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| My joke about a second take back-fired. |
[Ed. – I actually held onto a few posts from A Project of Self-Indulgence, the first several artist profiles of 2019 among them. Because the 1st Quarter Playlist that I’m putting up includes a fair number of artists on this list, I thought I’d repost these summaries to give people an intro to the artists they hear on the playlist. Just the good ones, mind you. And, now, without preamble…]
Masego
“Anytime I’ve tried to make this recipe for dopeness, it just doesn’t work.”
That doesn’t so much sum up Masego, the stage-name for the fairly-recently launched Micah Davis, as embody him. He describes his influences – jazz-era legend Cab Calloway and Jamie Foxx, of all people, not to mention Pharrell, and OutKast’s Andre 3000 – while also talking about how much he relies on improvisation when making music. He trips when he tries to too-consciously follow his idols.
Masego is a fairly recent act, someone I found when the Portland Mercury named his Lady Lady as one of their top albums of 2018. Personally, the connection came slowly and through inaction: every time I came close to skipping a song, I’d inevitably counsel myself to give it “just a couple more seconds.” I only noticed I’d stopped saying that when Spotify started playing another artist. Lady Lady is the kind of magnetic, low-upon-first-listen kind of albums, but it’s something I sank into, and without noticing it much. I pulled “Lavish Lullaby,” “Old Age” and “Just A Little” to the playlist and, the more I listen to them, and read up on him, the more all that feels like a toe-hold onto something bigger. Judging by the fact he was scheduled to headline a European/North American tour shortly after this interview, says that The Mercury and me aren’t the only people who can’t quite find the skip button.
Born in Jamaica, raised in Newport News, Virginia, by an entrepreneur and a guy in the U.S Air Force, both of them pastors, Masego comes from Soundcloud, and the internet in general. He calls what he does “TrapHouseJazz” (and…I’ll accept it), and, from one interview to the next – whether in a WAMU 85 Bandwidth.fm interview (source for the quote up top), or one with Billboard (link above) – understanding what that means requires some long-form reading. To give an example, he neither reads nor writes music, but, in a testament to his drive and/or compulsion, he created his own musical notation that he understands well enough to translate for others. Most often, though, he just sits down and lets it happen – and, after that, he invites in more people (something about 100 people being “in TrapHouseJazz”). Call it hyper-, open-source collaboration with all kinds of anyone he can find. The man (age 25) even created an app called Network, in order to enable the kind of collaboration that works for him – and probably people of his generation.
Masego
“Anytime I’ve tried to make this recipe for dopeness, it just doesn’t work.”
That doesn’t so much sum up Masego, the stage-name for the fairly-recently launched Micah Davis, as embody him. He describes his influences – jazz-era legend Cab Calloway and Jamie Foxx, of all people, not to mention Pharrell, and OutKast’s Andre 3000 – while also talking about how much he relies on improvisation when making music. He trips when he tries to too-consciously follow his idols.
Masego is a fairly recent act, someone I found when the Portland Mercury named his Lady Lady as one of their top albums of 2018. Personally, the connection came slowly and through inaction: every time I came close to skipping a song, I’d inevitably counsel myself to give it “just a couple more seconds.” I only noticed I’d stopped saying that when Spotify started playing another artist. Lady Lady is the kind of magnetic, low-upon-first-listen kind of albums, but it’s something I sank into, and without noticing it much. I pulled “Lavish Lullaby,” “Old Age” and “Just A Little” to the playlist and, the more I listen to them, and read up on him, the more all that feels like a toe-hold onto something bigger. Judging by the fact he was scheduled to headline a European/North American tour shortly after this interview, says that The Mercury and me aren’t the only people who can’t quite find the skip button.
Born in Jamaica, raised in Newport News, Virginia, by an entrepreneur and a guy in the U.S Air Force, both of them pastors, Masego comes from Soundcloud, and the internet in general. He calls what he does “TrapHouseJazz” (and…I’ll accept it), and, from one interview to the next – whether in a WAMU 85 Bandwidth.fm interview (source for the quote up top), or one with Billboard (link above) – understanding what that means requires some long-form reading. To give an example, he neither reads nor writes music, but, in a testament to his drive and/or compulsion, he created his own musical notation that he understands well enough to translate for others. Most often, though, he just sits down and lets it happen – and, after that, he invites in more people (something about 100 people being “in TrapHouseJazz”). Call it hyper-, open-source collaboration with all kinds of anyone he can find. The man (age 25) even created an app called Network, in order to enable the kind of collaboration that works for him – and probably people of his generation.
