Emerging Artist Interview ‣ AKAI SOLO
AKAI SOLO has Lived and Died and Lived Again
An interview with one of Brooklyn's Hip-Hop swordsmen.
Olivier Lafontant
Writer
Will’s Pub in Orlando, Florida probably isn't the first place that comes to mind when a handful of aces from NYC’s indie rap scene tour the east coast. For Wiki, Papo2oo4, Subjxct5, iblss, and AKAI SOLO, this patch of southern soil will do just fine. Past the pub entrance, a foyer across from the bar provides space for a stage, a standing area for spectators, and a lounge with an old arcade machine and a photobooth. TVs by the bar showcased classic WWF clips from the 90s on mute as people trickled in through the doors gradually. Very gradually.
Funnily enough, it’s just past 8:00 PM (the concert’s start time), yet AKAI SOLO, 28, sits in solitude to the left of a merch table in the lounge area, seemingly unconcerned about time or fan turnout or anything else, really. He deftly rolls a spliff for himself as just about half a dozen people stood idly in front of the stage, waiting. Papo, the opening act, is nowhere to be found at the moment, but it’s calm.
When AKAI introduces himself, it’s by his first name. “Hey, I’m Daniel,” he says with a firm handshake––a small, but assuring indication of the Flatbush rapper’s noble character. He’s dressed in a plain white tee, black Champion shorts, blue Puma Suede Classics, and a Triathalon trucker hat in homage to the New York-based alt R&B band. A crinkled sheet of Saniderm glistens on the left side of his neck, shielding a brand new tattoo of an ouroboros, the self-eating snake that represents the cycle of death and rebirth.
For 20 minutes or so, AKAI makes conversation with my friends and I about all types of random shit: the brilliance of Snowfall’s final season, his preference of Kid Cudi’s discography over Ye’s, and that one time he surprisingly encountered a dreadheaded Mach-Hommy in Flatbush. On the merch table were vinyl records of 2020’s Eleventh Wind and 2021’s True Sky, alongside various t-shirts and other albums. Notably missing from the bunch was AKAI’s 2022 opus, Spirit Roaming, an album he prostrated mind, body, and soul for.
“I definitely kinda died when I made Spirit Roaming,” he says as we sit in the back of the venue after Wiki’s closing set. “What I had to go through to make that shit––just to be aware of the things that I’ve done, and the conversations I’ve had, and the experiences I’ve endured as I was making this music. It constantly happens and that’s just my path.”
Within Spirit Roaming are fragmented keystones of the hero’s journey––when put together, these pieces scintillate like stained glass in front of sunbeams. Along the canvas of grainy drum patterns and muddied vocal loops, AKAI weaves intricate passages of harrowing self-reflection into awkward pockets. He’s painstakingly verbose and doubly honest for 64-bar verses at a time, but there are droves of beauty in the midst of the word vomit. His use of metaphor as a driving force for his pathos can cut deep. “The man studied mathematics, but he’s still morose about the formula / Soon as she’s subtracted, his expressions fall apart,” AKAI raps on “Mob Psycho 100.”
Since the mid-2010s, he’s cut his teeth with like-minded emcees in the gloom of New York City alleyways and overpasses, steadily refining his rhymes and bolstering his word bank. As the de-facto leader of Tase Grip, a Brooklyn-based hip-hop collective, AKAI SOLO has taken a grassroots approach to spreading philosophically dense Black music. In the crux of his deep discography, group members like $hayButtah, Wavy Bagels, and Lungs are at the forefront of feature lists and production credits alongside celebrated indie acts like Pink Siifu and Navy Blue.
During his set at Will’s Pub, AKAI is damn near growling into the mic as iblss, his DJ, producer, and trusted confidant, twists knobs and hovers over his MPC as though he’s locked in a dream state. He too is an integral figure of Tase Grip’s convoluted web of beatmakers and wordsmiths. At its peak, there are probably 25-30 people bearing witness to the virtuosic duo blacking out on stage, making for an immersive and intimate atmosphere. Two drunken ladies at the foot of the stage yelp and banter in between tracks like “Demonslayer” and “Panama Canal” as if it’s Pitbull up there performing. AKAI doesn't seem to mind it at all.
AKAI SOLO the writer is an intellectual recluse; AKAI SOLO the performer is a ball of energy sapping up everything in its orbit. His voice is bold and hoarse as he raps onstage, and he cranes his neck to the beat as he struts with his eyes shut. When we sit together past the pub’s fire exit after midnight, he’s bright-eyed and poignant, but his voice is more placid now. The esteemed artist is seemingly willing to share every capsule of experience he’s gathered in his path up to this point.
All photos by Olivier Lafontant.
How’s tour been treating you so far? Clearly you guys look pretty close. It seems like you’re having a lot of fun.
Olivier for Half Moon
Yeah, I’m an introverted dude so it doesn’t take a lot for me to be at peace somewhere. As long as I can find people who are cool with that, it’s really straight for me to just navigate. It’s the first time I’ve chilled with Papo for an extended period of time and that shit is fun. I don’t really feel this shit a lot but I feel like we’re related. It’s weird, but it’s cool. Just really kindred shit. I be hanging out with iblss all the time so that’s just regular. I was playing mad Fortnite with this nigga before we met. [Subjxct5] is the homie.
Crowds are warm so like that’s cool, people are generally really nice. People are listening more. People are coming up to each of the acts and talking about what some of their lines meant to them. I don’t really take stuff like that for granted just because of the waning attention span that’s developed over the last decade or so.
In general, food has been dope. I had poutine for the first time when niggas went to Canada. Smoking a lot of pot. It’s interesting comparing the herbal essences in different areas, and the varying points of access, and the quality, and how people regard it in different places with the legality and all that. That shit is cool.
AKAI SOLO
You were first introduced to rap by a math teacher in 6th grade that showed you Aesop Rock. That’s starting from a crazy reference point that a lot of people aren’t really familiar with. How was your introduction to rap from that point on?
Before that point, I have a radio in my room and I’m going to sleep to 105.1 Radio Disney. It’s crazy bro. I get my first introduction to [rap] ‘cause my mom kept a stack of Jet magazines in the crib from significant events. She had the issue when Left Eye died, she had the issues when Tupac and Biggie passed. So l’m looking at these profound people and those are seeds. In between all this, I’m getting sprinkled with Lupe Fiasco. The Aesop Rock thing happens and I had to become smarter to understand the significance. But it was a crazy thing to burrow into my subconscious and I didn’t realize that until later.
The sentiment of your music gets really heavy at times. There’s something to say about exposing that part of yourself to an audience. Does the relationship with your music change when you put it in a live setting?
Yeah, it’s like you’re saying: my music gets taken to a lot of internal places. That’s a consequence of my reckless honesty. When I’m doing it in front of people that forces me to sit with the work again in a different way. I write things and I have different ways of how I write things, but regardless I’m not good at making up things. It’s fun, but as I found my groove and what felt good, it was always something that was honest. The consequence of that is vulnerability, so it’s really out of my hands. My stance chose me.
I play Monster Hunter and I always end up using the Great Sword, and it’s like a metaphor for the simplicity in which I like to approach my writing style. I feel like simplicity is complex. I’m not big on compromising. So I take that shit into my writing and I take that shit into my performance. That lack of compromise forces me to see that honesty through the whole way. No matter how awkward I look on stage, no matter where my mind goes. I don’t ever really forget what my shit is about, but the moment in between me recording it and me performing it again is the only time that I have where I’m free from what it was I was writing about.
Do you embrace that freedom?
Yeah!
What do you do with that time?
I try to live. I just try to be very grounded in that moment. I try to really revel in mundanity. Just like look in the sky and try to discern different cloud patterns. Be engaged with the people I talk to. Things that I generally take for granted ‘cause I’m always inside my head. That’s the self-renewal. That’s why I got this ouroboros tat, to represent the constant cycle of death and rebirth. It’s kinda like every time I bore my soul or whatever, it’s like a death in a sense. I definitely kinda died when I made Spirit Roaming. What I had to go through to make that shit––not to brag about it ‘cause that’s weird––just to be aware of the things that I’ve done and the conversations I’ve had and the experiences I’ve endured as I was making this music. It constantly happens and that’s just my path.
With that album, did you feel like you were struggling with a mental block at any point? Did you have an insatiability when it came to being satisfied with what you were making, or did it really just come naturally?
It’s a mixture of all those things. I definitely have dealt with writer’s block before, and I always use this analogy: I always feel like Peter Parker in Spider-Man 2 when he’s trying to swing and the webs don’t come out and he falls into the trash. I be feeling like that at times. Throughout me making Spirit Roaming, I had these moments where I be on my poor man’s intellect vibe where I try to keep my brain moving. The whole idea of keeping yourself in a state of preparedness to be able to handle that energy when it comes, but to never chase it or approach it. If I’m sitting down and I’m reading a book, if I’m watching Baddies West, if I’m ordering a chop cheese and a bar comes to me––whether it’s a word, whether it’s a line, whether it’s eight––I take out my phone, I assess that, I let that go for as long as it goes and as soon as the word stops in my head, I stop. I don’t force it. Generally, I run through walls a thousand times. There’s no door, I’m gonna make a hole in the wall, that’s my whole thing. So it’s like I’m kinda refining and restructuring that approach of resilience and letting it be this type of fluid thing that I just interact with when it wants to talk to me. Outside of that time, I’m just living my life.
You signed to billy woods’ label, Backwoodz Studioz, a couple years ago and he executive produced this record. What type of approach or influence did he have on the making of Spirit Roaming? Was it more of a hands-on type of thing or did he let you take the wheel for the majority of it?
It was really the latter. Spirit Roaming was already an idea before I did anything with Backwoodz. I had “Cudi,” I had “Demonslayer,” and I had “Musashi.” I already had the beats. [billy] had offered [an album release] to me a while ago when I was on tour with him, like “Yo, if you ever have a project or an idea you wanna build out, this is a place that you can drop it if you’d like.” And I just took him up on that offer. I pulled up on him at his crib, played him the tracks, and then he was like “Yo man, lemme executive produce it,” in the context of like he would lend a secondary opinion, an ear to things like sequencing. He would also A&R things, like he got me the Messiah Muzik beat. Obviously, now I have access to a billy woods feature, I got the Armand Hammer feature. Shit that I wouldn’t have been able to by myself probably, ‘cause niggas is like “Who’s AKAI?”
And just having another like-mind that I respect, to be able to bounce ideas off him. ‘Cause another consequence of my general workflow is my work is really solitary. When most of my verses come to me, I’m by myself. The SOLO thing is facts.
Do you struggle with collaboration?
Not really, I’m just not really a team player. It’s weird. Like I care about the collective, and I care about friends, and I care about concepts of community and stuff like that, but I just feel like the way for me to be most useful to people is for niggas to leave me on the other side of town. Like “I got this,” and everybody goes and does their montage thing and they fuse and I just handle the whole city block. It’s just like I’m clumsy and I’m forgetful and that could harm the thing more often than not. At least when I’m left to myself it’s just me to deal with my own hindrances, and I can reconcile those faster than having to worry about someone else tryna figure it out. It’s a self-preservation tactic for my anxiety.
And also, from an objective standpoint, I be mad tight doing features and then I accidentally get into it too much, and then I write a really nice verse. And now I’m like “Yo, this is not my song,” so it’s like “Fuck!”
I’ve noticed how Earl Sweatshirt champions a lot of your music. I saw him post Spirit Roaming before I was really familiar with who you were as an artist. What’s your relationship like with him? Have you collaborated with him before or is that more of a friendship thing only?
Yeah, that’s the bro. I went to his crib and linked him when I went out to LA for Black Sand stuff. Bussed his ass in Tekken. Niggas went and saw The Lighthouse.
I got a beat from him that’s gonna be on my next [project]. I have two things that are done that have beats of his. We be talkin’ and shit. Him, [Navy Blue], all them niggas is all cool. Sideshow. When I go out to LA, they help facilitate and create a warm environment. ‘Cause I have no sense of direction and I just care where good food is at.
What’s the next move for you in terms of releases or personal goals?
The thing with the Earl beat, that’s, like, done. I could go to the Airbnb and drop that right now.
Let’s do it. *laughs*
Left to my own devices, I would do that. But I’m tryna be strategic. I want to let the Backwoodz thing run its course and listen to everything that billy told me to do because I don’t listen. But yeah, as soon as that shit is done I’m gonna drop maybe two more visuals for Spirit Roaming. Then I’ll start phasing into the next one. The next one is called Verticality Singularity, the concept of starting from a singular point and moving upward, and then exploring all of the data that you get in between that journey. So if Spirit Roaming was about me hitting a bottom and exploring what happens at that bottom and what it took to get there, Verticality Singularity is the clearer verse of what has to happen. I have another thing called Dream Drop Dragon. I don’t know if it’s gonna be an EP or an album, but it’s like five, six tracks. Only the Strong Remain is my next RAFT. I work at multiple things at once because I’m weird. I think about my shit as arcs.