Feeling anxious or depressed sometimes is part of what it means to be a person, and it might even be essential to success.
— K. Flay
My default is e-40 because there's no one else in the world who raps like him. I've always loved e-40.
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.
I liked that music was a window into a world with a lot of unpredictability and chaos; it was almost diametrically opposed to my very regimented day-to-day living.
'Life as a Dog' is when I really started to feel comfortable, like I had the due north on my compass.
I write songs as honestly as I can without worrying about genres or labels. Sometimes I sing, and sometimes I rap, and sometimes I do something in between. I jump around on stage and don't care too much about how I look. I try to be myself even though I'm still figuring myself out.
I was totally sober in college and really, really focused. I just took the time when other people might be partying and just made music and played at the party instead.
I think it's more important than ever to be as vocal as I can be about things I believe in outside of music.
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.
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.
I'm a big advocate of revisions, of living with something for a month and then realizing what needs changing, what was lazy, what could be better.
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.
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 think, initially, working on your own is really great because it allows you to just be really free and not worry about how things are perceived or if people are going to think you're an idiot. And once that becomes ingrained, at least for me, I think I'll feel really comfortable to work with other people and still feel that same freedom.
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.
I went in reverse with this whole thing. People I've toured with were kids who consumed as much hip-hop as they could. I didn't do that until I started rapping.
There are people who are profoundly mentally ill. But we now have a very weird perspective on mental illness and what it means. I do think that people are overmedicated.
Hip-hop is rich in musical allusion. It takes something that already existed, respects it, and reuses it.
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 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.
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.
I feel like, for me, different environments are very important to me creatively. I think it's my norm to be on the move.
What I've discovered and try to integrate into my show is when you're up there, and you are loud and more visible, you're setting a tone for how people can behave and how they can feel comfortable behaving.
More than anything for me, making music is about taking nothing and making something.
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 love playing in Chicago. It's the memory lane hometown, which is really nice.
I know that in my own mind, I struggle with a desire to be both entirely absent and entirely present in any given moment.
It's like there's this boldness that I have where I'm driven by something that I can't name.
The more I talk to people who are at a place I'd like to be at, whether its music or writing, or being a doctor or entrepreneur, sometimes you get lucky, and right away something happens. But for most people, the common denominator of success is just working really hard.
I think the key for any kind of artist - and this transcends music - is a certain degree of authenticity and sincerity.
There's something distinct and interesting about a live performance. There's this weird immediacy that's, for me, really invigorating, and it just feels really rewarding.
I've always had a duck personality. Calm above water, feet going crazy below.
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.
Pre-show, I warm up my voice, stretch, do a little team huddle, and sometimes throw a shot of whiskey in there, too. After the show, I hang out at merch meeting people and signing things. After that, I usually try to see friends in whatever city we're in, or if I'm super beat, listen to a podcast and pass out.
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.
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.
Even the dark places are places. You're still somewhere.
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.
I've always had a complicated relationship with sleep. Even as a little kid, I never wanted to go to bed - it always seemed unfair in some way.
I'm letting inspiration move me, in whatever direction it may, without concern if this sounds too rap or too indie, or there's too many words in it.
I was thinking about how we're so in touch with our image now. That conception of ourselves, in a very physical sense, can be oppressive. You find people wanting to be in dark places, not really see themselves, see themselves as a filtered image. A curated image.
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.
Remixes are so much fun. For me, it's like this great release of energy. I like producing stuff for myself, but I also enjoy making music that wouldn't really suit my own vibe.
My sound is, at its core, a mix of things. Definitely an imperfect mix, but one that incorporates elements of the music I love - a bit of indie rock, super rhythmic rapping, and lots of synths.
The one thing that I've always kind of had, ever since I was a kid, was that I lack a certain degree of self-consciousness, which is alternately good and bad.
I think, no matter what, when you're writing songs, most people write about the extremes of their experiences.
I was always very academically focused when I was growing up, and music was something for which I really had no preconceptions or expectations for myself or really any rules. It kind of represented, at least for me, a divergent path of creativity and self-discovery.
My songs are a mix of my own weird raised-by-wolves perspective and civilization.
