Though just starting out as a rapper/singer, JPRiZM isn’t afraid to let you know right off the bat that he has ambition. Daft Punk levels of ambition. And he’s not slacking on getting there: the room was full of friends for hype, a camera crew, audio engineers, a full band, and his manager, everyone busy at work. I got to sit in for the filming of songs “Planes 2 Sea” and “North Star.” Though they each took several takes, JPRiZM didn’t lose a bit of energy. If the first step to building hype is believing it yourself, then JPRiZM is ready for step two.
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Nick Canton: You cite Indie Pop, Electronic Dance Music, and Hip-Hop as your main three styles. Who were your introductions, and when, to those three styles?
JPRiZM: Hip-Hop was at an early age. I found some old records in my family’s house of De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, people like that and I was just into their rhythmic schemes and melodies from an early age, so I was just like, “This is where it’s at. I want to pursue this somehow.”
Indie Pop was really later in life ’cause I didn’t know too much about it because I grew up straight Hip-Hop as a youth. What happened was, I discovered an act, Toro Y Moi and I kind of just did a Last.FM search, I was like “who sounds like this? Who sounds like this guy?” I just researched it myself and found some new inspirations that way.
EDM, that also was an early age, it started with video games, really, playing Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, those 8-bit, 16-bit game consoles. That inspired me a lot, I need to get on this somehow.
So you listen to a lot of chiptune, and chiptune remixes?
JP: Yeah, but my biggest inspiration is Daft Punk. Their “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” “Aerodynamic,” songs like that were pretty inspirational to me.
Right now nerd culture is completely open in Hip-Hop. What are your thoughts on how Kanye and others, now you can talk about robots and space whereas in the 90s if you talked about that, you’d lose all your credibility, and then it was just gangsta rap?
JP: I’m completely embracing it, that’s something that’s something that’s a part of who I am. I’m a huge sci-fi fan, huge superhero fan. I have a song called “Vigil N Tea,” I think it’s like a theme song to a superhero nation. I want to embrace that because that’s where I get a lot of my inspiration from, Marvel, DC Comics and video games. Just to be able to embrace that and not be shunned or anything, talking about your street cred is lost because of what you’re doing, it’s a good place to be.
Is there anywhere you want to take further, stuff you want to be more accessible in hip-hop?
JP: Yeah, absolutely I think the way things are going with hip-hop, a lot is still emphasized on talking about how much bling you got, how many girls you got, and I don’t think that’s really important, if you call yourself a hip-hop artist. To just have a positive message, to talk about space and stars and what’s out there and to expand your mind a little bit, I think that’s what MiNDWALKER is about. Taking you to a place you never thought about going before.
This is your introduction to the Hip-Hop world but you’ve been producing for a long time. Why now, in this project?
JP: It started from a humble place. I never thought about rapping or singing until later in life. A friend of mine was like “you make all these beats, why don’t you rap or sing on them, see what happens?” and that’s really where it started, just a random moment in time where I was like “Okay! I’ll start.” “Golem,” the song I have on MiNDWALKER is the first rap I have that’s recorded.
So what started you on producing?
JP: It all started with piano. I was 8 years old, my grandmother had an old grand in her house. I used to just play that and try to get two notes to sound the same and just get the melodies together. Then I took lessons and got a 16-track recorder and just played with an electronic keyboard, made my own sounds. After high school I got an iMac, and that’s when I started getting serious, with Logic and Reason. All those programs are really dope, so that’s when it got serious.
Tell me about recording MiNDWALKER. How long did it take and what programs were you using for that?
JP: It started late Summer of 2012, like August, and I went ’til October. So just two months, me in the basement, headphones all day, straight hibernating like a grizzly bear, just cooking pizza, Walter White status, Breaking Bad in the lab all day. That’s what I was doing. Programs I was using were Logic to run and arrange, Reason making sounds there, atmosphere, different VSTs (Virtual Studio Technology) all on one system, mixing myself.
What do you want to bring to the stage?
JP: It’s all about energy. All about uplifting, showing people things they haven’t seen before. A new side to Hip-Hop that’s almost Stadium-Rock status, that’s what I want to reach.
Do you have any crazy, off-the wall, “If I could do this, if the technology existed, what would I—”
JP: Fly.
High-five people in the back?
JP: Yes. Indubitably.
You sat in your room for two months. Now that you’ve listened to it, now that you’ve played it for people, do you see a new direction, “Okay, that’s where I was, this is where I’m going,” or were you right on point from the get-go and you’re taking that from there?
JP: MiNDWALKER definitely served its purpose. It was my first exposure to recording myself as a vocalist, singing, rapping. As a huge fan of EDM, I hope to one day pursue that as a beat artist, an electronic artist, almost the level of what Daft Punk is. Being in a mothership and mixing stuff on a huge lit-up keyboard. That’d be dope to incorporate that into what I do.
How do you write a song? Is the music there and it makes you think of something, or do you have the words and I just need the music to roll it out?
JP: It all starts with the music for me. And it’s really an off-the-wall Jackson Pollock approach. I just get some sounds and throw them in, play them, play them, play them, get a melody, it’s like “That’s it,” record off of that. Well, it starts with drums, then melody, and it just keeps building like Stairway to Heaven.
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