Written for New Wave Magazine Issue XIV Cover Story
Empowered by resistance by always stepping away from the norm and helping others achieve peace through his craft, 6LACK’s journey is so much more than just an artistic release and rather, an expedition into flourishing self-discovery. His earlier days, whilst he soaked in the rich culture of Atlanta, were the starting point of his poetry before finding his ideal communicative style within music. And perhaps it was meant to be all along, since the Gemini is ruled and bound with the cosmic messenger, Mercury, a fitting parallel to his flair for storytelling within his songwriting. Drawing upon the inspiraton that his city simmered in, 6LACK remains loyal to his roots by paying homage to his hometown like in his globally-loved East Atlanta Love Letter, a charming sibling to his more wistful Grammy-Award nominated debut Free 6LACK. His latest body of work, Since I Have A Lover, is his most mindfully mature piece yet, as he delves deeper into his artistic evolution, reflecting on his inner growth, his pathway, having a family of his own and how he’s much more fulfilled in a new flow of life.
Co Creative / Producer - Derrick Odafi ( @esco_boomin )
Co Creative / Photographer - ABOVEGROUND ( @aboveground )
Photographer Assistant - Antonius Cramer ( @ntanosui )
Stylist - Ignacio de Tiedra ( ignaciodetiedra )
Art Director - Murdo Hepburn ( @murdohepburn)
Set Assistant - Darcy Norgan ( @darcynorgan )
MUA - Kayla Eviana ( @kaylaeviana )
MUA Assistant - Shoko Kiyokawa ( @shokosoko )
Gaffer - Nonso Onwuta ( @nonzmedia)
Production ASST. Prince Molife ( prynce__jr )
Creative Production - New Wave Studios ( @nwavestudios )
Executive production - BAUBAS
Hi 6LACK! Thank you so much for joining us. How have you been? How is touring going?
6LACK: It’s been really, really good. I’ve wrapped up the European tour now and since then I’ve been designated some time off. But in that time, I started to think about the album anniversary coming up. So, we just ended up doing some surprise pop up shows in New York and Atlanta. The goal of the shows was to strip everything back down to the live music mainly and just to expose ourselves in that way, be nervous again, not really knowing what we were doing on stage and figuring out what the next era of performances might look like for us. I’m constantly just thinking about what I might want to create next.
Are you planning any other shows for the anniversary at all?
6LACK: So, we did that last week in Atlanta, I can't remember which day of the week. And then we did the New York show a few days before that, so those two are already out of the way. Now, I’m just more so thinking about what I might want to do for L.A, if we do it somewhere else. I would like to keep the theme of the show that we just did alive.
That sounds great! We were able to catch you at your London show and the crowd was going crazy and it was really nice to hear. I felt like your live setlist was a really memorable one too and that you wanted to cater a lot to your core fanbase. What would you say incorporates your signature 6LACK sound that makes it instantly recognisable?
6LACK: For me, it’s the lyrics more than anything. I believe for most people who enjoy my music, they enjoy the content. I think that with music there are a lot of distractions sometimes from the words, especially these days. But for me specifically, the stories that I tell, the things that people can relate to, the things that I've been through, how much I've grown and the content of the lyrics is what people resonate with the most. So, if you hear me kind of walking through a personal story, I think those are moments where people kind of turn around and say, ‘oh yeah, that must be a 6LACK song’, or ‘you must be listening a 6LACK album’. If you see somebody in a specific vibe while they're listening to music and they're kind of engulfed in it, I think those are things that kind of give away the fact that they might be listening to me.
So, with storytelling being such a big attribute that trickles down through all of your music and through all of your albums, do you ever find it difficult to be vulnerable at all with a lot of your tracks? As they tend to speak a lot on relationships and love?
6LACK: Not really. I think communicating through music has always been second nature to me. Before I was ever able to figure out the trick of communicating in real life, I had already figured out how to write it in poem form, or how to make it in song form. So, doing it in music has always been second nature. I think the only difficult thing over the past few years is figuring out how to talk about good things, in a way that people still enjoy, because it's very easy to cling on to heartbreak and to cling on to turmoil and for people to resonate with that stuff. But it is a little bit more of a task to talk about feeling good and to still have everybody on board.
Touching on the early days of 6LACK and how you really made your mark in the R&B scene with your first studio album Free 6LACK, how did you manage the huge success that you got from it? And what were your feelings at the time when you noticed that people were really picking up on the sound, and that they were paying attention to you?
6LACK: It was a little bit of everything. It was really exciting, obviously and it was a dream come true. It was full circle to deal with the intensity of it all. I think I really just worked through it and we had tours back-to-back after that. I think I went from very small capacity venues and then I was on an arena tour with The Weeknd, and then we jumped from that tour back to our own tour. Working through it was probably the most productive thing that I could have done because it didn't really allow me time to sit around and just marinate in and all the social media stuff and all the articles and all the hype of everything. It was more so just like; I'm doing my job and it's the most amazing job that I could have ever dreamed about. Now I need to be responsible with it, and now I need to be respectful with it. So, we worked through it for sure. Through that, you figure out things about yourself too, like there was a bit of a flaw to working through it. Sometimes if you get to creep into it, you don't tend to like your personal life and the other things that matter. So, it was a working through everything, type of process. For me, it was trying to figure out the balance between adjusting to my life changing and then also taking care more responsibilities.
Considering you started touring straight off the bat, do you have any tour essentials or any rituals that you like to do before you go on tour or during?
6LACK: Yeah, I think over time they've grown and changed as well, but there's always been some kind of vocal exercise before we go on. There's always been some kind of physical exercise before we go on. For our first tour, we had a push up rule where if any one person of the crew did a push up at any point in the day, it could be at a restaurant for all we care, if someone did a push up, everybody had to drop down and do push ups. It was just the little things to keep ourselves in check because it's very easy to eat crazy when you're on the road or not eat at all and not really set a routine for yourself. So, that was something more on the physical side. And then the last few tours, I think has been more about creating space for me to just relax, mellow out and have a clear mind before I go on stage. So, we did a yoga room on the US leg of the tour, and then besides that, it's just making sure that there's a room that people can take off to that doesn't have noise and doesn't have guests or doesn't have music and allows us to just have a centring moment before we have to do a performance.
Mental health and wellness are things that you take quite seriously as well. Relating to that, I did want to ask you about how your release that came with the sound wellness company Endel. How did that partnership come about leading you to release your Since I Have A Lover study and sleep soundscapes?
6LACK: It was brought to me through my team. And it was one of those things where with the album, before it even came out, I was consistently telling them, I want the album to serve as many different purposes and have as many different lives as it can have. And then they approached me with the Endel idea, and when I got with Endel, it was just the perfect and most fitting situation for me. I already run my music through my peers and through my family and sometimes even through my daughter. So, to have a moment where it's just like, oh, I can make an album that centred around rest and sleep, and that's been like a thing that has been a priority for me over the years. Where I used to work late night studio sessions, now I’ve switched. And for the most part, if it's not a serious session, I end my sessions early and I wake up early in the morning and work in the mornings. So, when I got with Endel, they explained the technology to me. They told me that we would take the stems, we would feed it through a technology that would repurpose and reorganise and, almost like if you give it a prompt, if you tell it, you want it to be for studying, if you want it to be for sleeping, if you want it to be for focusing, it would take what it knows, redo the stems and give it to you. From there you can edit it the way that you want to. It was a really, really dope experience for me because I got to test it out in LA. We did a listening where normally you go to a listening and it's pretty loud and there's drinks everywhere. But this listening, people were waking up by the end of it.
Oh, that sounds really cool. I guess that's more of a nicer way of using AI in the music industry, isn't it?
6LACK: Absolutely, yeah. There's good and bad for sure. But I think with any type of purpose, like any type of technology, it can be beneficial.
Atlanta has such a rich, cultural music scene. We've got so many big artists that have come from Atlanta as well as a slew of rappers. Were you inspired much by your neighbourhood and surroundings to create music, as well as it being something more home-grown?
6LACK: For sure inspired by my neighbourhood and my surroundings. I think there might have been a portion of time where I was mentally was trying to tell myself, ‘alright can you stop shouting out your neighbourhood like every few bars and just give it a rest for a second?’ But I grew up outside so, it was natural for that to just be a part of my music. If it wasn't a school day, I pretty much spent sunup to sundown and past that on my bike riding into different neighbourhoods on the other side of town with people telling my mom they saw me in a completely different part of town that I couldn't have been in. But it was just a way of life to wake up and go, and there's just so many different things to pull from. If you get into some trouble, you can get into some music, you can just be in the neighbourhood and just do kid s*it like basketball. There were tons of different things to get into, followed by a soundtrack to actually live to. We had dance music and snap music and trap music and R&B music, and it was just a pool of inspiration for me and I pull from as much as I could possibly pull from. So, the good and the bad. Atlanta definitely is a thing that, even to this day, I don't think there's been a project or I haven't said something about the city.
Definitely. And even the number six is being something very significant to you as well, considering you were raised in Atlanta's Zone Six, your daughter called Syx… So, is the whole six thing purely to rep Atlanta?
6LACK: Oh no, it’s for a lot of different reasons. When I was a kid, I didn't know much about the zoning of Atlanta. The number six was already my favourite number. I was born in June; the sixth month and it was just a reoccurring thing. Anytime something pops up in my life, I try to put meaning to it. So, if I'm looking at the clock at 6 o’clock or the sixth person in line at school and all these things are just showing themselves to me. For me it's just like, okay, well, what can that mean? Is that my favourite number? And then as I got older, as I got into numerology and life path numbers, I realised that six is my number, you know, in that realm. And it just kept taking on new meaning as I got older and then like I said, zone six, my daughter being named Syx, it just it kept showing itself. So, I just ended up owning it.
Oh, that's so cool. I was just about to ask you if you've ever tried to work out your life path number as well.
6LACK: Oh yeah, for sure. I had gone to it before I did the calculator. I went to six first and I read it and I was like, ‘oh yeah, that's definitely me’. And then I did the calculator and it obviously ended up being six.
It's so funny how life works that way because with me, I've always really liked number seven. And then when I calculated mine, it was actually seven.
6LACK: That's how it goes.
It's interesting how things just work out in that sort of way, regardless of if someone who believes very much in spirituality or not. I’m a very big believer in spirituality and I do believe that things are set out for us for a reason, and things happen for a reason, and our paths are already laid out for us as well.
6LACK: For sure, absolutely. If something shows itself to you in a bunch of different ways, you'd be really, really crazy not to pay attention.
That's a good quote. About the album Since I Have A Lover, it's the first solo album you've done since East Atlanta Love Letter from 2018 and there’s quite a big gap in between them. Music has evolved quite a lot since then so, how did you adapt to these sorts of changes that were happening around in and around the music space with Since I Have A Lover?
6LACK: I didn't at all, I just did my own thing. There was not much for me to reference or adapt as far as how outside things go. For me, it was more of a personal journey. And this album was a journal entry for me, it was where I'm at. The last two albums have been markers of where I was during that time, how I felt and how I thought. So, for this album being in a different space and not coming from a place of depression or deep confusion for me, this one was about realising my potential as a human being and realising how much more space I had to grow, seeing how far I had come and trying to figure out what the sonics of that sound like. For me, the title track was a moment where I was just like ‘what does an ideal day sound like for me?’ and not necessarily thinking about the confines of is this R&B enough? or is it hip-hop enough? or is this old 6LACK enough? It was just like, what and how do I feel right now? Is it more alternative leaning? Is it pop? How do I feel and how do I put it in song form? So, we went with that goal for the first track, the title track, and then from there, I just started to build upon the idea of that. It was just more and more moments of how do I make an audio version that describes me in the flow of life and a really, really good flow of life, figuring it out type of flow.
Are there any standout tracks from the album that hold a really special significance at all?
6LACK: For sure. You know, the easy answer is all of them, but more specific, I would say ‘Inwood Hill Park’ has been one that continues to just make itself like a regular part of my day. If I'm on social media and I'm clicking through story notifications or anything like that, people are living to it. And of all the songs on the album, it’s the one that I feel like is the theme to my life the most right now. It has a hip-hop type of drum pattern to it and is very like, get up and go, as far as just like how it feels when you listen to it. So, for me it’s the chorus to that song, just talking about being dazed and under pressure and embracing the highs and lows of life, and how it might not be easy but I keep it alive, and I do it as much as I can every single day. So, ‘Inwood Hill Park’ applies to me through every single walk on my life so far so I think that one stands out the most.
So, relatability is a big and significant trait that you like to have within your music.
6LACK: And motivation as well.
With that, are there any process that you have when it comes to selecting features for your albums? Considering in the past you've had Future, Offset J. Cole… But for this album, were there any thought processes that went into that? Or were there people that you really wanted to work with?
6LACK: Normally I just create and work on the music myself first and as we live with it, I see if there are any songs where I feel like I need someone else's voice for this bridge or this last verse and it’s just not me. So, maybe I tried it at first and it didn't stick or it wasn't something that I loved. And I'm just like, yeah, maybe it just needs someone else. For songs like ‘Stories In Motion’, I had already listened to it enough to where I was just like, ‘I think I hear a Wale at the end of this’. And besides that, just the glue of the album to where it might not be what you call a traditional feature, but hearing the gaps in between songs and saying someone needs to narrate this part, but it's not me and tapped in my partner QUIN, and having her talk through certain moments of the album. So, it's just for me, the feature part of albums is more about like making it, listening to it, living with it, and then, you know, figuring out like the kinks or the spaces that need to be filled that just don't come from me.
With QUIN being an artist herself, do you both ever try and help out each other when you're making music? Do you both ever have any challenges or conflicts of ideas at all, or do you find it that it's quite seamless and you mould together well?
6LACK: I think when people think of creatives that do the same thing, you just think like, oh, you make music, you make music together, y'all just make music all day and it's just easy and fun… but for me and us specifically, I think it has been really testing to be creative and to figure out how to share space or figuring out when it's someone else's turn. If it's her turn and I need to step back or my turn and she has to step back. Living in the same space and then also balancing creativity within that are the things that people don't necessarily always think about or talk about, but they have been the biggest tasks for us. And not in a bad way, but just more of a realisation type of way where it's just like, oh okay, like the same way you can be shy to do yoga in front of somebody or to sing in front of somebody. These things are real life things that people have to work through. So, it's been amazing to have a partner to figure it out with. And we've done a good amount of songs. We've done at least two on her projects, we've done a few on my projects, and then we've done some separate ones that we're planning for a different project. But it's never been just all the way an easy thing to do. And I think that that's the beauty of it, just figuring it out and how to crack that code, because once that code is cracked, then you know from there everything becomes more fun and more easy.
Does fatherhood at all play a role within creating your music as well?
6LACK: Absolutely. You know, I think that when realised that I was going to be a father, that was the moment where I felt like honesty was the biggest point that I needed to tackle in all of my music. Before I had a kid, there was a lot of deflection and a lot of insecurity and a lot of ‘I don't know’, not necessarily being true and honest about my own part in certain situations… and once I knew I was going to have a kid, from there I was just like, okay, well, you have to clear up all of these grey areas and be a little bit more sure of yourself and be a lot more honest, because not only do you deserve it for yourself, but someone will be looking at you as an example. Maybe she doesn't see it or notice it or hear it in the beginning, but eventually her ears and her understanding of everything will be very, very clear. So, for me, it just pushed a lot more honesty into what I do. And I think that's why we get to make albums like Since I Have A Lover where, I’m not creating from a bad space anymore. And that's partially because of having a kid who needs to also feel happy and inspired and healthy and supported. And if I make music that does that for me, then I can only imagine that it'll do the same thing for her.
We really appreciate that you've collaborated with some huge British artists such as Gorillaz on the track ‘The Pink Phantom’ featuring Elton John as well as yourself. Was there anything that you learned in the creative process from either of these artists at all when working with them?
6LACK: With the Gorillaz track specifically, I think that has been a lesson that I've learned throughout my whole entire career of making music, which is if I want to grow and if I want to do different things, I just have to continue to put myself in spaces where people might not be used to it. Or maybe the first time I try something with it, it might be uncomfortable or it might not be my favourite. And then over time, I figure out my space in those moments. And when I learn in those moments and when I create in those moments, I end up loving it. Then I can bring new tricks and new things back to my own music.
Sounds like the most ideal situation, just taking little elements of things from different people and then just incorporating it into your own thing to grow even more.
6LACK: Absolutely.
For this issue we're focusing on the theme of resistance. So, would you be able to tell us what resistance within your art would mean to you?
6LACK: To me, that would mean continuing to just stand on purpose and serving a cause greater than myself. I think that money, attention, distractions, social media and biases, there's so many things that take us away from the core of why we are here and why we create. So, for me, resistance within my art just means sticking to what I know is right. Sticking to what I know actually helps people and letting that just lead my whole entire career for as long as I can do it.
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