redveil sits across from me in a conference room in Chinatown, New York City, but his soul is elsewhere.
It’s in a bunch of other places, actually; this is the guiding sentiment of the Prince George County-bred rapper’s new studio LP sankofa, which translates to the Ghanian Akan tribe’s concept of “go out and get it.”
“Home is a lot of different things,” he shares, of Caribbean descent, Jamaican on his mother’s side, and with roots in St Kitts on his father’s. Born and raised in Maryland, he now resides in Los Angeles, where he recorded the entirety of sankofa. “Home is a place that’s physically and spiritually tranquil. I feel a heritage connection to it, but home is also the DMV. It’s also the places I grew up going, the music I was into as a kid, the skate parks in Maryland, and being on stage. That’s home. That’s where I’m like, meant to be. And that can be anywhere.”
The 12-track album is fully produced and arranged by the 21-year-old rapper, self-aware and sonically experienced beyond his years. But this is an album redveil has felt he needed to make since he was 12 years old; it’s this cathartic, stream-of-conscious lyricism that defines the diverse body of work rooted in redveil’s heritage and history.
“You can only resonate with people if you’re being yourself. Everything else changes within seconds … The only way to ground yourself in something static is to ground yourself in who you really are outside of any of that stuff.”
Similarly, he’s trying to create something static. A legacy that is enduring and long-lasting. “I’m not just writing songs. I’m trying to carve out a sound, and I’m trying to carve out a world.”
He lets us into this world in the conversation below.
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Elaina: First off, could you introduce yourself?
redveil: I’m redveil. I’m a rapper, producer from Prince George’s County, Maryland, and I’m 21 years old.
Elaina: Growing up in PG County, what was your connection to music like during childhood?
redveil: My early connection to music was pretty eclectic. I grew up in a religious family, and my mom only played gospel music. That set a foundation for a lot of the tones and sounds I’m drawn to musically. My dad played old school hip-hop, funk, that kind of stuff. My parents laid the foundation for my music taste, and then I got into music myself when I was 11. It started with Tyler, the Creator, and from there, that’s when I realized that jazz was really what I was into.
Elaina: The jazz influence in this album is really strong. Tell me more about why you wanted to implement that side of your artistry now.
redveil: This was an album I wanted to make since I was 12 years old.
Elaina: And you made your first beat at 11, right?
redveil: My first beat at 11. Over time, I learned how much of my art is still limited by my resources and how to best execute my goals. Recently, I got to a point with this project where I was just blessed enough to actually be able to expand on my sound; sometimes, you do need resources and help to do that. I was able to really expand with this album. This is real expansion.
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Elaina: In those early days, you were dropping frequently on SoundCloud. How did those days of dropping mixtapes prepare you for where you’re at now?
redveil: That’s a good question. Those days made me realize how to create a body of work, and how to commit to a moment in your life where you’re deeply invested in specific things you know, and to do that moment justice. Those early days gave me a lot of practice with world-building at no stakes, and that’s something that I think is just really important for every musician to do, but especially for someone like me, because that’s what I care about the most, and that’s just where I thrive. Once I got a little older, I realized the way I wanted to build my world and where I wanted to belong sonically, and everything kind of just started to fall into place.
Elaina: How would you describe your music today?
redveil: I can’t put it into a box. I guess hip hop, but it’s alternative, whatever that means. It’s a gigantic umbrella. But I’d say it’s jazz first these days.
”Some of these songs just came out of nowhere when they started, and that’s the best way to write a song … Writing those songs just felt right.”
Elaina: You did most of this album solo – why did you make that choice?
redveil: A lot of the songs on this album were songs that I felt I needed to be by myself. I needed to say the things I said on this album.
Elaina: I feel like that really comes through on songs like “pray 4 me” and “or so i.”
redveil: Both of those were really fluid in a way, like when it was actually time to sit down and write those verses, they kind of just spilled out of me in a way that I wasn’t anticipating. They both kind of came out of nowhere when they started, and a lot of times that’s the best way to write a song, because it’s coming out in an inspired way, because you don’t even have to think about it. Writing those songs just felt right.
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Elaina: “history” is another one of my favorites.
redveil: That’s definitely one of my favorites on there, too.
Elaina: Why?
redveil: It’s so bright and so sonically layered. At every point in the process, it was really exhilarating. I’m of Caribbean descent, and I’m Jamaican on my mom’s side, and from St Kitts on my dad’s side, and so the verse on that one was inspired by the first time I went to St Kitts and all of the feelings that I was having trying to reconnect with heritage and land, while also sharing all this space with these people that didn’t have the same connection. People don’t even have access to all of their own beaches there. So, it was a beautiful moment that I was able to go there, but I was also very much feeling that frustration at the same time. Both of those emotions are what I was trying to put into that song.
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Elaina: How did you curate the tracklist?
redveil: There was a lot of, there’s a lot of stuff that I started, a lot of stuff that I started and threw away.
Elaina: Why is that?
redveil: I just wasn’t getting the inspiration I needed for certain songs to feel complete. I executed the idea as I fully wanted to. I’m allowed to try multiple times to execute similar emotions. I don’t have to use every instance of the thing. And it’s okay to know when you could do it even better, so a lot of these songs on this album, I’ve written about similar things in previous times, and they just never saw completion, but when I did it this time, I figured out the missing piece. That’s why this album is short, because I was trying to have the best version of every emotion that I was trying to convey, and every set of sounds that I wanted to touch on.
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Elaina: Okay, my last favorite: “buzzer beater / black christmas.”
redveil: I had to put more of myself into the song than I was used to putting in. I had a point that I wanted to make, and I wanted to kind of paint a picture of this show, and the things that I was feeling at this show, and I wanted to start from the beginning so that you could get every kind of bit of context as to why I felt the way I felt. That was actually the first song that I kept from all of the album drafts. This was one where I was like, ‘Okay, I really have something with this. I need to hold on to this and kind of figure out how to branch out from this.’”
Elaina: Just to confirm, were you in LA for the majority of the album’s creation process?
redveil: Yes, I was living in LA. I finished the first song, “brown sugar,” basically right when I got to LA, and then everything else just followed suit.
Elaina: Did moving out to LA impact your artistry or creative approach at all?
redveil: Yeah, I’d say living in LA inspired me. Seeing how much work goes into being a successful artist. That put a battery in my back to be more thorough as a musician and make sure I’m covering every base that I could cover with an idea or a song. That approach kind of made everything even bigger and more intimate than the last album.
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Elaina: Is LA home to you? What is your relationship like with the concept of “home”?
redveil: That’s what I’m trying to figure out. And I want the listener to feel like they’re figuring that out with me. To me, home is a lot of different things. Home is a place that’s physically and spiritually tranquil. I feel a heritage connection to it, but home is also the DMV. It’s also the places I grew up going, the music I was into as a kid, the skate parks in Maryland, and being on stage. That’s home. That’s where I’m like, meant to be. And that can be anywhere.
Elaina: Why did you choose to produce this album in its entirety as well?
redveil: I’ve always been that way creatively. I’ve always been very specific about what I want, to a degree where only I’m going to be able to do it the way that I want it exactly. With my music, I’m not just writing songs; I’m trying to carve out a sound. And I’m trying to carve out a world. And so, because of that, I just like being involved in every single part of whatever process I can be in. If I can produce everything, then I will, because I know exactly what second, what millisecond I want everything to hit. I never produced for myself because I had to, because I didn’t have to. It’s because I need to.
Elaina: Why do you say that?
redveil: I just have something very specific that I want to say sonically, and so I trust myself the most with that.
”You can only resonate with people if you’re being yourself. Everything else changes within seconds. The only way to ground yourself in something static is to ground yourself in who you really are outside of any of that stuff.”
Elaina: Would you consider yourself a perfectionist? Do you get caught up in the small details?
redveil: Yeah, it’s very easy to get caught up in the nitty-gritty. My view changes with every project and era of my life, as to when I know when something is done. With the last album, I was reaching that point with the songs a lot earlier in the creation process, and going back every project before that, it’s earlier and earlier and earlier. But as time goes on, it gets later and later and later in the process. I sit with stuff, I try more things, and do more rewrites.
Elaina: How do you know when something is done?
redveil: Once the things that you’re changing aren’t making anything better or worse. They’re just making it different for the sake of being different.
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Elaina: How do you juggle all parts of the creative process – writing, rapping, producing, arranging? Do you do everything at the same time, or is it more of a segmented process?
redveil: Sometimes it’s simultaneous. I may know how I want a song to sound, and what I want to lyrics to be about, so I’ll kind of go back and forth between both at the same time. Usually, it’s a few minutes on this, then a few minutes on that. Sometimes, the visual component is also present at the same time. But the visuals are typically after the fact. With this album, it actually took a while to lock in the visual component.
Elaina: What’s it like collaborating with other artists who are also so steadfast in their respective creative visions, and why did you choose the features you did for sankofa?
redveil: Smino was he first and only person that I wanted on “brown sugar”, just because, you know, tone-wise, I just felt like he could add so much to it. We had a collaborative process on the part of the chorus that he’s on, where I wrote something for him, he sang it, and then he added on to it. That was new for me, so it was really cool for him to trust me with that. And Carolyn Malachi, it was kind of a similar thing. I needed her voice. I needed her tone on it. And the significance of that. She’s a singer from DC, and I grew up listening to her music as a kid. She honors jazz in a very intentional way, so I knew that she could hit the specific things that I wanted on the song.
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Elaina: What does this album say about where you’re at both sonically and personally right now?
redveil: It says that I’m here to stay, but I also think it says I’m here to keep evolving. Every time you see me, I will not be doing the same thing as last time. Don’t expect it. I’m trying to set a precedent, because that’s just who I am. I’m always trying to find a new way to do something.
Elaina: What do you want listeners to take away?
redveil: I want them to be able to tell how much I care about music and how much attention goes into everything.
Elaina: How do you block out the outside noise?
redveil: You can only resonate with people if you’re being yourself. Everything else, like the algorithm, changes within seconds. You can’t ground yourself in that, because it’s not static. I think the only way to ground yourself in something static is to ground yourself in who you really are outside of any of that stuff.
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
Nayquan Shuler For Hypebeast
