PAUSE MEETS: KYLE

Speaking about how you have matured since 2017, how do you feel your music has changed?

When making this newest album I think there was a lot of self-care that went into it and I think that has changed my outlook on my career in general. Usually, when I go into an album it’s me sitting alone in a room with one other producer trying to work it out. I’m not just sitting in my emotions and for this album and I think how my music has progressed, it’s been fully about having fun. With this project that’s what it feels like to me, I think my music has progressed into something that feels like the person who made it was really happy when they did it. I hope that charged up feeling I put into will come out when they listen to it.

You dropped a bombshell there, there’s a new album?

Yeah! The new album is called It’s Not So Bad and that is the statement I’m riding with. I was influenced a lot by UK music when I was making it and dance music in general. When I started making the album it was meant to be this lo-fi RnB album, like full sadboi shit. Me just sitting by myself in the pandemic all sad. The reason I love the title It’s Not So Bad is because through the process of making that album I was like: ‘why am I going to sit here and make all this depressing shit? I want to dance; I want to feel good.’ I left my house in LA and I flew to Miami and worked with a bunch of producers there and some producers here in London because I needed to make dance music, I needed to feel good and I needed to prove to myself that life is not so bad. I can’t sit here and make this album while I’m all sad, I need to physically feel happy and not just put it on as an outfit. The album is kind of like a cup of coffee, if you listen to that shit it’s going to make you feel better on the inside.

You say you were inspired by UK music and I know you have a love of UK garage, what was your introduction to that?

I have cousins who are British, they’re from Cardiff and when I was a little kid they would always come to America and they would play me Wiley, Big Narstie, Craig David and all this UK shit. I was listening to that as a little kid.

When I’m making music it’s like I’m walking in a forest, I don’t know where the fuck I’m going because taking a path I’ve already taken is so boring to me. I wanted to make lo-fi music and started realising it was too slow. I wanted to focus primarily on singing here and talking about what I know, which is love. I’ve been with my fiance for thirteen years so I know about love and relationships, let me speak on a subject that I’m familiar with. I know I want to sing and I’m making RnB songs but they are too slow. So, how do I make fast RnB? I start listening to Garage which is in my opinion kind of like fast RnB music. It’s like RnB you can dance to. Craig David is the perfect example of that, he’s so soulful and yet has a tempo and a beat that forces you to move. Pinkpantheres is another artist I am so inspired by and I am a fanatic. I am literally a Pinkpantheres stan because her music is this warm hug. 

And you can hear some garage influence in her music.

Yeah, or if it’s drum and bass. I’m not super well-versed on what the difference is but I think that’s what I was most inspired by. There’s this song Shola Ama, Imagine which makes me feel so good and that’s a garage song and is not so house where it’s just a drum beat, the drums are broken up a bit.

You can’t beat a garage rave.

I haven’t been to one, I want to go and experience that. 

It’s crazy hearing an American talk about UK Garage like this.

It has all the right properties for right now. The last time dance music was attempted there was a lot of bad music when it was popularised and I think that at the core people don’t realise that dance music originates from black people so there’s soulful shit in it. You’ve just got to find the right way to do it but in this current state, after having been locked inside a house for two years, I want to dance and I don’t want to waste my time doing anything other than that.

How was your lockdown?

It f*cking sucked. It was not cool. It was necessary though, I realised I need to destroy a lot so that I can build something better. There was a foundation of who I was before the pandemic which I was just sitting in and I needed to grow but nothing was going to force me to grow. My lifestyle was going to stay the same, I was going to keep living this rapper life. When the pandemic hit it took away so many things that were feeding my ego and my confidence. It took away shows, it took away me being able to see that people are reciprocating what I’m doing and it made me sit with myself and I realised that there’s a lot of work to be done and I need to destroy a lot of things that used to give me validation and build something better that gives me validation from within and not these external things. That had a lot to do with why I left my record label. I left Atlantic because I could not be subdued by the comfort of the life that I had, I needed to really make a radical change in my life but I wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t sitting in my house for two years. So many of the good changes I made for myself came from how shitty of an experience the pandemic was.

What has the change been like since going fully independent?

Way less money, that’s the first thing. You realise you need to pay for everything yourself. You are sort of pacified by this paycheck that will come in from music, not realising that you’re doing all of the work and you’re not reaping all the benefits. Being independent feels like I’m a vase maker and I have a vase shop and I just make the vases and if people come and buy them that’s cool and if they don’t it’s cool too. It feels like I can flow without all of this unnecessary pinpointed pressure on certain records. I would make a song that maybe I like or maybe I don’t and if they fuck with it then it’s like ‘let’s do it because we need to get another smash hit.’ That’s the whole energy and I can’t make beautiful and meaningful art like that. This is the type of stuff I didn’t realise when I was just out in the world going to another show, getting on a plane, going to another event. I was pacified by the lifestyle and then when I was by myself I realised that I need to make meaningful art, I need to help somebody, I need to help myself. I need to destroy all this so I can build something better. 

And how has that gone so far?

It’s like I had this weighted blanket on before. Free is the word, what you’re aiming for at all times in life is more freedom.

Talking about See You When I’m Famous, that’s something you wrote in school.

So much excitement went into that album and it was so fun to make. There was so much excitement but there was an equal amount of expectation which I think was the downfall of my experience with releasing it. I was following up Light of Mine, this platinum album with multiple platinum singles and billions of streams and all this crazy shit and so there’s this huge expectation to make this stadium-ass music and then I make it but it’s when the pandemic hits. I feel like See You When I’m Famous is almost my strongest project but there was so much expectation with that album that it underplayed how beautiful and shiny that moment was because it was so fun. I was in Ventura in a beach house with all my friends and having the time of my life but I had this expectation that it all needed to be bigger.

We’ve just finished your photoshoot and being a fashion magazine it is a topic we like to touch on. How do you define your style?

I’m a jacket person, I put all my emphasise on jackets. I think because in California the weather is so nice you can just wear a jacket pretty much all the time but I really put a lot of emphasis on my jackets and denim.

What’s your favourite jacket?

That’s hard. There’s this Japanese brand called A Love Movement, and I have a racer jacket that almost looks like an old school Adidas jacket but on the left, it has a big weed leaf and on the back, it says “Lost Angeles” and that shit is crazy. I love that.

I know you love Japanese fashion and Kapital in particular. What’s your favourite Kapital piece?

My favourite piece that I own is a surf hoodie but I’ve never seen one like it. It’s patchwork with all these different sleeves and it’s grey.