I’m pretty sure I started making music out of self-hatred. Believing that music or making art had the ability to give me intrinsic human value. I thought, if I could be better at this than everyone else then maybe I would finally be worth something. It’s good to be wrong.
I’ve lived most of my life behind my skin, behind my mind, behind what I feel. Because I didn’t think the way I thought or the things I felt were acceptable. Subconsciously feeling that to be entirely myself, was a reality I could not exist inside of.
I hated how I spoke, how differently I thought.
Hated being physically different.
Hated being darker than everyone else.
Embarrassed about growing up poor.
Embarrassed about being a foreigner.
Embarrassed about the neighbourhood I lived in.
Embarrassed about having a terrible relationship with my father. Embarrassed about my sexual abuse.
To me, these felt like a weakness or a fault in me. And I couldn’t share the parts of me connected to those feelings with other people because I feared judgement. Or feared it being used against me. But the inability to exist as yourself is an insidious poison, that rots you completely from the inside while also creating a hardened shell around you that becomes its own prison.
Without really knowing it, what I had stumbled on when I started to make music, was an avenue to begin to soften and to heal. A sacred environment where I could begin to shed skin and pour out. It’s a journey that brought me here, renting a studio for four months. In near isolation, in a vacuum where the only things strong enough not to be crushed were ideas too powerful, too visceral, too true to be corrupted or destroyed.
No managers around, no A&R’s. No worrying about what will playlist, what will chart, what will publish well. Ex-communicating anybody that would give advice contrary to this prime directive of being myself. Of walking towards my spirit’s core, and being doused in the nature of my own existence.
To finally have a space where I could expose myself to myself. Where I didn’t have to second guess myself, where my instincts were okay. Where what I believed was worth believing in because I believed in it. A space where whatever world I created was beautiful just for the mere fact that it didn’t exist before I created it.
Not worrying about being understood, but only expressing. Only throwing up and releasing a current lifetime worth of fear and depression and anxiety - making a record of whatever the result.
It’s in that space where for the first time I could begin to lay down heavy armour. That is where these songs, these auditory paintings, come from.
It’s in that space where I began to understand what intrinsic human value was. To be valuable just for the sake of existing. To be seen as valid because nothing like you existed before you came to be. That is worth something. Something tangible.
I'm an artist. And artists are people that are compelled to share truth. To offer perspective from a lens of self determined discovery. Truth isn't always a call to action, it doesn't necessarily ask you to do or be anything. It's a mode of operation or perceivable element that exists entirely on its own periodic chart. So being exposed to it, sometimes is enough. You change just by the mere fact that you come in contact with it.
Like water being exposed to air over time, changing states from liquid into vapour.
The songs, the words, the melodies in this album, they all matter to me because they represent the real time outworking of my own trauma, pain and discovery of joy and peace. But there is a life inside this record equally important to all of the above, which is also trying to be communicated. It’s almost like how listening to a song in a foreign language doesn’t hinder you from absorbing what the song is communicating. In listening closely as I expose myself to myself, that is where the art is. Maybe every time we have the courage to unabashedly be true in ourselves, the courage to do the same is received by someone else.
I ask that you pray for me, so that I can continue to live on the surface, not only in private while making art, but also in public while living life visibly. Also that as I continue on this journey with myself, that I can communicate who this old yet new person I have found is. A little better each time, with more clarity each time.
supported by 6 fans who also own “Joy Comes in Spirit”
Just a beautiful jazzy rap album with buttery smooth flows versed with huge talent. It's not only lovely to the ears, but the lyrics are profound and empowering about the struggles that she faces. zhangtastic
supported by 6 fans who also own “Joy Comes in Spirit”
saw Thundercat for the first time recently - truly a GOAT of live performers. this album is him in his most honest, focused, and emotional state, and it beautifully intertwines his silly artistic voice with his stories of struggle and loss. the album is short and sweet - BUT, if you want to see him and his friends jam a little longer on these ideas, definitely see him live. the dude literally practices like Coltrane and it shows. zilla
supported by 5 fans who also own “Joy Comes in Spirit”
Hands down my favourite vaporwave album of all time. Every song is absolutely awesome and the album was a soundtrack to many smoke up sessions with the boys. Hard to pick a favourite but it’d have to be the one the started it all
“ж” Angus Molly