#had the endure the first artist who performed a freestyle rap shitting on my city per the audience's request

[omppupiiras]

cuties <3

[ajaklaaaaaaaa]

Who is Nick Weaver coming all the way from Seattle over L.A. to Germany wearing an Eintracht Frankfurt Jersey in his Tour promo video? He is an artist, he is a performer, he is a producer and a guy like you and me. Check out our interview for information about his HipHop approach, his self-perception and the tour dates in Bad Nauheim on the 10th and 11th of November 2017. In 2016, 330724 Spotify listeners streamed 9.8 years of his music. The first release that I found online was „Forever Automatic„ in 2012, followed by his debut „Day One, None“ in 2013, by “Yardwork” 2015, „Prowler“ in 2016 and „Photographs Of Other People“ 2017. Besides that you can find side projects and freestyles on his Youtube account. You’ll find the tour date infos at the end of the article. NICK WEAVER Website – Facebook – Twitter – Instagram – Spotify – Soundcloud – Youtube – auf RUN FFM When asked about the style of his music he says it has a Kendrick Lamar, James Blake and Jamie XX touch and is for any fans of Hip-Hop, R&B and even Electronic Music. The list of artists he likes and is inspired by is long and diverse: From Depeche Mode, Mozart, N.W.A., The National, LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Jay-Z, Nas, Biggie, Mobb Deep, to Eminem.* Let’s jump in with the interview. Can you tell me something about your family- and your educational-background? I grew up outside of the city of Seattle in the United States. I have two older brothers, a mother, and a father – they all live in Seattle area. My father was a scientist for the United States Geological Survey and my mother was a writer/technical editor. I studied marketing at a college in Seattle, which lead me to a business career before I got super serious about music when I moved to L.A. It seems like you had a productivity boost since 2016 judging from you youtube output. What happened? I became much more self-sustained as an artist. I taught myself how to produce instrumentals, so I could pretty much do it all. That process was (and still is) so inspiring and motivating to me. It re-ignited my creativity; the desire to try new stuff. What do you think people feel when they listen to your music? I hope they hear someone who puts a lot of themselves out there. Music is such an incredible thing to be able to do, so you really gotta go all in. I hope people hear someone who really loves the process of making music, and someone who is constantly working at creating their own style of sound. You seem to be a dedicated person thinking about you inspirational and motivational talks on Youtube. Why did you decide to share those thoughts with your audience? I love talking about the process of being creative. I love sitting down with fellow artists, business owners, even friends who have big dreams in other fields. It’s motivating, and it keeps me driven. I created the #WorkFlow series as a way to let people see that side, and to show them that “Nick Weaver” the artist is also very human. In Yardwork BTS: Ep 4 – The Show you say the following: “Everyday shit that I know a lot of people relate to. It’s just real life shit. Keeping that theme, maturation, coming of age, figuring out what is important in life and sort of casting away the rest of the bullshit.” Would you say that you are a normal guy? I would like to think so, yes. Everybody has their own quirks and eccentric parts to them, I have no shortage of my own. I like that about people though. It’s not hard to figure out that you are a sports fan. On your IG are a lot of pictures showing you in jerseys of many different teams. Are you also practicing sports? I used to play a lot of sports – soccer (properly called football in your country), and basketball. I am short, so I always play sports with a big chip on my shoulder! There is one thing that we are especially interested in: Where did you got this awesome Eintracht Frankfurt jersey from? Good choice! Haha, I knew RUNFFM would like that! So in the States you can actually order the Bundesliga kits without sponsor logos on them. Eintracht Frankfurt is my team for life! When I toured Germany in 2016 I promised myself that if I got to see a Bundesliga team play at home, that team was going to be my squad – and it just so happened to be Eintracht that I got to see. The fans were so amazing, it was like a spiritual sporting experience for me. Frankfurt has been my team ever since. I even got to see them do a friendly match in my hometown against the Seattle Sounders. How did some of your videos end up at the german entertainment and gamer channel RELOADIAK? Christian (RELOADIAK) is a homie. He has been such a great support to me. He initially found my music when it was featured in a Super Street Magazine car video a few years back. He really liked it and contacted me about asking to use it. He had so many amazing fans there that really liked my music, so we built a relationship where he was cool with posting some of my content on his channel. Which kind of relationship do you have with Germany? What made you tour here and not in another European country? The fans I have in Germany are so supportive. They show me so much love on Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, FB, everywhere. I love them for that. They created the opportunity for me to go somewhere else in the world and play music. I can’t even describe how grateful I am for the fans! The tour had to be in Germany! It seems like you’re doing more than just rapping. You contacted me, I saw storyboards on your IG, you are playing instruments and you are producing? Is it a necessary evil or do you need to be in control of all the work? I think independent artists should be in control of as much as they think they can still be happy with. I certainly think there are things like videos and photography that you need to leave to the pros. But there are so many tools these days to help you create your content. It’s all one YouTube tutorial away. Even if your doing a lot on your own you probably have a team or people that you trust and work with. Who are these people and how do they help you? My manager Austin Hurwitz is a lifesaver, extremely professional, and an incredibly hard worker. He keeps me honest about my process too. My good friend Ryan Skut shoots a ton of my stuff. He shot all the artwork for the Photographs Of Other People project. I still have a core group of my best childhood friends and my family who come to all of my shows in my hometown in the states, that support after all these years means so much. Do you still have your full time job and what is it about? I have been lucky enough to do music mostly full time at this point in my career. Every once in a while I do contract work on the side for corporate event planning. The first video on your Youtube channel supports a foundation called ��Growing Veterans”, you released an EP dedicated to the movie “The Rock” and you can be seen shooting a rifle on your IG. What do you think about the army and weapons in general? You really did your homework on me! Growing Veterans is a great organization in the States started by my childhood friend Christopher –  a US Marine veteran who wanted to help other military veterans back home. The USA still does not give our military veterans the resources they need after service. They struggle with mental health, finding work, and many other problems when they come home. Chris created Growing Veterans to find work for former military folks in agricultural and farming industries. Our military has endured a lot on behalf of our country’s decisions, it’s important for me to support groups like Growing Veterans. Despite that IG photo, I am very anti-guns. Somehow, someway, the United States is going to have to figure out how to decrease gun violence. Literally as I write this answer, I am seeing a news update about another public shooting in a church. Gun violence is the saddest most senseless shit, and the United States needs real leadership to change this issue. NICK WEAVER GERMANY TOUR „HipHop Jam VII“ Freitag, 10.11.2017, Einlass: 19:30 Uhr Jugendhaus Alte Feuerwache, Johannisstrasse 5, 61231 Bad Nauheim Facebook-Event „Fashion by relict with Nick Weaver DJ Set“ Samstag, 10.11.2017, Einlass: 21:00 Uhr Fashion Caffe Bar, Reinhardstraße 10, 61231 Bad Nauheim Facebook-Event To get an even more tangible picture of your persona I would like you to share something about you that you do not highlight on social media. Guilty pleasures, secrets, things that you want to improve? I love old video games. I just bought a Super Nintendo yesterday, because I still have all my old SNES games from growing up. And I’m not talking about that little “Super Nintendo Classic” that comes pre-loaded with 20 games. I went and bought the OG system on eBay. I still miss my Honda Civic, which is immortalized in my Prowler, Yardwork, and Day, One None albums. I owned that car for 10 years, a whole decade! I am going to get a tattoo of it. I just recently watched the entire Friday Night Lights TV series for the first time. It’s the closest thing to a soap opera that I vibe with. Thank you for your time and the intresting insights! Thank you so much for this opportunity, I know it is in on short notice as well so I really appreciate you doing this! *If you would like to know even more about Nick Weaver you can check out his interviews with respectmyregion, distinctionmgmt, illuminati2g and therealhip-hop. Thanks to my awesome and beautiful Italian co-author Laura for cross-reading! I hope you enjoyed the article For more global HipHop related articles chek my previous posts. Feel free to send me suggestions or feedback to „yoscha at runffm.com“. Find me on Facebook/Instagram/YouTube/SoundCloud/tumblr. Cya! Um mit weiteren Events und Konzerten in und um Frankfurt auf dem Laufenden zu bleiben, empfehlen wir euch unsere Gruppe mit Veranstaltungshinweisen auf Facebook. Der Beitrag Have you met?! with Nick Weaver erschien zuerst auf RUNFFM.

http://runffm.com/2017/11/have-you-met-with-nick-weaver/

[damnthatnoise]

An Exercise In Lyricsim | An Interview With Willing

I have the benefit of being exposed to new music from names I don’t know while running site, and while a huge chunk is not good in my opinion I do get the rare gems that slide through. Willing out of Texas is one of those rare gems of music that came across my inbox and blew me away pretty quickly. If you aren’t familiar with the young MC then let this be a great stepping in point for you, and then do the homework and go backwards to check his previous projects (if you can find them). 

I come from the era of hip-hop when lyrics ruled and where MC’s who prided themselves on creating some of the illest couplets, cadences, and concepts ruled magazine covers and music video shows (you remember those?) and Willing would be one of those people you caught in The Source’s “Quotable of The Month”. With his new EP that finds him reworking Jonwayne beats and making them all his own entitled An Excercise In that just drop, we should see Willing on EVERYONE’s radar and firmly placing him on the top of your ‘Favorite Lyricists’ list.

Read the interview NOW....

An Exercise In by willing

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Damn That Noise:  You have a very minimal social media presence so for people who haven't caught your previous EP's tell us who you are, where you're from, and why you hate social media sites!

Willing:  I tend not to allocate a lot of brain space to social media and often doubt whether or not anyone will actually care re releases of mine. I've put out five EPs over the past few years, one over like... old RJD2 and Can Ox beats, one over beats from friends in Austin (Multi-Tracker and Lo Phi... some other folks as well but I forget who), two with Sadsic (we call ourselves L-Theanine): Cap Metro 7 and Fudge Circles Circles, and one with AO (formerly of Wave Hands Like Clouds) called Closed Set. Only the last of these five is still available. An Exercise In, the new one, is just me ripping four Jonwayne beats I thought were dope because I had a series of more ambitious collaborations fall through and felt like I had hit a new plateau and wanted to update the few people who actually care, which is now enough that private email chains just won't do. I was born in Oceanside, have lived in seven different states and several dozen cities/towns, and now live in Austin.

DTN:  You have an impressive knack for complex lyricism that seems rather incredible for someone I assume is under 22. When did you decide you wanted to be an MC and who were your earliest influences that helped direct your approach?

Willing:  I actually just turned 22 last month. My earliest influences were Eyedea, Aesop Rock, Cannibal Ox, Blackalicious, and the wider turn-of-the-millennium east coast/mid-west backpacker shit. I realized I could be myself in a rhyme instead of falling into precocious fantasy when I heard milo's Milo takes Baths in February 2013. That record really set me on the road toward rapping outside my dorm room. I've performed pretty regularly at the Austin Poetry Slam the past few years and spent too many years in college reading literary theory, which both helped expand my idea of what a rhyme could be, or what I found valuable in writing.

DTN:   Why that name Willing? Why not some super scientific lyrical spiritual miracle type name like....Bloodmoney?! I mean..Bloodmoney is a DOPE name..haha.. Seriously though, how did you approach the creative naming of yourself?

Willing:  I think the concept of will is interesting... that we say we are "willing" to do something not because we "will" or "desire" that thing but because we are resigned to its inevitability, or don't really mind it. I think that's an ironic quirk of language and I like reversing the thought and focusing on persistence hunting as the means of getting what you want. I mean it as an active process... developing will and expressing your will in one of the few spaces one can be unabashedly "free" (art). It's also about love and Serengeti and Kierkegaard and a band called Krill and a few moments in my life where all those things came together. I also fuck with backpacker names that were kinda thesis statements... "Illmaculate", "Gift of Gab", "Eyedea", "I Self Devine", and "Intuition" are all dope names to me because they tell you what dude is about without just falling into the trope of "every rapper in this sub-genre adds x or y to their given or nick name".

DTN:  So how do you approach writing then when it comes to laying vocals down over beats versus say, spoken word poetry? Is there any distinction in how you're structuring everything or do you write your lyrics in a way that can make it all adaptable to any/most beats?

Willing:  Sometimes I write to beats, sometimes I write not to beats, sometimes I freestyle, and I sorta collage all of these things together. I have thousands of text files spread across three different computers, two different phones, a google drive, a drop box, and the 'drafts' on my gmail account. I've only ever written three deliberately "slam-oriented" pieces, and a few thousand loose rap verses. At slam I mostly just cobble together my notes between rounds. It's a neat community/performance space but, for the most part, not my focus as a medium. I'm a rapper.

DTN:  Since you have a kind of reclusive relationship with social media as it relates to your music, do you think this will have any negative impact on your reach possibly being limited since a vast majority of artists use it for self-promotion? Does that kind of promotional tool matter to what you are trying to do?

Willing:  It's not really on purpose that it's reclusive... I just go through phases of withdrawal and return. I'm working on breaking that cycle to foster something sustainable now that I feel more full in the work.

DTN:  Has Milo come across your music at all, and if so what was that like for you to hear from an influence?  

Willing:  He's heard me. It's both inspiring and humbling.

DTN:  Once An Exercise In has had time to marinate in the listeners mind, what comes next for you projects wise? Is there a timeline of what you want to do, or are you just allowing the creative energy and flow push you toward the "next"?

Willing:  I've got a few threads I'm working on right now depending on time and materials. I work best when I have a specific aesthetic goal in mind and a very short time frame. I'm going to have at least one more (longer) project out this year and a constant stream of singles.

DTN:  Outside of the original early influences for you, who else tends to have your ear as far as rapping goes? Who is Willing listening to when he isn't creating?

Willing:  I like Smino, Noname, Clipping, Earl, Danny Brown, Isaiah Rashad, Kendrick Lamar, Skech185, and Lamon Manuel's recent work. Been meandering around Pusha T's catalog for a bit. Busdriver and Open Mike Eagle are probably my two most consistent rap listens. Saul Williams' Amethyst Rock Star gave me my most recent "holy shit" moment. MC Breed was the last one before that.

DTN:  Does the current pattern of how music is consumed and forgotten worry you at all as a new artist? What I mean by that is, when I was your age albums were released and we digested them and sat with them for a long time before we moved on to something else, whereas now we have albums released, hyped up for 5-10 days (if that) and then forgotten once the next big thing arrives. No one appears to be REALLY sitting with albums anymore. Thoughts?

Willing:  I'm not really worried about being forgotten, or about individual pieces not really receiving a lot of attention or careful listening. I'm good at compiling heaps of broken images as opposed to erecting crystalline eternal monuments and, in that way, I think the contemporary mode of music consumption almost plays to my advantage. I started listening to rap in the album-a-minute environment of imminent disposability and still developed massive attachment to artists / projects / songs I love from many different eras and operating at many different levels of ambition/polish. I still sit with records for months or years, and know some will stay with me my entire life. I know plenty of people my own age and younger who do the same, and am confident that the power of a work for the individual will endure even as the market reaches unfathomable levels of saturation (as it seems to each day, until that level is fathomed and inevitably surpassed). I work in a niche enough arena of rap that every day there's an opportunity to demonstrate a skill set, ethos, and agenda anew for someone who's never heard it, and work at it enough to reveal new sides to the few close friends who bump my shit daily and, more importantly, to myself. The work is mine first, and I've written and recorded so much only never intended for ears other than mine that no concern for a market could ever cloud my favorite part of the process -- writing and rapping in ways that are fun and therapeutic for me, all alone.