats are really outlandish and wild, that bounce is really familiar. It’s really different, but it’s the same trap bounce, the same street bounce, the same hip-hop ruggedness, but it’s really new it’s really futuristic sounding. That’s why I feel like people can actually accept it. It’s at a fine line where it’s different, but it’s not so new that it’s annoying or trying too hard. I made it mesh and meet in the middle. Tasteful.
Have labels been reaching out? Is it at that point? I guess it’s at that point. I like what I’m doing and I think it can grow naturally because it’s been growing naturally to this point. I want to see how far it can go naturally. If it makes a complete 100 percent sense, then maybe I’ll consider a label, but right now I’m content with what I’m doing.
What most excites you about what you’re doing right now? Knowing that I don’t know where it’s going to go or how big it could possibly be. The unknown is really exciting. This could be big! It could be on the radio, and it could change what people think. It could change the way the music goes. It could change the BPM. Knowing that I don’t know that makes me excited. Knowing that kids could take this route and add something to it is cool. Knowing that I could start something and start a revolution is exciting. That’s the coolest part about what I’m doing. In my city there’s a lot of hate, but I don’t get any of it at all. I get so much love it almost doesn’t make any sense. Kids are changing up the music and starting to let that image shit go. They’re starting to make better music and clique up more. This is the best era for the DMV.
What else do you want people to know? I want fans to be like, ‘Damn, that nigga tight.’
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