Our latest premiere is of the new album by multi-talented L.A. artist, Rhys Langston. The mostly self-produced Language Arts Unit comes out tomorrow on POW Recordings, but you can check it below right now. And keep scrolling to read our interview with the man himself.
You describe yourself as a “multi disciplinary artist and performer”. Unpack that for me.
I am given pause every time I want to explain to someone that I create in more ways than one, because I know folks can front like they do more things than they do, or they do everything but badly or in mediocrity. I’ve been creating in the fine arts (painting, drawing, other media) since before I can remember, and am the most trained in that discipline. The cover art for this album and its “Eyes Dyed in Saturated Retinas” single are original works I created in and of themselves, only later realizing I wanted them to be involved with the album. Writing has always been a natural process, and my gift for language was always present (or so I was told). It is a deeply intimate process that I practice to understand myself, but it actually took me to the most public art of mine form: the music. The potential for sending a message sent me to sounds, and now I find myself actually a capable instrumentalist as well as vocalist. I am also the descendant of a lineage of performers, a natural, so when writing and music first took me to a public space people often thought I had been doing it for years prior. That is the pack unpacked.
There’s something a bit milo, Open Mike Eagle, Busdriver and Serengeti about your music. How has the whole Project Blowed/Low End Theory scene inspired you?
It’s funny, because I wanted for so long (in college at least) to be in league with those first three guys, and met all of them in my hometown of LA. However, I discovered them after I had already started writing and rhyming in my own way (as much as that may sound like a fiction). I released a really abstract project in February of 2014 (my sophomore year), and an acquaintance compared it to milo’s work. Not being familiar with his music I scoffed (as we all do when we think we are very original), but upon listening I saw how one might have construed him influencing me. I see the similarity, but we interact with language differently and have quite contrasting ideologies.
He did eventually influence me, however, along with OME and Busdriver when I started to see their names more, and get into music as a fan. I made music for long time with my head in the sand (not really listening to or discovering much music), and early on was more influenced by artists like Talib Kweli, Saul Williams, and the Pharcyde, riffing off their styles, not quite realizing what was in my backyard. I performed at KAOS Network (the home of Blowed) years after hanging out there at community initiative events as a 15 year old who didn’t even compose music. I performed at Low End Theory in 2016 before it closed up, but I honestly feel fortunate to only have gone there after I was already doing my own style, starting in like 2014, as well. It allowed my sound to not be bogged down in being over-influenced (especially in my instrumental production).
You come from a family of creatives (actors, directors, composers, etc.). I guess it was pretty inevitable you’d be an artist yourself having grown up in that environment?
I had/have the privilege of being reared by people not only sympathetic to an artist lifestyle, but a mindset. My mother and father, and my ensuing step parents all had a path and career in the arts, but it was of a more working class reality and ethic. I am fortunate to have seen that day-to-day humility while working in the realm of more lofty ideals, you know, the balancing act that many parents aren’t aware of and therefore cannot support. I think what separates a lot of parent support of their children in the arts is the ability to be comfortable with indeterminacy, an often meandering journey, and the reality of no easy answers. Even so, my dad who is a multi-talented artist, definitely wanted me to be a basketball player more than anything, haha.
When you create across a lot of different mediums, whether it be writing prose, rapping, production, spoken word or paining, how do you decide which discipline to express an idea in?
To be honest, I don’t decide. I’ve had a multimedia ecosystem of creation for years now, and each thing informs another. The goal of my creation as a careerist is to get to a point where people won’t lose interest if I decide to focus on one medium for a while or release something completely novel. The medium is not the message; it is a translation and I take all of those translations to heart distinctly.
Your music can be quite polarizing. Listening to Language Arts Unit, I can’t help feel that people will either really love it, or not like it at all. No middle ground or casual fans. Are you conscious of how people take your music and whether or not they get it, and do you even care?
No offense, but I would reject that notion or even entertain that thought into existence. I feel more than anything, folks are apathetic to, or confused by my work, because they don’t understand it, don’t feel they can easily reduce it to association, or are too distracted in their newsfeed to sit down with it earnestly. This project, as much as the title suggests something abstract or even dry, is one where I tried to reach out with a stylistic and musical olive branch more than any preceding project. If I wanted to be polarizing I would have produced more experimental beats, leaned into unintelligibility with the wordage, and totally eschewed the pop structure I’m playing with. I think if one listens to this project without thinking in a taxonomizing, association-centric fashion they will see that there is something for a lot of different types of listeners. For example, listen to just the first track and then the last track on the album. Someone cynical might say that I am “doing too much” or “can’t focus,” but I would contend the range and the ability to channel abstraction in many styles speaks to a type of reconciliation of sound and meaning. In another universe Da Baby would be rapping on the first track and young Björk would be singing on the last (and a host of other artists in the between tracks). However, I’ve decided to insert myself inside those sonic environs, to show instead what could be done with the range.
But yes I am of a sub-genre of cats who really get abstract and weird, which can be polarising— but I am not afraid to declare that my musical versatility and innate understanding of tone and structure makes me unique in that succession. I think abstraction can work in tandem with an immediate, undeniable musicality, and I tried to make the literal music be a vehicle for that. I am actively trying to re-define what we think accessibility can be, and I don’t care how romantic that sounds. This is pop poetry.
I’m excited to see that Language Arts Unit is mastered by Dave Cooley, known for working on a lot of classic hip-hop from Stones Throw, including Madvillain and Donuts. What was it like working with him?
Yes, it is exciting and an honor! I believe he’s very selective, so thinking back on how I started to work with him is actually pretty wild. In 2013 I hit him up with maybe the second single I ever thought about releasing (it passed the test of time and is still up everywhere), and he really took to it and was down to master the song. He’s mastered four projects to date actually, though this is the first project in years where I’ve been able to afford his prowess. Since I mixed it myself, I knew I had to have the best on board so I wouldn’t be thinking about how it sounded it in 5 years. Obviously the classic hip-hop is important to my sound and the legacy I’m creating, but the fact that he mastered albums by Yves Tumor, Ariel Pink, and Bob Marley was important for me, with the varying sounds/genres on this record. He turned the album around in a day and even did the full instrumentals, without a single revision needed. It really took the worry off of finalizing of, you know, 3-4 years of creating the record.
Language Arts Unit comes with a book of essays. Tell me about why you chose to include that, and how it accompanies the music?
This project is a full exposition of my skills from rapping, producing, mixing, prose writing/editing, painting, to performing. In this way the title, reminiscent of school instruction, is a play on words and the concept of the record: to take y’all to school with a text and book of textbook raps (and literally in every art form I could muster). I know cynicism is easy, and people don’t believe the non-famous can do many things well, but this book was something I wanted to write for a long time, a series of ideas that finally found their way into a project without forcing it. Especially in an age where musicians are lauded for everything they DON’T DO (the production, the cover art, even the writing), I wanted to kill everything. The book is the album and the album is the book. Yet they are made in such a way that you can interact with the two halves of project as superficially as you want (just hearing the sub-bass on the records and bouncing around) or as deeply as you can (digging into the footnotes in the book and copping a Fred Moten or Saidiya Hartman quote).
Any closing thoughts about the album?
This album is for those who don’t wait for permission to proceed as they innovate, for those who are the early adopters of new ideas, for those who wanna shake their ass to the beat and be flummoxed over the lyrics at the same time.
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Language Arts Unit is out tomorrow on POW Recordings. Get it here, including the books of essays. Follow Rhys Langston on Twitter and Instagram. Interview by Grown Up Rap Editor Ben Pedroche.