villin on The Nasty Collective Podcast

March 2023 interview with Miguel of The Nasty Collective, discussing Iowa music and the value of celebrating local talent.

Imma Interview

Imma is a Des Moines-based MC and he just released a new EP titled GOOD. In this discussion we spoke about the release and the influences that contributed to its sound. One such genre that swayed its direction is R&B from the '90s and 2000s and as we continued, Imma explained how the genre not only influenced his approach to making music and music videos, but also how it's also influenced his relationship with sexist language within his own music. A son of Sudanese parents, Imma also discussed feeling like an outsider throughout his childhood and what it means to have now found a sense of belonging within a community of likeminded friends.

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villin: The song introducing things here is "Thought of You" by Imma from his GOOD EP. This episode of the villin podcast features a conversation with the Des Moines-based MC about his new four song release, though we strayed into more personal territory as we talked, discussing at length his experience growing up as a child of Sudanese immigrants and trying to reconcile that within Black American culture. We touched on Imma's childhood feeling of alienation, which originally led him to creating music. [This] now contrasts greatly with the close knit group of contemporaries he's found within the Blackshoe Inc. crew, which is made up of a laundry list of creatives largely in the Des Moines area. First up though, we spoke about the music on GOOD, where it came from, and how he hopes it translates to listeners.

Imma: So, for me, the theme of it was really just kind of—"good" music to me, really, I don't really listen to a lot of new music. I'm really listening to '90s R&B and hip-hop, you know what I'm saying, just like a lot of old Kanye, Jay-Z, you know, some Nas. For me, music that I like is a lot of '90s R&B and that's just really what I was trying to go for. I remember back in music when the way that guys would talk about women was really different, you know what I'm saying? It was really more of trying to uplift women. Like, guys were chasing girls in their songs. And so that was just the place that I was trying to go with it. And I like to use the term "good" because, really, "good" doesn't really have a set definition. Everyone's interpretation of what's good is always very different. So, I kind of wanted people to be able to listen to this and tag on how they feel about it and make that the reason for the album for them.

villin: As we broke down those influences a little more, Imma made a distinction about some of the music that inspired him and how R&B's reverential view of women has impacted his own approach.

Imma: It's important to me just because—even before I wanted to rap I wanted to be an R&B singer. And the things that always captured me, like I always loved listening to Ne-Yo and Usher and even early Chris Brown, you know what I'm saying? I would listen to a lot of their music growing up. And that's really shaped the way that I view women in my life. I personally don't call women bitches. Even, just like, I think seven months ago I stopped using the word "bitches" in all of my new songs that I want to make. So it's really, for me, something that—I want my music to be very inclusive. Something that women will listen to and they will find parts of it that they love.

villin: For anyone familiar with Chris Brown's past, this statement brings up an obvious paradox. Avoiding endless debate about the separation of art and artist though, it's interesting to hear someone Imma's age—twenty-one for those counting—reconciling a personal set of values with cultural influences and figuring out how to navigate those waters.

Imma: My thing with Chris, specifically is—I used to listen to a lot of Chris Brown before he had gotten with Rihanna. And that was my time where I really liked him a lot as an artist and a person back then. And I feel like, for me, I just kind of, I look at those times as almost the clearer parts of his life. Like, I almost look at Chris Brown as a template of what not to do, because in a lot of his early music he is really respectful of women and then we just saw that it was not really how he was carrying himself. When I look at his career, and almost, like, his lifestyle also, I want to be like the Chris Brown that didn't mess up. You know what I'm saying—almost kind of like that.

villin: Out of the paradox is developing a congruency; living and creating music aligned with an ever-evolving set of values. Those values are something that we continued to discuss, relating them to his ongoing collaboration with friends in the Blackshoe Inc. crew. On their Facebook page, Blackshoe is described as an "Independent Multimedia Collective," and a once-over of their YouTube page speaks to that, offering short films, music videos, album streams, and skate videos. Imma's introduction to the group stems back several years to when he met rapper and producer DRXCULV, who just released a thirteen track album called ANTIPORN in October.

Imma: I've actually known [DRXCULV] for a little while. Right before he moved away from Des Moines. He had moved away from Des Moines about a year, maybe two years ago. And I had met him, I'd say, probably three years ago. I met him through his friend Morgan and we just went over to his house and we were just smoking with him and I found out that he made music and then me and him kind of became better friends than me and Morgan. So it was really just kind of a chance interaction that really just blossomed into a really great friendship. When he had moved back into town he asked me to perform at his Blackshoe Fest. And just from there, it was like working together, talking a lot together, you know what I'm saying? I just felt like Blackshoe Inc. was really a group that reflected the same ideals that I have. And it's always better to surround yourself with the type of people that are chasing the same goals as you. So that was really the decision for it, was just seeing how motivated they were and seeing that it matched my motivation.

villin: The broader concept of collaboration is one that worked its way throughout our conversation. Imma talked about an idea that's been developing between himself and some of his Blackshoe friends to run a showcase at Suite 203 in Des Moines, attempting to create a platform for artists to share a stage together. This, again, speaks to some of the shared values that attracted him to Blackshoe in the first place.

Imma: So with a lot of us being in Des Moines for the last five years, we've noticed a lot of rappers who've made a rise out here and now don't really have that same type of credibility that they had before. And one thing that we've noticed is just that a lot of rappers in the city are not really coming together to work with each other. And that's one of the big things, that we like to work with people who make music. We're creatives, so it's just anybody who makes music. It could be somebody who's into film, because we do have cinematographers and all types of people inside of Blackshoe, even people who don't make music. Really, the creative aspect of it, and seeing everyone try to turn what they love into a career for them. Also, everyone trying to push forward brand new ideas. No one's trying to just stick to the norm of everything. Like, it'd be so easy for us to just make drill music and try too ride that wave that's going right now, but everybody wanted to make something out of the box and plan something that is bigger than just themselves. I feel like those are the ideals that really stood out to me.

villin: For me, personally, I mentally kept coming back to the concept of scarcity when we talked. It's easy to get trapped in that mentality, that there is a finite level of success to go around and we're all somehow vying for the limited resource. Whether it's fear or greed, that mindset can kill the spirit of collaboration.

Imma: I mean, and especially now when we have streaming, there are rappers who make more money playing video games than they do from their music. There are other rappers who go into fashion and make more money doing that. There's so much space for us all to capitalize on right now that it's just… I feel like the only way to really do it is to come as a group. Because bringing all your fan bases together is really what's going to make this culture pop, you know?

villin: This idea, or the concept of no man being an island, offers a practical benefit, as well.

Imma: Especially 'cause, I mean, I don't know how to produce for nothin'. I don't know how to produce and I don't have a crazy camera, so it's like, if I was really trying to do everything on my own then I would not be able to do it. And, even as a solo artist, I go to another studio and record there, I have my engineer mix my music, I have other people make covers for me. So, I have to really realize when I look at it that there's nobody who's really doing everything in house all on their own. You're always going to need a team of people. And I feel like creating that team of people with other creatives around you locally is definitely one of the best ways to do it.

villin: This was sort of an aside before we got off the phone, but we talked about what it means for musicians to develop a local base of support in a global marketplace. It strikes me as curious when I see creative types reacting negatively to labels such as "local artist," receiving the language as a derogatory term, but I guess it's about the implication of the phrase. Like, for me, when talking about Iowa artists, it doesn't even cross my mind that the label is limiting. But I can see how some view it as a limiting term, implying that you're only of interest to a small territory or audience.

Imma: We're all trying to be global artists. We're not just trying to just stick to our city. I like to say that we're all peers. We're all at the exact same level. Even if somebody out here in Des Moines is a little bit more popular than another artist that's out over here, we're still on the exact same playing field. We're still trying to crack that ceiling. It's easier when we're all throwing a rock at the same window, instead of everybody trying to break in from a different window of that house.

villin: The thing that first really drew me to Imma's music were a series of music videos he'd released, which speaks to a real-life situation of this collaborative spirit paying off. Directed and produced by Juice Box Visuals, the video for "Stressin'" is particularly bold and eye-catching. And his desire to create such impactful visuals is something that I love, having grown up myself during a period of exorbitant music video budgets. Imma went on to address where his desire to add those visual elements to his work came from.

Imma: For me the reason why is I've always just been infatuated with film and TV. I love to see a TV show that has really good acting in it, really good pacing. That's one thing I always pay attention to. I remember watching music videos like "Jesus Walks" or a lot of Ne-Yo's music videos, actually, because Ne-Yo would always do something where it has a little bit of a story first. You don't even hear the song for the first forty-five seconds because they're setting the stage of the story. So just seeing those gave me inspiration to want to make those kinds of art. Because I feel like as a musician, music goes with everything and especially film and TV. If you can make a really good visual to go with a song, sometimes people will come back and watch the video not even for the music. I don't know, I really love acting. For me, I always love to do things that you just really wouldn't see anybody else do.

villin: Imma was born in Eerie, Pennsylvania before moving to Virginia where he spent most of his childhood. His parents are both Sudanese and moved to America in 1999, two years before he was born. This isn't something that he necessarily wears on his sleeve, yet, as an artist, but Imma's heritage is definitely important to him and he spoke of daydreaming about a time when he can bring this into a conscious presentation of himself as a mainstream artist.

Imma: I want to display my heritage as much as I can. Right now, I am just kind of building my career working on getting a little bit more of a spotlight on my career just so that I can speak on these things. I've already planned for my first Grammy. I'm going to be wearing what's called a jalabiya. It's what we wear down in Sudan. But I want to wear those to my award shows, you know what I'm saying? For me, that's something that's always in the back of my head and something that I'm always trying to push forward. And I'm just waiting for the right time to be able to speak on it enough to really get a lot of attention on it.

villin: That background also created a significant sense of being other than or different from in his childhood though.

Imma: I grew up very very differently, you know? I didn't grow up like Black kids in America and I didn't grow up, really like anybody else in America because of my immigrant parents. And I feel like especially with African immigrants it's a little bit overlooked; our differences and the way that we grow up, our differences in our culture and how we carry ourselves. And I want to bring a little more attention to that. That's why I feel like in my music I'm never really trying to just sound like everybody else because I also grew up not the richest and not in the best situation, but there were other factors of my life that made my life the way that it was, and make me who I am. So I just want to talk about the parts of an immigrant child's life that people don't really think about or know about.

villin: It's probably cliched to say that Imma's coming into his own as a creative and a person, but I get that sense. I mean, the change in approach of using the word "bitch" is a small pivot, but it's something I see as a rejection of prevailing cultural influences. The same kind of influences that historically left him feeling other than based on his race and heritage.

Imma: So definitely growing up it [felt] much different, especially when I compare it to my life now. When I'm around Black people there's never a problem, they see me as exactly the same. But growing up there was always that divide where it was just kind of like… it was almost like I wasn't allowed to be seen as Black. Black kids didn't accept African kids in their groups growing up as easily as they accepted other Black kids. We were just seen as almost the minority of the minorities. I know that's not really talked about a lot, but it did make me feel almost… I don't know what's the right word to say. It made it harder for me to almost accept my race, because I look Black just like everybody else, but I was still being treated differently by the people that look exactly like me. So it definitely brought a different dynamic to just being Black. Because I never felt like I was just Black.

For me, growing up, it definitely made it harder for me to accept my actions. I was always hyper-aware of if I was acting Black enough or if I was acting too Black. Because going home I can't talk like the African Americans at my school or I can't talk like the way that I did at school because my parents would say that I was acting too Black. And then if I was at school I wasn't able to act how I always do at home because it wasn't seen as Black. Some people would say that it was acting white or just say it was weird, you know what I mean? It took a little bit of a toll, for sure, in learning to be okay with just being African and trying to repel the self-hate that was almost put on to me.

villin: That's a crazy spot to be in, with that feeling of self-rejection, but as he continued to explain what it was like growing up, we got into how music played a role along the way. Even there there's this divide of being somewhere in the middle of two distinct cultures having to find his own way forward, but it makes a lot of sense with relation to the sound that comes through on GOOD.

Imma: So for me, my mom was very into R&B. She loved Usher. Like, Usher was her favorite artist; Michael Jackson also. But she didn't listen too much to American music. We were listening a lot to African music growing up. And, I mean, even in my later years she'd still be playing African music throughout the house or watching shows on the TV that are broadcasted in the Middle East. And I've kind of had to find my own way through music, I feel like. Although I was put onto R&B early, I had to venture into rap music on my own and find out what I like and find out what was really the style that I could associate with.

villin: Imma started making music when he was 16 and released his first full-length album over two years ago. That said, it's like he's just now finding a different semblance of foundation that's providing him stability and confidence with his music. Without dancing around the subject, we talked about what it's like finding a crew of likeminded people and how that influences this sort of feeling… particularly after a lifetime of feeling like an outsider.

Imma: I can't even tell you. There are times when I'll be driving to [DRXCULV]'s crib and we're all just going over there to work on some music, you know, hang out and stuff, just talk about music, and it's like… I gotta just tell myself all the time, like, I'm already living the life that I wanted. I'm already living the life that I was dreaming about a year and a half ago. I'm performing now. I'm working with other artists, you know, my music is on Apple Music. I always make sure I hold onto these type of feelings. I remember the times where I wasn't on Apple Music and I remember the times where I was praying to perform or wanting to work with other people who weren't so willing to work with me back in the day. Definitely just finding my group of people is such a gratifying feeling.

Annie Kemble Interview

Annie Kemble is a Des Moines-based singer, songwriter and musician who just released her seven track debut titled Dive Bar. In our discussion we talked about a sort of dual nature inherent in the release, as it's simultaneously autobiographical while bearing aspects of a performative persona. Annie also discussed her collaborations with members of the Des Moines hip-hop scene and how she's already focused on her next project: A full-length album which she says will be a much more personal affair.

villin: The song introducing this episode of the villin podcast is called "Cherries" from Annie Kemble. I don't know what first led me to "Dive Bar," but I'm glad found it. The song, and the release by the same name, is fantastic, bringing with it an ability to create a set of visuals in the mind that accompany a blend of jazz and pop among so many other influences. Albeit her debut solo release, "Dive Bar" wasn't the first time that I'd heard Annie though; that came over the past several months where I was exposed a variety of collaborations released with B.Well.

Annie Kemble: I actually met B.Well through—when I first moved to Des Moines I was working with a group called the MFK Trio, who I then played with for years after that. But when I first started working with them, the keyboard player in that band, Fred [Gaddy], knew B.Well, and B.Well was looking for a group to book at Wooley's for this jazz brunch. And so B.Well hit us up and that was the first time I met him, and then from there he asked me to feature on one of his songs and that's how I met Anthony (AMMixes). I did a couple songs with B.Well and I recorded my first single, when I released "Before You" separately, I recorded that with Anthony. I love the Des Moines hip-hop scene. A lot of those artists have kind of taken me in even though I'm not a hip-hop artist, obviously. But B.Well has given me a lot of opportunities and chances to perform and make music with him.

villin: Therein resides one of the interesting elements to Annie's music: it's ability to rest slightly outside the reaches of easily definable genre labels. Speaking with Ryan O'Rien this past fall, Annie made comment of a Linda Ronstadt documentary she'd seen and I think there's an argument to be made for a comparison between the two, stylistically. In her own words though, Annie connects her sound to a variety of different genre types that she feels describe the style she's aiming for.

Annie Kemble: I have recently been describing it as pop-jazz, or like soul. I feel like soul encapsulates it. I would hope that you can feel soul throughout the whole thing. That's kind of what I want. But, yeah, it's hard to pin down. I feel like I can tend to write more bluesy or even folk, like folk-country sometimes, some of the stuff I've written. I think I was a little scared of the "pop" genre and what that means, but I think that just kind of… like, I write songs in [a] pop style, of like, the way there's a verse, a chorus, a verse, a chorus, like in the way that I'm trying to make them catchy. So, I think that kind of makes sense. But I think there's obviously a big jazz influence.

villin: There's a quote on Annie's website which says "Annie uses her training in voice, piano, drums, and arranging along with her exceptional songwriting to tell stories and evoke feelings as universal as they are specific." "Training" is such an interesting word to think about when considering the arts, but that doesn't make it any less common or applicable. In Annie's case, she spent time at Southwestern Community College's professional music program—where she was, at one point, honored with a "Vocal Jazz Soloist" award—to receive part of that training.

Annie Kemble: I started going to school there—I didn't know how to read music. I sang my whole life but I never really played piano and any instruments or anything. And then when I started going there, it's a vocational school so you do everything. I was taking bass lessons, drum lessons, everything, I took studio recording lessons, all kinds of crazy shit. That was definitely where I got my training. They didn't teach much about songwriting there but I did learn a lot about arrangement and I feel like I try to implement that into my stuff. Yeah, that was definitely where I got my training, was from there.

villin: Listening to Dive Bar brings about an interesting sense for its place in Annie's timeline. On one hand, it's a product of this broader musical track she's been on, while on another it's a very personal creation focused on a narrow window of time. One of the aspects of that side of things comes with the inclusion of a close friend, Deborah Huysman, who guides Dive Bar by narrating its journey.

Annie Kemble: So, she's one of my closest friends. We work at the same daycare together. And she's a 70 year old woman who is the most absolutely hilarious person in the world, and she's very special to me. And I also love her speaking voice, and I knew that I wanted—when my friend Jazz and I were writing the interludes—I just knew that I wanted an older person's voice. And I knew I wanted her right away. She kind of gave me a hard time about it and I didn't think it was going to happen a few times before recording, but finally she said yes and we got it done. Yeah, she's awesome. I love her.

villin: I feel like this speaks to a sort of conceptual tightrope that Annie's walking with her music on this release, balancing between two sides of the self; the personal and the performer.

Annie Kemble: When I was recording the songs I think I was a little bit—I really like when albums tell a story and when it seems cohesive and I was a little bit concerned about the cohesiveness of the album because all the songs are so different and because my songwriting style can be so different. And sometimes I'm writing about personal things and sometimes I'm just making up random shit. I was talking to my friend about that and how I want—I always wanted to have an interlude because I like when there's a little space between some of the songs and it's not just song-song-song-song happening. And I was talking to her about it and we decided to write something about a storyteller and sort of introducing me. That was the objective, was: this is my first project and I feel like it's really important to know the artist and get a little glimpse until like what they have going on. So that was kind of like our way to sneak that in was to say that I'm a storyteller and that baseline, all the songs are about just how they're about stories, if that makes sense.

villin: It's more of a balancing act than a contrast between the personal and persona, from how I see it, and one that is readily on display throughout Annie's music videos as much as the tracks themselves. Prior to speaking with Annie this stuck out to me, straddling those two sides, simultaneously presenting very personal and personable music at times while crafting this character of Annie at others. To me that's what Deborah's introduction does, it reconciles these multiple aspects of Annie which are present, the self and the character she's presenting as the singer.

Annie Kemble: I think the "Cherries" music video... and "Cherries" is all very sort of like this character like you're describing, like I am on the cover, like I present when I'm performing. Sort of like a songstress, and that's—I don't know, just the jazz kind of vibe. But I think what I wanted to do with the "Movie" music video was make it a little goofier because I am a very unserious person. And I feel like that doesn't always come across when I'm singing on stage being serious about it. I don't know, I think I have two pretty different sides of myself—maybe I have three because a lot of my music is like emotional. A lot of my unreleased stuff is really personal. I think this album was like my least personal album that I'll probably put out, 'cause the stuff I'm working on next is very much more about my life and it's a little harder to release. I think it's fun to not really know what you're going to get, and so I think that's kind of where I'm at with it because I feel like I'm so many different things at one time so it's fun to be able to be all [these] different things, you know?

villin: Her song "Before You" is a great example of this falling back into a second, or maybe third side of herself, as she referred to it, as it pulls from personal experience in reflecting on the difficulties of growing by way of troubled relationships. This isn't to say that each side is equally as comfortable, however, as the more personal her songs are the harder it is they are to release into the wild.

Annie Kemble: I think it becomes a little easier to release the more intense emotional stuff if it's like sprinkled with those little songs that I'm making up that are not true, you know? Yeah, it is, 'cause otherwise—oh, God, all my music would be so depressing, oh, all of it. You'd be crying the whole time.

villin: It wasn't until watching the music video for "Before You" that I connected with the song's lyrics, which to me speak to a different idea than I think they were intended to. There's a line in the song where Annie sings, "Wish I could say it was all your fault / Yeah, you made the trap, but I'm the one that got caught." For me, this lyric has an element of self-sabotage, and nudges my own personal history riddled with countless moments where I failed to protect myself from situations that I knew weren't good for me. From her perspective though, Annie takes a little different angle on the line and how she relates it to her songwriting journey.

Annie Kemble: I wrote that song after a very tumultuous situationship. It was never a relationship, but it was constantly on and off. I think I like knew that this person that I was seeing was not necessarily good for me, or good at communicating, or honest with me. But I continued to put myself back in that situation because I liked him a lot. I have a hard time writing songs—angry songs about people because I try to not hold on to that type of anger or blame. But I just felt in that moment when I wrote that song I was just so angry and I let myself be mad a little bit. I think is this song comes off more sad than how I wrote it, when I was actually pretty angry. But saying that you miss who you were before you met someone is kind of a lot and so I hung on to that one for a while, too. But I knew that I had to release that song first just because it is intimate and I wanted the first music video to be intimate in the same way. And that music video was inspired by an Alanis Morissette video for "Head Over Feet," where she's just sitting there and it's like really intimate and I love that.

villin: Beyond Alanis, Janelle Monáe's "Cold War" music video presents itself as something visually similar, where it creates a visual vacuum, isolating the individual and amplifying the expression of self that comes through the song's lyrics. This is captured in Annie's video, as well. Elsewhere in our discussion Annie made reference to a musical similarity between a track of hers and Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game," which itself also has a wildly provocative music video, and elsewhere throughout the release there are a wide variety of other musical influences which Annie calls upon.

Annie Kemble: I get a lot of inspiration from—I love Sade's instrumentation and her music, I love the bossa nova feel. That's kind of where "Cherries" came from. My biggest inspirations are Adele and Amy Winehouse, for sure, vocally. I think I write... I pull inspiration in my writing from Lana Del Rey. I'm a big fan of hers, as well. I also love Alanis Morissette and I also love Fiona Apple. A lot of female singer-songwriters. Yeah, I don't know, I think every song, when we sat down, it was like "okay, this song has a very different vibe from the rest. What do we want to sound like, what are the inspirations?" I think "Movie" was inspired a lot by Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars, like the Silk Sonic kind of sound. That sort of '70s sleaze kind of music, you know? I don't know what "Dive Bar" is, I think it's kind of a... I think that song is the most "me," the most my style, and "Cherries," too. I don't know. I pull inspiration from so many places that it I think that's why it's kind of all over the place genre-wise. My older stuff I was definitely—I mean, in that song "Lavender" I reference a Lauryn Hill line. I love Lauryn Hill and a lot of like R&B singers. And when I was playing with the group that I was with, we were playing a lot more R&B style music, a lot of Jill Scott, stuff like that.

villin: "Before You" also has an element of reconciling a younger self with the present, which the video speaks to by including footage of Annie as a child.

Annie Kemble: I think that song—it was written about a relationship, but I think that it could also go, it could have multiple meanings. And I think that song also means, to me, you know, people that I grew up with and people I grew up around that we're not kind to me... and so showcasing my younger self in that way is like a little tribute to that. Because I love when songs have multiple meanings. I think you can miss who you were before a lot of people. Yeah, it was just a little tribute to my younger self in that way.

villin: Miles away from "Before You" is "Movie," which also bears a contrasting video showcasing an entirely different side of Annie's personality. It's silly and sexy, it doesn't take itself too seriously, and it creates a story of a character, as opposed to drawing upon individual experience in painting a very personal picture of her feelings. Given how all these different sides of her are captured visually throughout these videos, I was curious if there was one that stood out as a personal favorite.

Annie Kemble: I do really like the "Movie" music video because it was so fun to make. But I don't know; "Cherries" kind of has a special spot for me, too, because it was kind of my first time being more like artistic with it. It was really fun to figure out like what the style was and to find other like older clips that fit in with the theme. So, I don't know. I really enjoy making videos and I think it's important to have visuals that go along with stuff. So, I don't know what my favorite would be I think they all have like a special spot, you know?

villin: Annie referred to last year's Pam & Tommy miniseries when drawing upon influences for the song, adding that the video's aim was something of a Las Vegas wedding vibe. But again, there was a line being straddled, using her creativity in putting this idea out there while also recognizing potential downsides of utilizing a character that might reflect negatively, or at least in an awkward way, upon the person she is in her day-to-day life.

Annie Kemble: That was so fun. I loved—I don't know, the song is like very not serious. I thought... I don't know, it's easy to go like super raunchy with that song and I didn't want to go like all that way, 'cause this song itself is inappropriate and I work at a daycare still so it's kind of like a weird balance for me to I don't know, not be doing too much, you know? 

villin: Aside from the concepts behind the album stand a musically robust release. Annie not only sings on Dive Bar, but adds piano on its title track.

Annie Kemble: So, I played keys on "Dive Bar" and then I originally, like, the first version of "Before You" I played keys on, and then I think I think Erik [Jarvis], the producer, ended up playing keys on "Before You" in the studio, 'cause I was singing at the same time. I think that's all I played keys on in this album. We didn't have a super key-heavy album, which is funny because I wrote all of them on piano. But, there's a couple songs that called for organ, and so Bryan [Vanderpool]—I think, actually, Erik—played on those, too. So, yeah, I only played on "Dive Bar" technically. But that one, I wanted to play keys on at least one song, to kind of showcase how I write. I don't know, I love stripped back versions of things, and I think it's a lot more intimate that way. So I wanted to like start out the album in a really intimate way.

villin: The release also features a wide array of guest players, which inspired some curiosity about whether there was much of a collaborative process behind the tracks on Dive Bar.

Annie Kemble: I think I wrote a majority of them, I think—I don't know, I think they're kind of all over the place. I wrote the last song, "Black & Blue/Blood & Sea," I wrote that probably two or three years ago. But I wrote "Dive Bar" one and a half years ago, maybe. I wrote that song when I was playing with a group that I was with. Yeah, we ended up calling ourself, it was MFKAS, was the rest of our initials, so we were the mother fuckers for a while. Yeah, and I wrote that song, kind of, it was on the end of working with them. I think I quit that band shortly after that. I was like so burnt out and there was several issues within like members of the band, but it's all worked out now, and we're all good, but it was rough there for a minute.

villin: In terms of the songwriting and arrangement on the album, what developed was a little bit more of a collaborative vibe as the recording progressed, but the release still primarily revolved around a direction and tone set by the singer.

Annie Kemble: With this album I wrote all of it myself. And all the stuff I've done in the past, I've just written alone. There's a collaborative element on "Before You," when we recorded that song for the album because the producer I worked with, Erik, wanted to re-record that song for the album and I didn't really want to at first. It was just going to be four songs, or whatever, and then it would have definitely been [an] E.P. that way. But I, I don't know, he kind of convinced me to give it a new life, which I'm really glad that we did. We kind of work together on that one and he gave me some ideas about changing up some of the arrangement of that song. And, I don't know, we took some stuff out and made it a little shorter. But other than that, yeah, I pretty much just wrote it all myself and brought it to other people.

villin: At times in the album, the presentation and production sounds so big. A large part of that, if we're talking a track like "Movie," is the strings, added by String Theory Strings, which came as a part of multiple people working together to construct the sound. In my mind, this track in particular opens as if slowly revealing a singer and band on stage. A turntable in the floor revolves as the strings fade in. There's feathers. It's not quite New Jersey, not quite Las Vegas. Something like that. This sort of imagery is, it seems, sort of what was in mind when crafting the production.

Annie Kemble: Erik is the one who, he did the string stuff, he arranged the string stuff, I did not do that, for that the interludes. But we had several like back and forths of trying to figure out what the vibe was. And I wanted it to be a creep-in kind of thing, of like: there is a band—surprise. So, I love that that's what you saw in your head, that was exactly what it was going for.

villin: Despite only being 24, Annie has several tracks on her Soundcloud page that reflect a period she's well removed from artistically. These came as a product of her time at Southwestern, revealing a blueprint for what was yet to come with Dive Bar.

Annie Kemble: Oh, my gosh. Well, two of those songs I record[ed], I mean all of those songs I recorded when I was in college. And I recorded them in the recording studio that they had there. And two of them, "Lavender" and "Willow Tree," were both like finals for a class that I was in. And then the other song, "Hallways," just like a personal [inaudible]. I really like that song. I'd like to re-record it at some point. But, I think those were kind of, those were definitely my first step into putting my writing out there in, kind of, a small way. I think "Willow Tree"'s on Spotify now, too. But I've always been so insecure about my writing style and just, you know, unsure about it and I always kept it to myself. And I think in college it was hard because there was a lot—I mean that's their whole thing, is that they're critiquing you to make you better. And I think I took that at the time as, like it kind of defeated me a little bit. And so I didn't write, I mean, for a while after I released those songs. And then I was playing with that band where we were doing all cover songs for years. And I would every now and then bring a song to that group and we'd play it. But, I don't know, I think I just had a moment where I was like, if I really want to make it as an artist I have to be original and I can't just sing other people's songs for the rest of my life. I'm not going to get anywhere. And I think it was just hand in hand with my like self-growth, and my like self-discovery of, like, oh, I do have something to say, and maybe people will like it. And even if they don't, it's enough just for me.

villin: And that is so interesting to hear, again falling back to this dual co-existence, this time a balance between confidence and insecurity. You can see the confidence in Annie's presentation in her music videos, and hear it throughout Dive Bar, but to know that underneath there is something else going on adds another layer to the onion. And if using the onion analogy, the layers of persona associated with her music and performance surround a more vulnerable core, or maybe something of a bulb in the center, found deep beneath multiple outside layers.

Annie Kemble: I think the insecure voice used to be a lot louder. I think it's getting quieter more and more. But I do definitely have like those thoughts of, you know, what is the point of this. you know. why am I doing this type of thoughts, and things like that. But I don't know, I think after the release of "Dive Bar," I just got such a good response and so many people were so supportive that I think, just going into my next thing is why I feel so ready to start being more personal in my music. Yeah, I think that the Annie persona is something that helps me be actually confident. Like, I don't know if I'm pretending when I'm being that way, do you know what I mean? It's just, like, it's a way to step into that. I think all the time about like Marilyn Monroe and the greatest, you know, the most beautiful women that come off as extremely confident. There's an interview that Marilyn did where she was walking with this journalist and then being you know her normal self and then she was, like, do you want to watch me become her? And then just stepped into her Marilyn persona and totally transformed herself. And I think about that all the time, where it's like, I don't know, if I can kind of believe it somehow, it's just—I don't know how to explain it, it's just like, it just feels good to [be] like, you're kind of pretending, but then it makes it real at the same time, do you know what I mean?

villin: I look at this as a skill, to be able to make a transition like that, and move freely between these different sides. In Annie's case, it's not a trait associated specifically with music though, but one that's been honed over a lifetime of performing in front of others.

Annie Kemble: I grew up in dance and I was always—I danced since I was four through, all the way through high school. So, I think that is a big reason that I kind of have that persona. Where, it's like, okay, I'm on stage and I know how to be on stage and I can, you know, be whatever character I want, which is pretty fun.

villin: That playfulness, and the guessing game of not always knowing whose voice it is we're hearing, or which side is coming out, adds depth and value to the listening experience. Looking at it with a better understanding of how Annie approaches her music though, it's interesting to hear about how this split persona developed, and what it provides for her outside of her music.

Annie Kemble: You know, I honestly, I think I'm more insecure about the person that I am every day than the person that I am on stage. I think when I'm on stage and when I'm performing and writing songs that are in this character, I think that feels more of me than I feel when I'm going to my daycare job, you know what I mean?

I've worked there for almost three years now, kind of on and off. I quit at one point last year and I was serving full time at a restaurant. The daycare that I work at I love; I love kids and it's like a big part of, kind of, I think my purpose, is to be like a nurturer. And I just love kids and I love their imagination. And I think that is, like, I am still a kid in my head a little bit, you know? 'Cause I use my imagination so much when I'm writing, too. But one of my friends from high school works at this daycare and I kind of just like stumbled upon it because of her. And that's where I met Debbie, who did the interludes, and I don't know, it's kind of—it's nice 'cause, I don't know. It's not a lot of.... like, Des Moines people that are in the scene, no one there like really knows me that well. They do know me, they do know I do music, but it's not—I kind of have a different persona there, you know?

I think that it's harder to have a conversation with one person than with a whole audience. I've always been that way. I think it's just easier for me to seem like larger than life in front of people—it's less intimate. And I think that just stems from intimacy issues in general. But yeah, I don't know, it's just, I just love being on stage and I think I think it's so fun and I think it's so freeing. And especially when I think about how a lot of people have a hard time being on stage and it's just something that comes naturally to me. It just makes me feel so like secure with myself, somehow. I don't know... interesting.

villin: Surely, as she continues to perform and release more music, those lines are probably going to get more blurry—and from a creation standpoint, I'm curious to see how her music reflects this change as more and more people within her orbit come to know her more as Annie the performer rather than the person who works at a daycare. Annie told me that her next release will come with a full-length album that she'd like to put out later this year, and how that album will reflect more of the core self and less of the persona. With it, I'm interested in seeing if and how those two sides meet, and what they sound and look like once they do. Until that time comes though, Annie will continue performing in support of Dive Bar, which includes a Gross Domestic Product afterparty set that's on the books for this April. And to wrap up our conversation, I asked what she hopes listeners might take away from the music from this stage in her journey.

Annie Kemble: I hope that people can hear little parts of who I am, I guess. I hope that they can hear that you could be anything that you want. I think that's what I'm telling myself throughout these songs, is I'm all these different things and I can be all of them simultaneously. And a lot of the songs, especially "Cherries," that song just makes me feel so good about myself. And "Movie," too, you know. It's like, I love when songs make me feel indestructible and I kind of hope that... I don't know. But also elements of "Dive Bar," you know, I think it's so... a lot of people feel alone often and I think that that song is kind of just about loneliness and about being a larger than life person on stage and then feeling so lonely when you leave. And I hope people can just relate to that and to like the different elements of the songs, and I don't know. It's kind of a ride but I just hope that people feel something at all. That's [really] what I want when I'm singing.

Zachary Lint (aka Coolzey) Interview

Zachary Lint is a multi-medium creator from Fairfield, Iowa, widely known for his music recorded and released as Coolzey. In our conversation we talked about his musical history, including the two albums he's released this year, but also his new short film called Burlington Paranormal. The horror comedy is still making its rounds on the festival scene, but if you want to be one of the first to know when it's available to stream or purchase I recommend kicking in on its GoFundMe page. The process of getting to this point with the film didn't happen overnight though. Instead, the path to its release involved several years of working in L.A., an abandoned feature-length film, a return to Iowa, and the sale of his house, which funded its production.

villin: It's sort of a funny way to bookend an episode, but what you just heard is a song called "You Fucking Suck." The track is from Coolzey's album called Thank You for Drinking of Me, which was released in February, and in this episode of the villin podcast we walk around some ideas regarding why something like this is a good fit. Primarily, it just felt like the thing to do, and when we were talking it came up in discussion and seemed like a good fit. Zachary Lint has performed as Coolzey for over two decades, but the main reason for us speaking revolved around a short film he's made called Burlington Paranormal. Prior to digging into that, we broke the ice by talking about Cedar Rapids, where I'm based, and one of Zachary's connections to the city, the MC imperfekt. imperfekt and I recently spoke for an article about his vintage clothing store, but he's also been a longtime collaborator and friend of Zachary's. The two got together on a great track called "That's That," from Coolzey's most recent release, but Zachary dove in with another memory of from a past collaboration between the two.

Zachary Lint: There's a nerdcore group on Facebook and they have a running yearly competition called the V.P.C. I think it stands for Vocalist Producer Competition, where different MCs will team up with different producers and they'll form a team, essentially a new group or a duo or whatever, and they'll compete. And every year it's a big thing and a lot of the main nerdcore dudes will participate in it. And the judges will have a certain number of challenges and then you do your challenges and everybody judges on certain things. He was on my last track for that, which was kind of a pop/punk mashup. And my idea for it was getting a whole bunch of non-nerdcore MCs on it. Anyway, it's something you've got to delve into, but it's called "Bring Out Your Nerds." And he was on that, it was just basically, I was getting people who weren't nerdcore rappers to rap, nerding out about stuff that they wanted to nerd out about.

villin: Nerdcore isn't a subgenre I'm overly familiar with. Actually, most of what I know about it revolves around the artist Spoken Nerd, from down in Nashville where I moved up from earlier this year. It's a small world, because Zachary has both toured and recorded with Spoken Nerd previously, though that's not entirely surprising considering the vast range of artists he's worked with over the years. The debut Coolzey album, for example, featured a wide variety of guests including Sadat X of Brand Nubian, Copywrite, and William Elliott Whitmore. And in addition to imperfekt there were about 20 other artists he worked with on that last album I mentioned.

Zachary Lint: So, that was a producer album that I did. It was ten songs where I did all the beats and I produced for other people. And that was the only track that I actually rapped on. It was the last song on the album and it was conceived by Mikal kHill from North Carolina, who's a nerdcore dude. And basically, it just a posse-cut angry diss track. Like, a vague diss track against whatever you wanted to be mad about. So, that's what that song was. It was the tenth song from a ten song producer album I did. It was a sequel to [Coolzey and the Search for the Hip Hop Hearts Vol. 1]. And the first volume I did was ten years ago in 2011 and it was called He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper and this one's called I'm the DJ, They're the Rapper.

villin: Zachary isn't a producer first, nor is he a rapper first. Nor has he ever really been tied to the convention of genre. I can't remember where, but in another interview I read he explained his music as "alternative." To me it's sort of like the Beastie Boys. Most people know them as MCs, but they started out as a punk band, and laced their albums with hardcore, slapstick country, and funky grooves. Coolzey's 2020 album, Fight the American Celebrity Machine, is accompanied by a description that likens it to "A mix of lounge, hip-hop, synth pop, alternative music that ranges in unlikely marriages of styles from Frank Sinatra to Old Dirty Bastard [sic] and beyond." All of which is just to say that for those familiar with Coolzey's catalog, the album fits in nicely, in addition to serving as a welcomed change of pace for the musical renaissance man.

Zachary Lint: You know, I like classic producer albums. Like, Pete Rock used to put out producer albums where he would [have] a bunch of people on it. Like, Marco Polo and stuff like that. I like the classic producer album. It's really nice for me to step back from the microphone and just make sure everything sounds nice and make a good beat and fit everybody in and get to be the RZA for a bit, you know?

villin: Again though, when reaching out, my thought was primarily to talk less about music and more about the film production side of things. But it's not like there is no Coolzey right now. Zachary has released two albums this year, and has plans for multiple tours in the new year with Snailmate and Schaffer the Darklord (as a sidenote: "You Fucking Suck" is actually a collaboration with the latter). He's also cracked open his archive on Bandcamp, offering a variety of back catalog and special releases to subscribers on his page, dating back to the 1999 album, Coolzey and the Sucker MCs. This, while he's exploring and working through the film festival process for Burlington Paranormal, keeping up with his job, DJing, and moonlighting at his local cider house in Fairfield, calling bingo and performing Frank Sinatra covers as Drank Sinatra. With all this going on, I asked him if he ever feels like he's not investing enough time or focus on any one specific area of interest and appreciate how he framed his approach.

Zachary Lint: I always like to think of it like kids on swings. And you gotta keep pushing all your kids on their swings to keep them happy, you know? As far as music goes, that was kind of a worry of mine at first because I put out these three EPs that were just straight up hip-hop, then [on] my first album the first single is a pop song, and there was a country song that ended the album. This is The Honey. And at first I'm like, "What am I doing, am I totally fucking up?" But then years later that's everybody's favorite album, and I'm like, "Okay, I guess I did something right." And I like to stay true to what I do… And also, before I was putting out those hip-hop EPs that people knew me for, I was actually doing indie tapes around Iowa City, and doing indie rock stuff and bedroom pop stuff, as well as hip-hop. To me it's just still doing what I'm doing.

So, as far as music goes, I'm feeling pretty good about it, but also I realize that now that I have fans, and a little following, it's interesting to see… like, I remember I put out my third full-length album, God Damned Friend Killers, and it was very much mostly rock and roll with a few hip-hop songs, and I was worried about it. Not worried about it, because it was actually my favorite album that I've ever done, but I was worried a little about the reception. And then I remembered, like, I don't really read my reviews or anything that much, but every once in a while I'll go down a little tunnel and I'll read 'em. I remember a couple years later, after I put out my fourth album which was more hip-hop, I remember reading a review where a guy was like, "Yeah, the third album was the best. It had all this punk rock and stuff." And I'm like, "Wait a minute, why didn't I read this earlier?" I have punk rock fans, you know? It's interesting to see. You only get to see what comes back your way, whether it's stats from Spotify or somebody who reaches out to you in an email, or somebody who reviews your stuff. You only get to see what comes back your way. It's always surprising to see how far your music goes and you just don't even know it.

So, musically I don't feel that way, but I hear what you're saying about my other endeavors like films and stuff like that. Well, actually, I've been trying to make a movie for a long time. So it does just feel like part of everything. I mean, I moved to L.A. in 2010. I worked for a number of years on a movie that I was working on, trying to get it made. And I almost did get it made, then it fell through, and then I went back on tour in 2014. So, it's not something that I just started doing; it's a kid on a swing that I've been pushing for a while. So, it's actually really pleasing to actually see it get made and get done and get into festivals and people's reactions, and stuff like that. I guess, for me, I've been working on all this stuff long enough, it's not just whimsical things, it's actual things that I've been working on for years, all of them.

villin: And when considering the various kids on swings at play here, film isn't a new, or even recent, addition to the mix. One of the projects I checked out in advance of our discussion, for example, is the 2012 indie horror film Dropping Evil, in which Zachary had a leading role.

Zachary Lint: When I was living in L.A. I did some acting and I do like to act. But my passion is in writing and directing. I mean, it was fun to do it, but as far as the movie that I was working on back then… it went the way that many movies do. I worked on it, I re-wrote the screenplay. For like ten years I was working on it with a friend of mine… or, not ten years, three years, but I re-wrote it ten times over three years. And then I had an investor and we had meetings and we had a contract. Like, it was very far. I had actors signed on, I had letters of intent, I had a guy getting ready to go location scouting in Cleveland, we had special effects people on… I mean, this is one of those things, on a podcast, I don't know but, like, Andy Milonakis was going to be in it, you know? It was just almost there, but I was working with these producers and they were uncomfortable with the contract that the investor sent for it. And there was some sort of, you know, basically waffling, negotiation and then the investor basically got fed up and withdrew his offer. And really, when it comes down to it, I wasn't ready to make a full-length movie anyway, you know? Like, it was a lot of money. It was like, I think we had a million dollar contract on the line. And I don't know what would have happened because I've never done anything like that before. For me it's actually, I feel a lot more comfortable that I did this one on my own and it was only a forty-thousand dollar short film. It was smaller scale and easier to pull off and I feel more prepared to tackle something bigger at this point in time. It was just one of those things. It was an experience. It almost got made. It went the way of a lot of movies in L.A. and didn't get made.

villin: When I explained some of my own entertainment industry experiences, Zachary rightly spoke to some sort of disenchantment, potentially even bordering on misanthropy, stemming from what I went through and how I interpreted it all. However he got to where he is with processing his own experiences, he's in a good place with them now.

Zachary Lint: Like I said, I don't feel like I was ready for it and it doesn't feel like it was the right time to do it. It seemed like it was definitely trying to jump way too far ahead in my process as far as movies go. It would have been nice to make a big ass budget movie but it might have been terrible and it might have been a waste of money, who knows?

villin: And if nothing, that experience helped better prepare him for Burlington Paranormal. The short film is interesting in its presentation. As Zachary said, some of the festivals he's submitted to have kicked back saying it's too long to be a short film, and it's certainly too short to be a feature. Also, in its delivery, I feel like it just gets going before it ends. That wasn't a mistake though, and there's more written for his characters to extend the story and the world he's created.

Zachary Lint: It was basically a very expensive business card. I just wanted to do it. I wanted to do it right. I wanted to have a whole crew, good actors, I got a bunch of good actors on it, friends of mine, and it was just something I really wanted to do. I have no regrets, I'm glad I did it, and we've actually been doing really good in film festivals, and everything. I just gotta keep pushing that kid in the swing and find out what happens next with it because it's a new thing for me, the movie thing. Like, for example, when we did a soft viewing of it here in Iowa I was also performing that night as Coolzey and I don't get nervous performing as Coolzey, but showing the film I was sweating, you know? Like, my friends were coming up to me trying to talk and I was like, I'm sure I was looking very freaked out. Yeah, it's just a whole new thing for me. I have never done that before. Which makes it fun and exciting, but it's a new process for me. I'm not quite sure what will become of it but I'm happy with where we're at right now.

villin: With a bit of hindsight, it's interesting to see how the timeline played out after production on his film stalled and he moved on from the project. It wasn't what he had in mind when he moved to L.A., but the unpredictability of life hasn't exactly led him in a terrible direction.

Zachary Lint: I moved there in 2010 and I was there on and off for seven or eight years. So, it was probably like 2017 when my dad died and I came back to help my mom and help her get everything in order. And then I kind of just stayed around. Every year I meant to go back and I haven't yet, but I also had a house that I was remodeling here in Iowa. I actually came back and finished remodeling the house which is actually how I got to make the movie. I sold the house and used the money to make the movie. But at the same time I'm doing all this other stuff, touring and everything, putting out albums…

villin: The clarity that sometimes comes with hindsight is funny. I remember back, to all these goals I had for myself and my life, and it's only because they failed or didn't turn out the way I'd planned that I was able to find the sort of satisfaction or fulfillment that I was looking for. Thinking back to this guy who started rapping with a crew called the Sucka MCs, and seeing where he's at now, lends itself to this thought. Not unlike how the film that didn't get made led to unpredictable new opportunities, I was curious how any goals along the way might have changed or morphed over time.

Zachary Lint: I definitely never really craved any sort of stardom, or any sort of… Like, I was always sort of not super into the idea of being famous or anything like that. I think at some point in time I was like—I mean, this is before I think Pavement was as big as they are now, but I was like, "I want to be like Pavement." Like, have a deal with a small record label like Matador or something and have a small fan base. I mean, that's still a pretty big fan base, but… Honestly, I'm very very happy with where I am right now. I'm pretty happy. I feel like I'm on a good track to where I want to be, and I am where I want to be. Music's just one of my goals, or one of my main things. It's a big part of it, but honestly it just feels like a regular everyday part of my life as much as everything else I do. Like, I work on houses and I make music and I write and I make movies and I, you know, whatever. Everything else I do, it kind of just feels like part of it and I don't have any grandiose ideas about it. But I do love doing it and I do love making people happy and I love people listening to it and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, I think early on I achieved a lot of the goals. This is something I come back to. When I was a kid I loved hip-hop so much and I listened to a lot of East Coast hip-hop and grew up on it. And to me the goals that I achieved early on, before I even put out my first album, just on tour, like, were pretty much exceeding the goals that I had. For example, I was on tour with Sadat X from Brand Nubian and we were friends and we were playing shows together and we were hanging out together and we were recording rhymes together and appearing together as guests on other people's albums and tracks. And when I was growing up listening to Brand Nubian, which I loved, there [were] lyrics in their albums where… Sadat literally has lyrics that [say] "They don't call my crib because they're scared of how act / If they call my crib they better get somebody Black." It was basically: Don't talk to me if you're white. So to me, having Sadat X be my friend and going on tour with him and all that kind of stuff was—that was huge! You know, like a huge goal for me. When I was a kid I was like, "I can never be friends with this guy because he would never be friends with me," but then we were friends, you know, and working together. And so those are the kind of things, those are the kind of accomplishments that make me happy, you know?

villin: That web of friendship and collaboration is what first jumped out to me when I was first exposed to Coolzey's music. Several months back I watched a music video for the song "Pound House Rap," which I swear I saw several years earlier. It's a complementary piece to the web series Pound House, from DJ Douggpound featuring the likes of Brent Weinbach and Johnny Pemberton. And I remember Johnny from ages ago when I was really into Duncan Trussell's podcast and he appeared as a multiple time guest, but also from his role in the series You're the Worst, which I fell in love with over the pandemic. Johnny is one of the co-stars of Burlington Paranormal. And DJ Douggpound is on a track from Coolzey and the Search for the Hip Hop Hearts. I failed to articulate my thought well when we were talking, but there seems to be this endless breadcrumb trail surrounding Zachary's work, leading to people like Sadat X, who are part of some larger artistic journey. And I love that. One more name along the way is Joe Genaro of the Dead Milkmen, who ended up as a recurring tour-mate and friend.

Zachary Lint: We've been on four tours, maybe five tours together. Joe is one of my absolute favorite people to tour with. As I got older, I started only touring with people who I just… Like, I used to just tour with whoever, you know, just to work. You gotta work, so you're touring with people. And sometimes they were big artists, too, like Gift of Gab [of Blackalicious] and people like that. But I got to a certain age where I was like, I'm just going to tour with people I like to tour with because they're my friends and we have good shows and we have weird music that we play that complements each other. And that's one thing about the Dead Milkmen is they're one of the most in-my-vein artists that there are. They kind of go all over the place, you know? They're weird, they genre hop, and all that kind of stuff. But, basically Joe and I just became really good friends and we just toured together because we liked hanging out and we wanted to work and we like playing shows and it just was a good fit. We did a bunch of tours together and unfortunately we were on tour in March of 2020 and we still had nine shows left and we were traveling from Tallahassee to Birmingham when the shit hit the fan. We had a meltdown and I had to put him on a plane back to Philadelphia and I drove straight back from Alabama to Iowa.

villin: It's an aside, but I first heard the Dead Milkmen when Napster was in its heydey and I was downloading treasure troves of music from groups I'd never heard of, becoming exposed to a ton of wildly influential stuff along the way. One of the few songs I remember from the band is "Bitchin' Camero."

Zachary Lint: I remember that song from when I was a kid. I remember my friend had a tape of that album, Big Lizard in My Backyard. Dead Milkmen were very conducive to kids, like, silly, you know? They were also very subversive. I just love that vibe. It's dark, yet funny, yet thoughtful, and there's tear-jerking stuff, and Joe's just the master of all that stuff. He's just really good at it.

villin: That thread of subversiveness is one that I think winds its way through Zachary's work, and it's also something at the heart of what can make a genre like horror enjoyable. And that brings us back around to the connection with Burlington Paranormal, but also horror in general, making light of established tropes and commenting on the seriousness of life. A few years back Zachary made a short called "Take the Worm," putting the early bird gets the worm-type jargon equally through a wringer of mockery and psychedelic horror.

Zachary Lint: So, I had done some directing and writing for music videos and stuff, but that was my first actual little piece that I had done that was not musically-based. And the whole idea was like, to me it was like a commercial for a men's product gone wrong or something. Where the narrator starts to turn on ya, you know? But it definitely has horror to it. I like psychedelic horror and just like, I'm sure it has some Lynchian aspects to it—definitely influenced by David Lynch. But it was just something I wanted to do. It was a no budget, run and gun thing. We shot it in a day just to do it. That was after my movie had fallen through and I had just come back to Iowa and I'm like, "I just want to make something."

villin: I got a kick out of the main character's drift into madness, externally conversing with internal dialog—which is something I've no doubt done in my own past—but further, the embracing of the absurdity of life. In that period of time I talked about earlier, which Zachary said led me to a bit of disenchantment, or disillusionment, I was still trying to find the humor of it. In the heat of that period I made a web comic commenting on jargon-rich marketing hucksters and a weird short video twisting serious and foreboding sounding nonsense into an ad to sell toys. Which is just to give you an idea of how my mind and sense of humor have worked to deal with this kind of stuff. It was refreshing to be reminded of how important it is lean into the silliness of life rather than become weighed down by it.

Zachary Lint: Well, yeah, it's something I've struggled with my whole life but also, I think that part of that is that you have to find the humor in it. And I think that is what that was all about to me. Being able to find the humor in the horror, you know? Which, the short that I made [Burlington Paranormal] is a comedy horror. And I think that those are my two favorite genres because you gotta be able to find the humor in the horror of life. And I think that "Take the Worm" definitely falls into that genre, as well. [...] I mean, when I was very young I watched Evil Dead 2 and it's the perfect comedy horror movie. It's just so much of both. Yeah, I love that juxtaposition. And, I think, most good horror does have a sense of humor, you know?

villin: And this led a bit further down the rabbit hole of comedy and horror.

Zachary Lint: Well, I also actually watch ghost hunting shows religiously. The worst ones. I don't even care. [Investigation Discovery], all that stuff, I love it. Because there's something so horrifying but so funny, at the same time, about people stuck in their haunted houses, being tortured by ghosts that are just other people that died that are stuck in these haunted houses. It's kind of like the human condition, except extrapolated, you know? Like, you gotta see the humor in it, but also it's dark. I mean, dark humor, you know? That's definitely in my wheelhouse, for sure.

villin: Not unlike Zachary, who said one of his favorites is The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I'm drawn to movies that weave religion or theology with horror. When taking a step back now, long after our conversation ended, it's an interesting thought to consider what he talks about here with regard to Hell. And not just the humor of creating our own Hells, but how the trappings of our misguided goals can contribute to that.

Zachary Lint: I'm also fascinated by the concept of Hell. A lot of demons and Hell [has] to do with Christian stuff, but I think of it more in a philosophical way. Like, Hell is a state of mind. You can have Hell on Earth. But also, I think, we created our own Hells in this life, and maybe beyond this life. For example, people that believe that they're going to Hell, and then they go to this Hell that they've created with their own mind. That kind of stuff. And when you come out of it, you gotta think, if you believe that the human soul is infinite, there's got to be a certain point in time where you come out of it—that Hell—and you're like, "Well…" At some point you gotta laugh at it, no matter when you've been through. You gotta be like, "Well, wow, I did that to myself," you know?

villin: It might be a stretch to align this dialog about Hell with the previous mention of goals, but at the same time I don't think it is. Hell can be getting trapped in expectations as much as anything. In a way this relates again to the business card idea Zachary had mentioned. The things we all do, purposefully or otherwise, are our business cards to the world. I'm thinking back to how many times I got caught up with my own faulty goals and how that became a sort of temporary Hell, thinking the business card I thought I was putting out to the world wasn't leading me where it needed to. All the while the salvation of the whole thing—to use a religious term—was found when the business card led me to an outcome or opportunity I couldn't have predicted.

Zachary Lint: You can talk about making films forever. And you can say "I've got this good idea, blah, blah, blah." But I actually took my own money and made it because I just wanted to be like, "Here, this is what I can do," you know? In that sense it's a business card. It's something I knew I could do. It's something I knew would be dope. I got a good crew, I got a good cast, and I executed it well, and I'm happy with the product. Everybody else seems happy with it. So, in that sense… I mean, also, every album is like a business card, you know? Unless you're lucky enough to have somebody invest everything in your album or your whatever—your project—you just gotta keep making your art. In that way it is. Not that I'm so crass to say that it's all for a business, but I mean, I'm going to make it one way or another. Regardless, as far as the world goes, people giving you money to do shows or make more movies, then yeah. They are business cards.

villin: In 2013 Zachary put out a Coolzey album called Hit Factory, and its Bandcamp page includes a comment which reads, "I like the idea of making hits for yourself. Songs that are a hit to you, or something you create that you can enjoy for years." Enjoyment is an outcome that often gets overlooked when considering goals or measures of success or any of that kind of self-serious stuff. When we were wrapping up I asked if there was a song Zachary wanted to use around our discussion and he instead asked me if there was one I had in mind. Maybe in a different context, a song with a chorus of "You Fucking Suck" might appear a questionable decision, but it just felt enjoyable here. And we continued to talk about that idea... despite getting overlooked sometimes, how enjoyment is aligned with finding humor in the horror: Seeking to make songs for yourself amid, or in spite of, the darkness or even the frustrating banality of life.

Zachary Lint: I think a lot of people go into making art when they're younger, possibly, with a feeling of… they're trying really hard to do something that will get them to a certain thing. I've never been that way. I've always just only made the stuff that I know I can make that's good. And I want to be proud of it and I wanted to be able to listen to it myself or watch it myself and feel good about it and enjoy it. And I think that's the integrity that unfortunately I don't think a lot of people have when it comes to art, because they're trying to do something specific with it to achieve a certain level of success. And that may be, for other people, something that works. But for me it's not my way, you know? I just do it to do it and so far it seems to be working. And I'm just going to keep on doing that.

villin: As we were talking, creation aligned with this story that's been banging around in between my ears relating to The Myth of Sisyphus. There's an absurdity to it, right? For those unfamiliar, the Greek legend of Sisyphus is about this character "condemned by the gods for eternity to repeatedly roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again once he got it to the top." The absurdity of it isn't the meaninglessness of being caught in a loop of trying to achieve the unachievable, but getting caught up in the the human need for reason in the face of an unreasonable world. I don't know that it's the answer, but as we were talking this idea came to me and the word "enjoyment" came back out. If we're stuck here among the at times horrific trappings of our lives with whatever our own individual boulders might be, enjoyment might be the antidote.

Zachary Lint: I'm all about that. You have to enjoy the process. You have to enjoy every day. So, to me, I would say that's the key. There's no top of the mountain. There is no top of the mountain, I don't think. As long as you live in this world. I've met too many famous people who are miserable. And too many rich people who are miserable, and still are, and never will not be miserable. It's not about money, it's not about fame, it's not about that kind of stuff. I mean, I'm a big believer that you have to enjoy the very very simple little things. I mean, this is going to sound—everybody always thinks I'm crazy for saying this, but—literally washing your dishes, cleaning your house, sweeping your floor, making dinner, you know, all that kind of simple simple stuff that you do every day in life. It's all part of it to me. I look at it all the same way. I look at washing the dishes the same way as I do making a beat. It's like, you get to enjoy having a clean sink and plates to eat food off later the same way you get to enjoy listening to that dope beat that you just made on your MPC and letting it play over and over again while you're doing the dishes.

I think there's a humility you have to be able to achieve that sort of continuity of… or any sort of prolongment of your enjoyment of these things. That's it though. You hit the nail on the head. It's about enjoying it. It's about enjoying it and it's about enjoying every part of it. Pushing it up, being at the top, watching it go down, going back down to the other side. Whatever it is, you know? I think it's all part of it. I think it's foolish to think that things are any other sort of way. Like, you're going to achieve enlightenment or you're going to achieve some sort of threshold where you don't have to do those things anymore. You may not have to wash your dishes anymore, for a while, but you're still going to have other things to do that are similar, no matter how rich or famous or whatever you get. There's always something that you have to do in this life. To me it is very much about enjoyment of the process, for sure.

That Honorroll KID Interview

That Honorroll KID is an MC based in Des Moines who just released a new album titled Peace God. In our conversation we discussed how the 18 track full-length differs from past work, including the Phase 2 EP which he dropped earlier this year with 1400slim. We also touched on how Honorroll Records was created and how he's developed since first releasing Say No More, in addition to broader themes surrounding masculinity and how to find peace within.

villin: Hey, this is villin and that track is titled "Work" by That Honorroll KID from his new full-length album called Peace God. In the conversation we had focused around the release we dove in head-first, with the MC explaining away any religious connotation associated with the album's title, instead interpreting it more as something signifying strength and equilibrium.

That Honorroll KID: It's like the power within me and the peace within me, just finding a balance in all of it. Can't get good without bad, you know what I'm saying? Can't get bad without good. Just trying to find my own balance; that's where the peace comes in.

villin: If anything is true about where KID at in this season of his journey, it's that a search for balance is at the heart of it. There's an aspect of it that deals with just being a man seeking internal harmony, and we talk about that more later, but as he explained, the album itself goes a long way in digesting his creative process to this point, and developing a far more well-rounded piece of work.

That Honorroll KID: I would say this is me putting it all together. Kind of, like, polishing what I do best and honing in on the things that I tried to expand on before that I didn't really execute on, in my opinion.

villin: In terms of the story on how KID got to Peace God goes though, there's a lot more to consider that led up to the release of the album. More specifically, we spoke at length about how the entire Honorroll crew came about and the Phase 2 EP, which was released a few months ago with Des Moines' 1400slim.

That Honorroll KID: That's like my cousin. We grew up together. We got a lot closer as of late with music and just being around each other a lot more since I got back from college. But we grew up together. Our families are tight and my mom knows his mom very well, our little brothers play basketball together, we play basketball together. Just family.

villin: As for the term "Honorroll," it's a distinctive word that was agreed upon by a close-knit group of friends looking to create something of a mission statement for their work.

That Honorroll KID: We're all honorroll. So, Honorroll Records is TC, me, and then 1400slim. It originally got started with me and TC out of high school. And then we had another one of our friends who was our manager, who's also making music now known as keeno—check his stuff out—but he ended up being our manager. We came up with the name Honorroll all on the phone together.

villin: And what it means is something they've tried applying across all outlets of life.

That Honorroll KID: Grade A everything. So, it's like, I feel like Grade A goes with everything. It's the best of the best so no matter what you're talking about it's number one. Honorroll, like, me personally, I didn't make the honor roll. TC made the honor roll. But when I came up with the name, the girl that I was with at the time, she had a whole bunch of honor roll achievements on her wall. And I was just looking up, I happened to be looking up and seeing, I was like "Honorroll Records." And that shit just rolled pretty well. The Grade A, you know what I'm saying, the best, that could be like either smoking, that could be with school, with grades, that could be with quality of something, just top of the top.

villin: The trio of TC, KID and 1400 put out a single earlier this year, but it was the latter who released the aforementioned collaborative EP this past summer called Phase 2. The second in a hopeful series of releases from the duo, it covered eight tracks, led by a single titled "FEELS DIFFERENT." How it differed from something like Peace God comes down to the broader approach of collaboration between the two.

That Honorroll KID: Man, OK, so like Phase 2, first of all I just want to say I think personally Phase 2 is way better than Phase 1. Like, it's not even close. But, my favorite track on Phase 2, personally, is either "SHARK TANK" or "TOO PLAYER." And I say "TOO PLAYER" because we made "TOO PLAYER," like, the day of the listening party. So we wasn't even really supposed to put it on the tape. It was just, I had heard the beat the night before and I was like we gotta put it on there. And we just kinda went in there and kind of executed it really well. But then I just like "Shark Tank" because I think "Shark Tank"—it's not the main song on the tape, but I just feel like we was just goin' crazy off the energy.

villin: "FEELS DIFFERENT," and secondarily a track called "POKÉMON," serve as personal favorites from the EP, but when thinking back there are a few different tracks that stand out the greatest to KID, himself.

That Honorroll KID: I think those are big crowd favorites, too. Like, "FEELS DIFFERENT," for me, we dropped that as the loose single off the tape so I've been listening to it a lot more. So, it don't give me the same feeling it did when I first dropped it—it kind of feels different. But it's still hard, I like "FEELS DIFFERENT." That's like a different type of sound that I have, I feel like.

villin: Continuing, he added that this variant in sound really does come down to the collaborative spirit between himself and 1400slim. The EP also contains a few features from GnarlyJevy, who also appeared on the track "Work," which introduced this episode.

That Honorroll KID: It probably leans a little bit more on 1400's sound, if that makes sense. It's a collaborative process, we've both got the same vibe when we in there together, we work well off each other, but it leans a little bit more to his side of things. That's why I think Peace God's gonna come in and really re-establish what I do with my music.

villin: Now in his mid-20s, KID began writing and recording music as a teenager. His first release, Say No More, ran 16 tracks, and still sounds fresh despite being the output of someone learning to experiement with the medium. While the release served as his formal introduction to putting music out as part of the Honorroll crew, music itself is something that's been with KID for much longer than just a few years.

That Honorroll KID: I've always been big [into] music. Like, I used to sing when I was younger. And I always liked rapping and stuff, but I started actually writing and getting serious my senior year of high school, after the basketball season, and after this kid named Terry had died in the neighborhood, or whatever. And I just got really serious about making a project around that time that I just never dropped. And so then, me and TC got even more serious. We had dropped a couple songs and then after that we just never looked back. With Say No More I feel like I love that project, I feel like I had a lot of good ideas, I just wasn't in a position to execute 'em. I didn't really know what I was doing completely, I just kind of dove head first in trying to just establish that I could do it.

villin: When looking back and thinking about the string of releases that followed, I asked what separated Peace God, and what he hopes listeners take away from it.

That Honorroll KID: First, I want everybody to say that it's better than Happy Tears. That's my number one thing. But then on a personal level, I would want people to say that I am somebody who's not afraid to express an emotion. And I'm not emotionless, but I'm aware of what having emotions can do to people's perception. So don't try me.

villin: Reflecting further on this point, I think it's really important. As the two of us talked, we discussed what we were listening to and Kanye came up in the conversation. I'm not going anywhere close to talking about what Kanye's going off on these days, but he has made a similar important point in the past—that he's aware of how his public expressions of emotion have allowed those looking for reasons to misrepresent him an opportunity to twist those emotions and use them against him. That's not local to him though, as either an artist or a man, and that's what I heard here.

That Honorroll KID: I feel like as a man, especially as a Black man, we really not supposed to be emotional. Like, we not supposed to have emotions, like we not supposed to show emotions. And I've just never been that way, like I've never been somebody who could just hide all my emotions. Like, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I can act accordingly, but at the same time it's like, if I feel something I would rather feel it than be numb to it. I feel like a lot of my life I was trying to be numb to a lot of shit and I'd rather just feel it and embrace it for whatever it is. And then act accordingly and move how I want to move after that.

villin: This is absolutely a dilemma of modern masculinity. Even when it's authentic, there's this ever-present cloud of toxicity caught up in its makeup, leaving the blueprint for what men should be a twisted mess at times.

That Honorroll KID: I feel like it's just, like you said it's just a societal norm at this point. People want the man to be the man, or they want the man to be the man and women to be women, whatever it is. But I feel like we comin' out of that a little bit and I feel like there's a little bit more room for people to be whoever they want to be. But I feel like, even as a man who wants to be a masculine man, who wants to be a man's man—whatever you'd call it—I feel like you can still show your emotions. 'Cause, like, there's some little kid out there who's emotional and he looks up to you and if you teach him like you can't show emotions, at some point in life I feel like that's going to fuck him up. You gotta bottle your emotions, that's going to kill you.

villin: As we went on, what I continued to hear revolved around that introductory concept of harmony within oneself and balance. It's a reconciliation with self, really, and when I asked about how it all ties together I used the word "holistic" as an attempt to frame the approach. Where KID is coming from differs from that a little though.

That Honorroll KID: I would say holistic, but more just like spiritualistic. Like, I'm just on that journey and really trying to find myself. And I'm at peace with knowing I don't know everything but I know who I am. And I'm going to figure out what else there is to find out. And it's not even like afraid, I'm just more open to—I don't give a fuck. And I feel like I've always been like that, but I've been a little too nice about it, or more passive aggressive about it. And now it's just, like, I'm just going to make y'all feel me.

villin: We didn't talk much about specific lyrics or beats or what the songs sound like or what topics individual tracks explore, even. From my own perspective, I don't know that it would have made much difference in terms of changing what I'm hearing with the album, even if we had explored all 18 tracks on a hyper-granular level. Our conversation does, however, create a presence that helps me better feel the album, if that makes sense. Not to double-up on a phrase from earlier, but now knowing where KID is at, the album feels different than it might have had we not spoken. And he hopes that however listeners get to the album, that they're able to take away a message from it that's in line with the headspace that accompanied its creation.

That Honorroll KID: As far as Peace God, I just want everybody to find their own peace, man. And whatever that means for you. Find some way to not always be worrying or always be stressing or always be coping with whatever it is that you've got to do to get through your day. And sometimes taking stuff for what it is and just sitting in that moment and just embracing the peace of that moment. Sometimes stuff just gets too fast for people and I think that once you embrace that moment, you know what I'm saying, that's when you're going to find that real calm, that real peace that we all be trying to get to.