A few months’ back, UHH’s Matt O recommended an artist I should listen to, as he often does, for someone he had seen perform in a Brooklyn basement and couldn’t stop talking about. Of course, I listened as I always do, but this wasn’t just an EP I played a few times and forgot about. This was Crimdella’s Bury Me in Gold and I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had many questions: "Who is this guy? Is he a big deal? How long has he been around?"

This record is one of the most solid pieces of work by an underground artist that I have had the pleasure of hearing. The seven-track EP was released earlier this year and I haven’t stopped listening; I regularly have at least one hook from it in my head. Crimdella’s lyrics are just very intelligent, not only with wordplay but also in the way he comments on social injustices and how the word has reacted to them. With lines like “Steady tippy-toeing around the BS, us against the world that’s a PS / PS1s felt like a reject, ain’t no more reset buttons”, you can’t help but replay his songs over and over again. The production from Mndcft is on point, accompanied by a well-curated selection of samples and features, Bury Me in Gold is a buried gem in itself that deserves to be brought up from the underground.

I was fortunate enough to attend a listening party a few months’ back, where I met Crimdella and Mndcft, who have proven to be a very well-matched musical duo. We listened to the tracks in respectful silence, which was followed by a Q&A with the audience. There was no question that we were featuring this EP and Crimdella more widely on UpcomingHipHop.net, so Matt and I sat down with him and a few pots of tea to discuss the EP, growing up in Harlem and how music became the focus instead of the hobby.

UHH: For those people who haven’t been aware of you until now, can you tell us a little bit about growing up in New York City?

I’m from Harlem, New York, my father is a known pan-African activist, which affected the way I grew up because I was always aware of certain things, social injustices and things of that nature. Every Friday he would go speak at the high school in Harlem on 135th St, and we would never listen to the speeches – we were kids. We would go outside and play ‘hot peas and butter’ and ‘who stole the bacon’. I also have a lot of older brothers – I’m the youngest of seven and I have an older sister, who has two kids (one who is a rapper too, he’s dope). When I was growing up, we were all in the house, except my older brother but he helped raise me. A lot of my hip hop sense comes from the fact that I had older brothers.

There’s a line in the track "Extra" that talks about how you were homeschooled (“I’m already home that’s where I was schooled at, and when I changed schools I wanted to school cats”) - how long were you home schooled for?

From first grade until high school, so I went to school in 9th grade. I hated it, it was terrible. They were real mean to me because I wasn’t used to socializing with a lot of kids. Home school can be good if you have another outlet to socialize with other kids, but I didn’t really – all the kids I interacted with were my cousins, my mother’s friends’ kids. If you grow up in the hood, kids are fucking mean! Even now I’m weird around people, you might not notice it but I notice it.

What was it like in terms of the music scene in Harlem as you got older?

I don’t really remember there being a scene in Harlem. In high school I rapped a lot – that’s when I started rapping more for people. But we never really went to shows, we had our own little battles. We had our own corner in high school called ‘The Corner’ and everyone kind of hated us because we were smart-mouthed kids and sort of outsiders. When I got out of college I would go to shows, but it would usually be in Brooklyn because that’s where everything was happening.

And you went to college? You’re in good company with Kanye and J Cole. What did you study there?

I did psychology, I feel like everyone does business or psychology. It was cool but I never really wanted to go to school. I went because I knew I had to go, it was really more for my parents. The experience was fun, I joined a fraternity and all that kind of stuff. But I always wanted to do music – I never had the intention of becoming a psychologist. I just needed a degree because I knew I could get better jobs with it if I needed while I was doing my thing. But I liked analyzing people in high school so it made sense to study.

Was there a rap scene in college too?

In college I was the best rapper, not even being cocky, I just was the best rapper. There weren’t that many people that rapped. Every year the fraternity would do a Mothers’ Day Barbecue and whoever won got $100 and every year I won $100. I would just end up battling my friends but it was just easy for me – plus I was younger back then, my brain was sharper, I could freestyle easier. I used to work with a producer on campus called Esteban, did a load of stuff with him but never put it out. I never ended up doing a tape until I was out of college and I focused on it.

How did you go about focusing on music after college?

At first, I was being a little, well, a lot lazy. I would continuously make music but I wouldn’t put the right amount of effort behind pushing it. So I would make it and then leave it, and I didn’t know how to navigate social media. So it took a while for me to really get into a groove, and actually it took a lot of performing. When you perform more, it gets a lot more natural, you know how to move around the stage. It’s easier to come back if you mess up because you have a better way of maneuvering that. I still had jobs but the jobs would get in the way because they were full time and I got tired - now I work four days a week. I would say it’s picked up the last three years.

What was the turning point, what happened?

I had a friend I met through my cousin called Precious Gorgeous and me and him started doing a series called KTS, it was a video freestyle on a flip camera every week. That got me more motivated so we started working on music, and that got me to start doing my own stuff more. I met a producer, Frank Knuck at the time, and me and him created a whole project together, and then I created another one. So I guess I just met the right people who got me more motivated. Then my cousin would nag me every couple of months like, “What are you doing? You’re really talented and you keep not putting shit out, people are going to start forgetting about your shit, you got a lot of competition”. Then I guess I saw rappers I knew come and go, which was inspiring because those were the people others would throw me off for. If I meet someone and I don’t really like their stuff, I never really shit on them because you don’t know what that person will become – people need to be developed and encouraged. There were still things I needed to learn, like I had to learn how to write songs better. When I was younger I had bars, I could rap your face off. But as I got older it got boring, the punchlines I would use when I was 23 just don’t hit now. I can’t say if one thing happened but it’s a culmination of a bunch of things.

Being a rapper in New York, the home of hip-hop, do you feel that’s a blessing and a curse, in the sense that you’re surrounded by inspirational people and those who can help you, but equally the competition is ridiculous?

To be honest, I don’t see a whole lot of competition in New York. There are a lot of artists and rappers, but a lot of dudes are still developing themselves. When I go to a show and I look at the artist, I’m not looking at how good they rap, because there’s a bunch of people who can rap very, very well. I’m thinking about stage presence, songwriting, do they hold up when you listen at home? You can make money off live shows but nobody’s going to buy your music. Not saying that there aren’t talented acts, a lot of people that I know are. It doesn’t really scare me, it just inspires me to do more. I think we’re starting to get more attention like Young M.A., Dave East, that’s starting to put a light on the city, so it’s a perfect time to be a New York artist now. I don’t really worry about competition, as long as I’m doing the best I can, that’ll take me where I need to go. A couple of years’ ago the city was stagnant, people trying to chase a different sound - now they are amalgamating the sounds but at the core it’s still very New York.

What do you think about the hip hop coming out from other areas, like the sounds from Toronto and Atlanta. Do you feel like they are sub-genres more than before?

I feel like hip-hop was always sub-genres, but it’s just a little bit more obvious now. In the 90s there were all these different genres, it was more about what you were rapping about and where you were from. Nowadays there are all these different styles of hip hop, like Young Thug, Lil Yachty. I think that’s dope because it means the genre is opening up, it’s too mainstream now for it to be a bunch of dudes in hoodies rapping on the corner with bubble jackets on.

Who are you really feeling right now?

There are a lot of dudes in New York who I think are really dope like people in my crew Black God Pantheon, Brooklish, Truth [City], Chazmere. As far as cats that are more mainstream, I listen to Kendrick, clearly. I like J Cole now, took a while but I like him, I like Travis Scott…I actually like some of D.R.A.M’s stuff…Saba, Rae Sremmurd. I think music is at the best place it can be, there’s so much variety you can pull from different things. People make fun of me but I really like Lil Uzi Vert, out of all those dudes I’d rather listen to him than anyone, he’s just mad fun to listen to.

So you mention your crew, Black God Pantheon, tell me about them.

Black God Pantheon are basically a collective of artists I put together myself. I go by the name of BlackZeusx – we don’t see a lot of positive divine images of black people and I just wanted to create something that was centered around that idea to make people understand that they have divine light within them and I wanted to do that through art. So everyone’s not necessarily a rapper but they are skilled in whichever art that they do. So it’s me (rapper and songwriter), Branson Belchie (visual artist and rapper), Rashim Ahmad (producer, rapper, singer), REAL iSHmAel (Rapper), Ashleigh Awusie (actress, singer, songwriter), Kita P (singer, songwriter, guitarist) and Precious Gorgeous (rapper, songwriter, actor).

Do you do anything together or is it more of an inspirational ensemble?

We do stuff together, we’re working on putting out a project called Zamunda, so hopefully it’ll be out before next summer. They are all working on solo projects themselves and I’m already writing for ‘Bury Me in Gold II’.

Bury Me in Gold II? Amazing – EP or full-length album?

I think it needs 11 or 12 tracks.

Ages ago when Matt put me onto your music, I was blown away as soon as I listened to Bury Me in Gold. It’s honestly an incredibly impressive seven-track EP but why only seven? (I know it’s not an album)

I’ve come to the conclusion it’s an album not an EP. But I think it’s only seven tracks because I wanted to leave people with that exact feeling – I didn’t want to overdo it. I’d rather someone say ‘it’s not enough’ than ‘it’s too much’. To do a full album is a longer project so I wanted to make sure I knocked it out of the park this time, so next time people want more. I can’t come back again and give you seven tracks.

[bandcamp width=400 height=373 album=3774977135 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 artwork=small]>

Tell me about the story behind this album and where the idea came from.

I came up with this idea at my father’s funeral. I saw him in his casket and because he was so well-known he was sent off like a king, like a pharaoh so the idea was ‘bury me in gold’ because when I go I want to have touched as many people as he did. I want to go like that, so that was the concept behind it. I knew I wanted to do an album based around that, but it was going to be called ‘Golden Eye’. But then I met Ivan (Mndcft) and we hit it off, he sent me some music, I spat over some of it and he’s like, ‘this is crazy’, so I said let’s do a short project. It took more time than expected but it came out really, really well.

You and Mndcft are obviously a duo that work very well together. How did that work – were you in the studio a lot or would you send things across to each other?

He would send me beats and I would pick the ones I liked and come up with stuff. I wouldn’t necessarily know if there was something he didn’t like, he just would respond. I’d ask, ‘did you like that?’ and then none of those songs made the project. He would be constantly updating the beats, then the beat would sound a little different but it’s close enough, so that’s how we built a lot of those tracks. Almost every song I wrote the hook and someone else sang it, I structured the song. It was little things he would do, like ‘On Me’ had a hook and he took the hook out and we ended up keeping it that way and putting it just at the end. The process was kind of smooth, like when we recorded, I would just get a whole day studio time and I’d just knock out a bunch of songs, I think we did that three times. The first time was only four hours and we did ‘Extra’ and ‘On Me’, and another song that didn’t make the project. A lot of the other stuff was post recording – half of the record was mixed by Paco [the G Train Bandit] and the other half was mixed was Pete Lincoln. The master can only be as good as the mix, so if the mix is not great then it’s going to come out in the master; people think the master can fix the song but it can’t.

What’s your favorite song on the album?

I don’t know, it changes. Right now it might be ‘Ambi’, I don’t know. I really like ‘Gold’ with Brittany Campbell, that was dope, and ‘Now or Never’.

And what’s your favorite song to perform?

It’s between ‘Extra’ and ‘Now or Never’. Right now, I’m actually starting to have a lot of fun performing ‘Electric’, because when you have new material you have to work out the best way to perform it. ‘Extra’ is an automatic hit but I don’t perform it everywhere because I got so many different records now so I can do different things. I like doing ‘Ambi’ too, it hits kind of hard every time I do it.

I really like that you have voicemail messages on your album, which I feel is such a thing at the moment. Why do you think it’s a mechanism people use, and why did you use it?

Originally there was meant to be a different skit at the end by my brother talking about family and how you need to love yourself. But Ivan said we needed something else, ‘maybe a skit or voicemail’ and I was like, ‘I got you’. I know this dude, Black Truth, who’s just also a producer and naturally a funny guy so I called him and said, ‘I just need you to call me and leave a mad passive-aggressive voicemail’. It was really good and people love that and it sounded like something that friends used to say about other friends that were rapping, so it’s kinda funny.

Your lyrics are narrating a story and you can tell it’s real and about you, but I don’t feel angst. Were you consciously trying not to be that angry rapper voice and what do you think about rappers who are just yelling?

I think the important thing about records, especially an album if you want to keep somebody’s attention for a long amount of time is tones. The reason I didn’t listen to conscious rap when I was a kid was because it was boring and it was too preachy and I think what I consciously try to do is make records that come from me. My background is rooted in that, so that’s going to come out regardless, but I want to make records that are Mandela / Crimdella, that’s just me. I have different facets, sometimes I feel this way, sometimes I feel that way. So it’s really just more about me being myself and through that, I feel like I get a different texture that other people may not necessarily know how to use yet. Even when I make conscious songs, I don’t want them to sound generic, I don’t want to make something anyone else can write. When you’re just yelling, you don’t get any personality so you need to know when to pull back.

There are a lot of other artists who say, ‘I want to get big so I’m just going to make turn up songs for the club and when I get big, I’ll be true to myself’. What do you think about that strategy?

It doesn’t make any sense because if you’re just going to do records because you think that’s what people like – you don’t really know, people aren’t as dumb as they think they are. I don’t think that ever works, because you’re doing something that’s not authentic to you. Even if it catches, the label will be like ‘woah, that’s not what made you, get back in that club’. These kids that are making those turn up songs, that’s what they do, what’s the problem? Let them do what they do. Maybe they’ll get older and think ‘damn, that shit is whack’ but right now they’re not feeling that way. That’s not going to work out for you though, do you remember Pitbull? I remember when he was rapping with do-rags on Miami Beach – when he first came out he was a spitter! He was one of those fast rappers like Tech N9ne, he thought he was spitting.

Talking of labels, there are a lot of rappers who anti-industry and anti-label, like Chance the Rapper. What do you think about that – do you still need a label behind you to be successful?

I think what the label does is help push you more mainstream. The influence that comes with that is important to me, because there are other things I want to do socially that I would like to be able to fund in the future. I’m not anti-label. At some point, I’d be down to sign a contract, it just has to be everything I want. I want creative control, I want to be able to work with who I want to work with and I don’t want them in my pockets all the time.

What is success to you?

Just being happy in what you do. I’m happy I’m doing music but I need to just do music full-time. I think my brain has always been more geared towards artistic things, like since I was a kid I used to draw and write comics, I still want to write comics. So my brain is just not geared towards that other stuff. I think success to me is just being able to do that and produce enough money and put it back into the community and do some positive things.

What are some of the social things you want to do in the community?

I’d like to invest in programs that teach inner city kids how to create their own businesses from a young age, so they’re not just thinking about working for people. Some kids might be better off as workers and that’s fine for them, but I think we need to open our communities up to new ways of making money in different industries and jobs. A black kid from Harlem might not think about farming because he’s never seen a farm, but he might be really good at farming.

You’re working on Bury Me in Gold II – who are you planning on working with / have already started to work with on this record?

I want to get more of the squad BGP on there, because there’s only Mono and Kita P on the first one. I definitely want No Suh Foster on there. But I don’t really know, when I write songs I don’t think about forcing features, I think about whoever sounds the best on this song. There are people that I’d like to work with, but we’ll see what happens. Just like this one, I’ll probably have a lot of female vocalists but I haven’t really thought about features apart from a track I have for No Suh Foster.

How do you process feedback and people’s opinions. How do you deal with constructive feedback, and on the flipside, those who are just ‘yes people’?

I have a lot of friends and they do not hold back. I kinda gauge depending on the person, for example, I have a friend who is an artist too and he has always been 100% honest. If he says something, I know it’s coming from a real place. Even my close circle, no one is holding back, I don’t keep people like that around me – I don’t like ‘yes men’.

And what about wider people you don’t know talking about the album?

To keep it 100, I don’t read everybody’s feedback! Everyone’s not an artist. But I was working with someone a while back that made some points which made sense from an artistic standpoint, but that’s because I respect their art. Everyone was saying positive things so it was good to hear, ‘this was dope, but you could have done this, this, this.’ Things for some people might not work for others. The main thing is to make sure the song writing is deep, you’ve got to find different layers. Even now writing the new one, I’m kind of struggling with that so I got to dig a little deeper into the song. But I wrote a song the other day that I really like so I’m feeling good now.

Is this album going to be a similar kind of sound?

Not necessarily. The first one is dedicated to my father, this one is dedicated to my mother. My mother likes to dance a lot so I want a little bit more bounce in it, but we’ll see what happens. I might start putting out records just to put them out. Not for the project, just stuff I think that’s dope that I wrote.

Thank you, just to wrap we’ve got the quick fire section – no thinking before you answer!

Island or mountain?

Mountain

Sunglasses or no glasses?

No glasses

Bottle or can?

Bottle

Cake or cookie?

Cookie

Whatsapp or iMessage?

iMessage

T-shirt or vest?

T-shirt

Buttons or zip?

Zip

Because Crimdella is not only a crazy good rapper, but also a crazy nice guy, he’s given UHH an exclusive track to drop with this interview, ‘Craig’s Lair’. It’s certified fire so definitely press play below if you want to hear lyrics like, “You think your girl’s an angel, she the reason you need day care, she jumping on the pole like a Mario stage clear”.

Connet with Crimdella
www.crimdella.com
Soundcloud.com/blackzeusx
Youtube.com/user/blackzeusx
Facebook.com/crimdellazeusx
Twitter.com/blackzeusx
Instagram.com/blackzeusx