Speaker 1: Pushkin. Jensen McRae writes songs that cut straight to the bone,
Speaker 1: intimate examinations of identity, relationships, and the complexities of coming
Speaker 1: of age in today's world. Since releasing her debut EP
Speaker 1: Who Hurt You in twenty twenty one, she's garnered attention
Speaker 1: for her literary approach to songwriting and her ability to
Speaker 1: balance vulnerability with sharp observation. Her music often grapples with
Speaker 1: difficult subjects, navigating mixed race identity, processing, heartbreak, and confronting
Speaker 1: the uncomfortable truths we tell ourselves, but there's also a
Speaker 1: warmth and humor in her work, which can be heard
Speaker 1: in this episode when she performs three songs Savannah, White Boy,
Speaker 1: and let Me Be Wrong from her new album I
Speaker 1: Don't Know How but They've Found Me. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: I talked to Jensen McCray about her journey as an artist,
Speaker 1: why she gravitates towards niche communities online on Reddit, and
Speaker 1: her list of goals that include both winning the Grammy
Speaker 1: for Album of the Year and the mayoral run in
Speaker 1: our native Los Angeles. This is broken record, real musicians,
Speaker 1: real conversations. Here's my conversation with Jensen McCrae, where she
Speaker 1: begins things with a live rendition of her song, Savannah, there.
Speaker 2: Is an inner section in your college town.
Speaker 3: WI your name, honing with your name morning.
Speaker 2: You are said he couldn't wait to take them, should
Speaker 2: have been Honor.
Speaker 4: Calls you out, honor.
Speaker 2: Disass side from God and archred l your fly.
Speaker 4: See him in wad.
Speaker 2: You try start to fly your curbridgesy saving LANDA well,
Speaker 2: no under you, ask man of HAMI someone new.
Speaker 4: Um to sup.
Speaker 5: Here is a boy in out loud in on theth.
Speaker 4: A bloody face.
Speaker 6: Come you were tied embombing.
Speaker 5: You swore raise our kidstand just like you with your
Speaker 5: fast crafting. That's a goddamn commense.
Speaker 4: Sassy side from.
Speaker 6: God and archerd l on by You see him in
Speaker 6: water n you try start by the bridges.
Speaker 4: He's standing leader.
Speaker 5: Well, no one under you, hossman of coming left someone
Speaker 5: new ungoing to Supana. Come I hear it's hot and
Speaker 5: the greatest ride his head le is away.
Speaker 4: He used to up.
Speaker 5: It's twenty one, he used to call those swim bitches.
Speaker 4: Did in you if you're the sweet like honeydew.
Speaker 5: Shvy how to talk to bus pass his side from.
Speaker 4: Her Trey Lyley on why.
Speaker 1: You See.
Speaker 2: It?
Speaker 5: Tried to start a fire for bridges, he stabbing Leanna,
Speaker 5: you lost me?
Speaker 4: So you want manner? Coming love with someone new, Come
Speaker 4: in to Survivana, Go.
Speaker 3: To Surveveano, Go went to Sana, Go.
Speaker 1: To oh Man, so good, thank you oh Man. What
Speaker 1: how did that song start?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 7: I wrote it a week after my first album came out,
Speaker 7: and so I wasn't in the head space of necessarily
Speaker 7: knowing or thinking about what I was making. But I
Speaker 7: had this very weird thing happened to me where I
Speaker 7: had two boyfriends in a row asked me to go
Speaker 7: with them to Savannah.
Speaker 8: Georgia, which is I have very Wrongnah?
Speaker 7: No, they just both had reason to go and wanted
Speaker 7: me to go with them, and I had never thought
Speaker 7: about it before, and I just I didn't go with
Speaker 7: the first one. But before I went with the second one,
Speaker 7: I just started thinking about the city and its history,
Speaker 7: and I found out how haunted it, and I just
Speaker 7: started thinking about ghosts in the past, and I wrote
Speaker 7: about how it feels to not be able to outrun
Speaker 7: your best.
Speaker 1: Wow, your first album was Are you happy now? You
Speaker 1: wrote that? I mean you wrote that right after the
Speaker 1: First Time come out? Were you happy after the First
Speaker 1: Time came about?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was. I was.
Speaker 7: I mean, I was relieved more than anything because I'd
Speaker 7: been sitting on that album for three years and I
Speaker 7: made it between the ages right about twenty one twenty two.
Speaker 7: That was when I was making it, and then I
Speaker 7: was twenty four when it came out, and I just
Speaker 7: felt like I had already changed so much and I
Speaker 7: was really happy to be telling that story, relieved that
Speaker 7: it was finally out of my hands and into other
Speaker 7: people's hands, and just really excited about being able to
Speaker 7: tour it and see the world as a result of it.
Speaker 1: Is that is that because a lot of people will
Speaker 1: release a record, even if it's one they've been sin
Speaker 1: on for a while, but release it and it's just
Speaker 1: like there's not a lot of writing going on like
Speaker 1: immediately after. But is that, like is that part of
Speaker 1: a feature of your personality? Like are you? Are you
Speaker 1: always onto the next thing? Is that? Or was it
Speaker 1: that just happened?
Speaker 7: I'd say generally, it's interesting because in the aftermath of
Speaker 7: this most recent album, I definitely have not felt like
Speaker 7: I have as much time to write. I've written a
Speaker 7: little bit, but after the first album came out, I
Speaker 7: felt like I was still really going, Like it felt
Speaker 7: like the writing process was just not done. But also
Speaker 7: a big difference is that, like my audience is a
Speaker 7: lot bigger now. The rollout of this album has been
Speaker 7: met with more fanfare, so like I have a lot
Speaker 7: more press obligations.
Speaker 8: I want more touring obligations. So I'm just like not
Speaker 8: home in the way that I was three years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Savannah, you so you're asked two times by
Speaker 1: two different people. Did you write that before you went,
Speaker 1: like as you were learning about it? Or did did
Speaker 1: you rewrite anything after you went? Did you end up going?
Speaker 8: I did end up going, and I didn't rewrite anything.
Speaker 7: It still felt I mean, I definitely heard the voice
Speaker 7: memo in my head while I was there, but it
Speaker 7: felt very apt even after I actually ended up going,
Speaker 7: felt accurate.
Speaker 1: And what happened with did did? Why were you there?
Speaker 8: It was it was for a work trip.
Speaker 7: Coincidentally, he was just gonna be in Savannah, and he
Speaker 7: asked if I wanted to visit him while he was there,
Speaker 7: and I was like, I think I have to go
Speaker 7: because I've been asked now twice, and I think I
Speaker 7: have to see this place.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 7: People were very A lot of people ask me about
Speaker 7: like why Savannah, and it is a very odd story,
Speaker 7: and I think it is a really special city. Like
Speaker 7: I mean, ghost tours are like a big part of
Speaker 7: the attraction of the city, and like there's I mean
Speaker 7: there's so many like bachelorette Like while I was there,
Speaker 7: I saw a wedding and a bachelorette party, and I
Speaker 7: think then we were joking like, oh, we have to
Speaker 7: see a proposal and divorce and then we'll have the.
Speaker 8: Full the full set.
Speaker 7: And yeah, it's super humid, like obviously, like I remember
Speaker 7: when I got there, like I felt like I was
Speaker 7: swimming standing up because it was just like the air
Speaker 7: was just so thick, and like that'll just make you
Speaker 7: feel feelings like when you're in intense weather like that,
Speaker 7: like it just stirs up I think, strong emotions and everybody.
Speaker 1: It makes you feel well, alive, you're dead or something
Speaker 1: with it's like you're like absolutely something can go wrong. Perhaps, yes,
Speaker 1: that's pretty wrong. Yeah, did you write anything while they're
Speaker 1: like based on.
Speaker 8: I don't think I did.
Speaker 7: I don't think I did, but I feel like I'd
Speaker 7: probably go back, And I remember thinking being there and
Speaker 7: also being in a lot of other cities I've visited
Speaker 7: on tour, like these smaller towns are very conducive to writing.
Speaker 7: I think I think it would be good to do
Speaker 7: like a writing retreat at some point, like get an
Speaker 7: Airbnb and just like hole up somewhere and try to
Speaker 7: write as much as possible. Yeah, because there's not as
Speaker 7: much noise and as much distraction as there is in
Speaker 7: a place like La.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird growing up in LA and then going
Speaker 1: to other places where you realize like, oh, like you
Speaker 1: know your friends will be from other places than you go,
Speaker 1: and you realize like, wow, I really grew up in
Speaker 1: a place that was not normal.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Like I have that realization so much.
Speaker 1: When did when did you first start getting outside of
Speaker 1: out of outside of LA for music?
Speaker 7: It didn't start until really until twenty twenty two, because
Speaker 7: I grew up in LA and and then I went
Speaker 7: to music school for college in LA and then a
Speaker 7: year after I graduated, the pandemic started, and so I
Speaker 7: wasn't touring at all or going anywhere, And so I
Speaker 7: started touring in twenty twenty two and that was when
Speaker 7: I started really meaningfully playing music in other places. And yeah,
Speaker 7: I just really saw the contrast of where I grew
Speaker 7: up with everywhere else. Like obviously there's just like the
Speaker 7: pace and the population, but it's just like the way
Speaker 7: people carry themselves. Like I always heard people say that
Speaker 7: LA was a place of you know, a lot of
Speaker 7: posturing and like a lot of people being fake. And
Speaker 7: I never understood it because, like, I know so many great,
Speaker 7: down to earth, authentic people in LA. But then I
Speaker 7: went to other places and I was like, oh, people
Speaker 7: are not putting on airs to go to the grocery store.
Speaker 7: Like people are not They're just not as obsessed about
Speaker 7: appearances and other places as they are here. And I realized,
Speaker 7: like how that probably took a psychic toll on me
Speaker 7: as a teenager in a way that I didn't comprehend
Speaker 7: until I was an adult.
Speaker 1: No, it's true. I even I like I live. I
Speaker 1: moved to Long Beach, and even just being like a
Speaker 1: little outside of the city, You're like, yo, like it's
Speaker 1: a very different way, Like nobody gives a fuck question
Speaker 1: at the grocery store, you know, as an example, like
Speaker 1: you just you can go in your pajama's at the
Speaker 1: grocery store and not feel like, yeah, it's a different
Speaker 1: way of it's probably a healthier way of living.
Speaker 7: Probably, yeah, But I do have an appreciation for having
Speaker 7: grown up in LA for all of the for all
Speaker 7: of its flaws. Like I'm such an LA apologist. I love, love,
Speaker 7: love Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: What do you love about it?
Speaker 7: Well, I mean the weather is obviously a huge part
Speaker 7: of it, and there's just something about the air, which
Speaker 7: some people would say it is pollution, but I like
Speaker 7: there's something about the air and the light that's just
Speaker 7: like very comforting to me. And it feels like there's
Speaker 7: just so much possibility, maybe because the city is so
Speaker 7: spread out and it's so many neighborhoods, like it feels
Speaker 7: like it never ends. And it feels like even though
Speaker 7: I've lived here my whole life, there's still so much
Speaker 7: I haven't explored. And I love that feeling of like endlessness.
Speaker 7: And also my whole family lives here, so it just
Speaker 7: feels very comforting to know that, like my brothers and
Speaker 7: my parents are just a drive away, Like I find.
Speaker 1: I just love like one thing you dislike about LA.
Speaker 9: I mean, the.
Speaker 8: Traffic obviously is bad. That's a gimme, Yeah, that's anything
Speaker 8: else I don't like.
Speaker 1: I don't like.
Speaker 7: I guess I don't like the ways and even though
Speaker 7: I do, I love my air one and I love
Speaker 7: the growth, I don't like the ways in which that
Speaker 7: has become representative for the entire city because like people
Speaker 7: are always shocked, for example, to find out that I'm
Speaker 7: from here, and I think it's because I'm not like
Speaker 7: a white woman with blonde hair drinking kale juice. But
Speaker 7: it's like I'm a black woman drinking kale juice first
Speaker 7: of all, and like there's just so much there's just
Speaker 7: so much diversity, Like I love, like I love hearing Spanish,
Speaker 7: Like that's another thing I love about like.
Speaker 1: Places. Yes, yeah, I miss.
Speaker 7: Hearing Spanish when I leave, and like there it just
Speaker 7: it makes me sad when people write I guess maybe
Speaker 7: this isn't a thing I just like about LA. But
Speaker 7: people saying that they hate LA because they're like, oh,
Speaker 7: I don't like influencers or like I don't like fake people,
Speaker 7: or I don't like the entertainment industry, and I'm like,
Speaker 7: even the things you dislike about it are more complex
Speaker 7: than you're realizing. They are lovely influencers and lovely people
Speaker 7: in the entertainment industry, and I've met them and like, yeah,
Speaker 7: I I it disappoints me when people allow their vision
Speaker 7: of LA to be super one dimensional and stereotypical, when
Speaker 7: there's just so much depth to living here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, Well, well said, thank you, and.
Speaker 8: Listen when I run for mayor what then, Wow, I
Speaker 8: would vote for you, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Wait, we could use it.
Speaker 8: I'm scheming. I'm plotting and scheming in you know, in
Speaker 8: like fifteen years.
Speaker 7: That's on the it's on the vision board job. I mean,
Speaker 7: I'm like, it's kind of a joke, but also it's real.
Speaker 1: There's a party that would like to run from Really.
Speaker 8: Everyone tells me not to, but I'm still thinking about it.
Speaker 1: When did that? When did that start?
Speaker 7: I just love LA so much and I have so
Speaker 7: many great ideas. And I don't want to be the
Speaker 7: president because that's too much work. But I want to
Speaker 7: be the president when I was a child because I'm
Speaker 7: a natural leader, and I would love I would love
Speaker 7: to be the mayor of Los Angeles and see if
Speaker 7: I can implement some of those ideas. But then, of
Speaker 7: course people are like well, if you just become rich
Speaker 7: and famous, you can implement your ideas without having to
Speaker 7: go through the red tape of politics, which is maybe
Speaker 7: very well be true. But I just I'm not ruling
Speaker 7: out a mayor all run when I'm older.
Speaker 8: I don't want to do it now. I have too
Speaker 8: much music to do.
Speaker 1: But it's more than to put it on the table
Speaker 1: so people aren't like surprised when it happened huge like
Speaker 1: Arnold farzeneggeror sounds like just from the beginning to say
Speaker 1: like I don't want to. I'm going to marry into
Speaker 1: the Kennedy family so I can. It's certainly not that, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's unseems cool. I don't know.
Speaker 8: No, I don't want to know. It'll be It'll be
Speaker 8: my political agenda will not be a marriage, but not
Speaker 8: be a marriage of politics.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too derailed by this. But
Speaker 1: what are your ideas to fix? Well?
Speaker 7: I want there to be a fleet of electric buses
Speaker 7: that get implemented, because I don't think I love the metro.
Speaker 8: I took it in college actually, but.
Speaker 7: It'd be it's really really hard on people's commutes to
Speaker 7: be adding more metro lines, and I think one day
Speaker 7: that is the vision. But I think in the meantime,
Speaker 7: if we just get a fleet of super clean electric
Speaker 7: buses that are on the street, and we just overrun
Speaker 7: the street so that people will just become so inconvenienced
Speaker 7: by driving that they'll just get on the super clean
Speaker 7: new electric.
Speaker 1: Bus because the buses are slowing down there.
Speaker 8: There's but also because the buses look cool, they'll be
Speaker 8: nice and brand new.
Speaker 1: To your point, though, LA is so big, it is
Speaker 1: so big, Like you know, off, I don't know where
Speaker 1: you live. Let's say you're in Santa Monica. You know
Speaker 1: it's not but it's not weird living here to be
Speaker 1: like I'm going to go drive to like, you know,
Speaker 1: to the Huntington on a Saturday afternoon. Oh yeah, are
Speaker 1: you going to take the bus from Santa Monica to
Speaker 1: the Huntington.
Speaker 8: Ever, Well, I don't know that. I don't know.
Speaker 7: I think we still will have cars, but I think
Speaker 7: it should be a thing where like that's what cars
Speaker 7: are for, is for when you're making the big cross
Speaker 7: La Trek, but when you're in like your immediate neighbor,
Speaker 7: like if you live in Echo Park, like and you
Speaker 7: just want to go to Silver La or Los Felis,
Speaker 7: like you should be able to hop on a really
Speaker 7: nice clean electric bus to go there, as opposed to
Speaker 7: having a drive and find parking which is a nightmare.
Speaker 7: And yeah, I think there's I mean, there's an art
Speaker 7: to road trips. If I've learned anything from touring, it's
Speaker 7: at a great long road trip can be very healing
Speaker 7: for the soul. But I just think it'd be nice
Speaker 7: to have more options because like, I love living and
Speaker 7: spending time in London as well. They obviously have a
Speaker 7: great tube, they have great buses, and there are people
Speaker 7: in London with cars, but like you just don't have to.
Speaker 7: It's a nice to be freed from the shackles of
Speaker 7: big car.
Speaker 1: You're You're right, You are right when you say there's
Speaker 1: an art to toryn like do you is there are
Speaker 1: to road trips?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 1: Like? How do you well?
Speaker 7: The most important part of road trip is the playlist,
Speaker 7: and I love It's funny because on this last tour
Speaker 7: I was in a van with a band for the
Speaker 7: first time, and we were all yapping so much that
Speaker 7: there wasn't that much attention being paid to the music.
Speaker 7: Like at one point my guitar player drives sometimes and
Speaker 7: he put on The West Side Story soundtrack for me,
Speaker 7: cause that's my favorite musical.
Speaker 1: Wait, yo, that's a good soundtrack.
Speaker 8: It's really good and it's great for driving. It was
Speaker 8: like a late night drive and it was perfect.
Speaker 7: But when I was touring, what would be like just
Speaker 7: me and my manager, Like I would curate playlists and
Speaker 7: sometimes they would come to me, like in the dead
Speaker 7: of night. Like I woke up in the middle of
Speaker 7: the night one time to make a playlist that was
Speaker 7: in my feelings and Rich Girl by Hollo know Its
Speaker 7: and the Boy Is Mine and I was like, this
Speaker 7: is the start.
Speaker 8: I don't know what else is going on, but these
Speaker 8: are the first three songs.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's good. Wait what was the first one in?
Speaker 7: And then a Rich Girl and then the Boy's Mine.
Speaker 7: I was like, that's how this playlist is starting. I
Speaker 7: don't know where it's going, but I had to like
Speaker 7: it's a fever dream of like this must be how
Speaker 7: it begins.
Speaker 1: That's inspired. That's inspired work. I would love to know it.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 8: I ended up being hundreds of songs, but I liked
Speaker 8: doing a mix of like old school stuff, like stuff
Speaker 8: from my childhood.
Speaker 7: I love Craig David. No one talks about seven Days
Speaker 7: and fill me In?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love me.
Speaker 8: I was in a hotel.
Speaker 7: I was standing outside of a hotel in Berlin at
Speaker 7: the beginning of the last leg of this tour, and
Speaker 7: fill Me In started playing over the speakers and I
Speaker 7: was like, this is so And I was with my manager.
Speaker 8: She couldn't hear it, and I was like, no, no,
Speaker 8: it's definitely happening. It was like raining. I was jet labbed.
Speaker 8: I was like, I'm maybe I'm hallucinating, but don't talk
Speaker 8: about Kig David.
Speaker 7: Kraig David always got to be in a playlist. Obviously
Speaker 7: loved to put some brandy on there. Obviously loved to
Speaker 7: put Holland notes. Like when I was a kid, I
Speaker 7: listened to my parents played me a lot of like
Speaker 7: James Taylor and Carol King like that always get the
Speaker 7: mood up, Fleewood Mac, you know, just all the classics.
Speaker 1: But then you also go there parents on board with that.
Speaker 1: I was both, but they both that was both of
Speaker 1: their musical diets.
Speaker 7: My mom was the one who was more like the
Speaker 7: She was like the James Taylor, Carol King stuff and
Speaker 7: Stevie Wonder both my parents were. Stevie Wonder was like
Speaker 7: the big overlap, I would say.
Speaker 8: For my parents. Yeah, like my dad. So my dad
Speaker 8: is a lawyer.
Speaker 7: But he won my mom over by singing to her.
Speaker 7: And he used to sing Donnie Hathaway and Stevie Wonder
Speaker 7: to her.
Speaker 1: Wait what yeah?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 7: He has a beautiful voice. Really, but he was like,
Speaker 7: you know, he was like, I have to make money,
Speaker 7: so he didn't. He didn't pursue it. But he went
Speaker 7: to high school with Lenny Cravitz.
Speaker 1: What yeah, like in Venice.
Speaker 8: They went to Beverly Hill High School.
Speaker 1: He's right, Okay, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 8: What? Yeah? So he had like a he loves music
Speaker 8: so much.
Speaker 1: But what grow where did he grow up?
Speaker 8: He grew up here because his.
Speaker 7: Dad was a football player and he ended up he
Speaker 7: was My dad was born in Tennessee and his father
Speaker 7: was traded to the Bears and then to the Rams
Speaker 7: when he was really little, so he was he lived
Speaker 7: in Chicago for a second, but then mostly grew up here. Wow?
Speaker 1: And did he did? Him and Lenny did?
Speaker 8: They They were friends?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: What they're friendly?
Speaker 7: I mean I don't think I don't think they've spoken
Speaker 7: since they graduated. But my dad was telling me that
Speaker 7: he went over to his house and like he heard
Speaker 7: him play music and stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's crazy, that's all right, hold lot.
Speaker 1: So so he would sing like that's that's yeah.
Speaker 7: He would sing chances are and he would sing Lately
Speaker 7: by Stevie Wonder.
Speaker 8: Those are like the songs that he would sing.
Speaker 1: Do you growing up?
Speaker 7: He definitely sang like in passing, like he would sing
Speaker 7: along to stuff in the car, like he would put
Speaker 7: on I have this very vivid memory of when I
Speaker 7: was thirteen, he did a re enactment of brown v.
Speaker 7: Board of Education for like the anniversary of the trial.
Speaker 7: Like he played Thirdgod Marshal, I.
Speaker 1: Need a dad. I need a d right now? Can
Speaker 1: he can he adopt me?
Speaker 8: He would love to.
Speaker 1: I will. He would love say, I'll put my papers
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 8: He was the final boss of dads. Oh he's like such,
Speaker 8: he's such a dad Martin.
Speaker 1: This is incredible.
Speaker 8: He's no, he's I mean, he's incredible, Like he's my hero.
Speaker 1: He re enacted Board v.
Speaker 7: Brownie Board of Education, and I remember I sang the
Speaker 7: national anthem at it. For some reason, I don't know
Speaker 7: what was going on. There, but we did that when
Speaker 7: I was thirteen, and I remember that we like were
Speaker 7: at the maybe at a courthouse or this was happening,
Speaker 7: and then we went out to dinner after and my
Speaker 7: dad drove me home. My mom had my brothers in
Speaker 7: the other car, and I remember that Return of the
Speaker 7: Mac came on and my dad was singing along to that,
Speaker 7: and I remember thinking that was like the happiest I've
Speaker 7: ever seen him, was him singing Return of the Mac
Speaker 7: after having just done this, how re enactment was like
Speaker 7: the confluence of all his favorite stuff and so now
Speaker 7: Return of the like him singing Return of the Mac,
Speaker 7: is like a very happy memory memory for me. And
Speaker 7: I think I had plotted at one point to have
Speaker 7: that be my walkout song on stage, which I could
Speaker 7: still do. I think I should.
Speaker 1: Really that's strong. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Also, my name's McCray, so it's like Return of the Mac.
Speaker 7: It's like it kind of works for my name.
Speaker 1: It does, yeah, And it's that song is endlessly But.
Speaker 7: He also likes to raps like he would he was
Speaker 7: he actually is the person that put me on to
Speaker 7: Kendrick Lamar. Really yeah, great when I was like seventeen,
Speaker 7: like because he was aware of Timpa Butterfly before I
Speaker 7: was really and he was like he put on the
Speaker 7: black or the Berry when we were going on a hike.
Speaker 8: And he was like, are you listening.
Speaker 1: Listen kids in your high school not listening?
Speaker 8: They were, but I just like wasn't.
Speaker 7: I wasn't as tapped in and like I think people
Speaker 7: had showed me, you know, the odd Kendrick song here
Speaker 7: and there, but it was my dad. He was like,
Speaker 7: this album is like one of he just he knew.
Speaker 7: He was like, this is a classic album. These songs
Speaker 7: are amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, what was the first artist you connected with
Speaker 1: as like this, like you know where you really identified
Speaker 1: and became obsessed with It.
Speaker 8: Was Alicia Keys.
Speaker 7: Yeah, my mom played me Alicia Keys and it was
Speaker 7: part of her campaign to like show me mixed race
Speaker 7: people because like, my mom is white, my dad is black.
Speaker 8: I was born in nineteen ninety seven. There wasn't like
Speaker 8: a lot of there was representation.
Speaker 1: Was starting like a lot of mix kids.
Speaker 8: Now now there's so many.
Speaker 7: Like my little brother's basketball team was like mostly mixed kids.
Speaker 7: But like even the five years between us, it was
Speaker 7: like it was it was like a chasm.
Speaker 1: You never get it. I get jealous of that a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm happy for them, but I walk around like I
Speaker 1: really wish like I would thrive in this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I wonder I want It's there's like
Speaker 7: such a trade off because it wasn't only it was
Speaker 7: not only being mixed, but also like the political climate
Speaker 7: of when I was growing up, Like, it wasn't when
Speaker 7: I was a teenager.
Speaker 8: It wasn't cool to be political.
Speaker 7: And so I'm like, what, I have also thrived in
Speaker 7: a time when we where it was like cool to
Speaker 7: have political to talk about race, and to talk about
Speaker 7: those things.
Speaker 1: When you were a kid. It wasn't we were a
Speaker 1: teenager at well, I.
Speaker 8: Mean when I was a kid, I don't think I
Speaker 8: had political opinions.
Speaker 7: But I was also eleven Barack Obama was elected, and
Speaker 7: so like that whole like eleven to nineteen for me
Speaker 7: was the Obama era.
Speaker 1: What did that do to you? Because I was that
Speaker 1: was the first election I was able to vote it
Speaker 1: into that. Well, I mean yes, but I'll say it
Speaker 1: only set me and my generation up for disillusionments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know suffered through Bush. Yeah, and then you
Speaker 1: think we've fixed it, We're vote like what like I'm voting,
Speaker 1: and but it does feel like generation is a bit
Speaker 1: younger than me. Yours like didn't took the Barack Obama
Speaker 1: presidency for granted in a sumise.
Speaker 8: Absolutely.
Speaker 7: When I was a kid, I remember thinking all the
Speaker 7: time that I wanted to live through something. I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 7: we have a black president, and like we fixed racism,
Speaker 7: and like I just was I mean, my parents did
Speaker 7: a good job of protecting me from a lot of
Speaker 7: the truth of the world when I was young, and
Speaker 7: so I didn't know how many problems there were still
Speaker 7: to be dealt with. And I really felt like I
Speaker 7: was under this the impression that I wasn't going to
Speaker 7: be the first black women to do anything, because I
Speaker 7: was like, Oh, it's already been done, it's already been solved,
Speaker 7: and now and then Yeah, the first election I was
Speaker 7: able to vote in was the twenty sixteen election, and
Speaker 7: it was just like watching my world come crashing down
Speaker 7: in real time, and like all these illusions that I'd
Speaker 7: had about America, like the cracks had started to show
Speaker 7: in the foundation before that, but like that was kind
Speaker 7: of like the final moment of like, oh, Okay, I
Speaker 7: see what's going on here and there is still so
Speaker 7: much work to be done. I mean I I I
Speaker 7: adn't kind of glad though that I had an Obama childhood,
Speaker 7: because it was a very very idyllic time to be
Speaker 7: a black kid in America. Yeah, was the president, and
Speaker 7: I don't know what it would like to be a
Speaker 7: kid now. Also, social media wasn't as bad when I
Speaker 7: was a kid, Like it wasn't as pervasive.
Speaker 8: It existed, but it wasn't. It wasn't on your phone.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was always it was on the computer, and
Speaker 7: you could like get you could not we could walk
Speaker 7: around and not have it carry it with you all day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird. It was on the phone back, I guess, right,
Speaker 1: but a little bit.
Speaker 8: But like Instagram was like it wasn't You couldn't make
Speaker 8: money on Instagram when I was a teenager.
Speaker 1: That's one of the big changes.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: It was just like a place where you shared photo
Speaker 7: of your friends and you got ten likes and you
Speaker 7: were like really excited.
Speaker 1: Food Like that was the big criticism. Like the big
Speaker 1: criticism of Instagram initially was why are people taking photos
Speaker 1: of their meals?
Speaker 8: That was my dad's criticism. He's like, well, no one
Speaker 8: wants to see your breakfast.
Speaker 1: We wish that was now. It's so innocent now.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I feel even though obviously social media warped
Speaker 7: some of my childhood, like I kind of got the
Speaker 7: last chopper out, like I didn't have to, well because
Speaker 7: like my well look at the kids now and like
Speaker 7: my so, my little brother was O two and like
Speaker 7: he got a he kind of didn't really escape social
Speaker 7: media's child, but he sort of did. Like if you
Speaker 7: were a kid who was born in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 7: like you're a goner, Like you had no like the
Speaker 7: iPhone was invented before you were born, like you have,
Speaker 7: Like there was no window of time where you could
Speaker 7: like play outside.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8: Every generation says that about the subsequent generation. I guess.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, but I think I think we
Speaker 1: are in different I think I think we have crossed
Speaker 1: the rubicon, so to speak. Like I don't think it's
Speaker 1: now just like hating to be like these big things
Speaker 1: are co hooked, you know, and I think things are cooked,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 8: But I have a lot of hope.
Speaker 7: I have a lot of hope, and I think one
Speaker 7: that there is obviously a lot of good It's come
Speaker 7: from social media, namely a lot of my career I
Speaker 7: built on it. And also I just think that there's
Speaker 7: a movement happening to get back to real life. I
Speaker 7: think people really miss real life, and I think that
Speaker 7: there's a lot of a lot of young people who
Speaker 7: feel robbed of like in person, tactile, sensual experiences and
Speaker 7: are seeking it out. And I think it's going to
Speaker 7: become a real status symbol to not have a huge
Speaker 7: digital footprint.
Speaker 1: How do you navigate that given just you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of your career you say it's like kind of
Speaker 1: due to social media, but I imagine you, like everyone
Speaker 1: else are, is also looking for ways to not be
Speaker 1: attached tethered to you know.
Speaker 7: Honestly, I haven't been that great about it recently because
Speaker 7: I think especially when I'm touring, like when I'm in
Speaker 7: the airport and I'm like really tired and like run down,
Speaker 7: Like I don't want to be like meditating or like
Speaker 7: you know, focusing on you know, the things in front
Speaker 7: of me. I want to be on my phone because
Speaker 7: I want to make the time pass. And so definitely,
Speaker 7: in the last couple of months, like I've been spending
Speaker 7: more time on my phone than I would like, But
Speaker 7: I'm finding other ways to like be on screens that
Speaker 7: are not social media, Like I'm getting back into playing
Speaker 7: the Sims, which, like that is a great way to
Speaker 7: like be on screen and kill time, but it's still
Speaker 7: a creative activity. It's like I'm building houses. I'm like
Speaker 7: making little people and telling little stories. And it's like
Speaker 7: that's not the most intellectual way I could pass the time,
Speaker 7: but it is still stimulating my brain. And like I
Speaker 7: when I am using TikTok, my brain is not it's
Speaker 7: not working, like it is off, and I think like
Speaker 7: watching YouTube videos is another great way to like be
Speaker 7: on a screen in a way that still feels engaging
Speaker 7: because it's.
Speaker 8: Like I'm consuming content.
Speaker 7: I have to be I have to remember what I'm
Speaker 7: watching in order for the content to make sense, whereas
Speaker 7: on TikTok it's like I can forget everything that I
Speaker 7: see as soon as I scroll past it and it
Speaker 7: doesn't impact my day, Whereas like if I'm watching a
Speaker 7: ten minute YouTube video, it's like, oh, I have to
Speaker 7: follow the thread of whatever this person's talking about. I
Speaker 7: also really like Reddit, which like maybe that's wait, tell.
Speaker 1: Me about that, because I feel like Reddit was done right,
Speaker 1: it's it is so bad what happened? Fact should be there.
Speaker 7: I love it because I so I have all of
Speaker 7: these interests, including the SIMS. My other big niche interests
Speaker 7: are like make up perfume and like stationary.
Speaker 1: Ok those are like things I love perfume, state wait,
Speaker 1: make up, perfume, stationary and what else? And the sims
Speaker 1: and the sims.
Speaker 7: Yes, and so I'm on all those subredits like looking
Speaker 7: at and so it's me engaging with other people who
Speaker 7: are passionate about my interests. Like I love being in
Speaker 7: the perfume subreddit where people like I'm looking for a
Speaker 7: cent that has these notes and we're all trading ideas
Speaker 7: or someone being like what's your favorite of this or
Speaker 7: what are the bottles you've used up? And like it's
Speaker 7: again it's.
Speaker 1: Way of I feel you can trust these people.
Speaker 8: I'm not giving them anything like meaningful, but but.
Speaker 1: I mean, like like the recommendations and the opinions.
Speaker 8: Well, that's what sampling's for, you know, people say you
Speaker 8: should try this, and I get I spend five dollars
Speaker 8: on a sample instead of two hundred dollars on the bottle. Okay,
Speaker 8: it's there's a whole networ's a whole network of sampling.
Speaker 1: That's how you're doing.
Speaker 7: Okay, yeah, but I I really like, I'm hopeful that
Speaker 7: like the Jens McCrae subreddit will become more active, Like
Speaker 7: I want my start it or no, I didn't start it,
Speaker 7: but I want my fans to like get more invested
Speaker 7: in there. But I don't know if my fan I
Speaker 7: don't know if like my top fans are Reddit people.
Speaker 1: We're putting the call out. We'll just make a Reddit people.
Speaker 8: Yes, please join us.
Speaker 7: But yeah, yeah, I did an ama with Threddit, like
Speaker 7: right when the album was coming out, and I loved that.
Speaker 8: Wow, because I feel like the people. I know there
Speaker 8: was a stereotype for a while. Yeah, well, I know
Speaker 8: there was a stereotype for a while about Reddit that
Speaker 8: it was like a certain kind of only a certain
Speaker 8: kind of person use it.
Speaker 7: It was like a negative stereotype. But my experience with
Speaker 7: thread it is it's all very thoughtful people. Because people
Speaker 7: like to leave long text posts, like it's not a
Speaker 7: it's a place that it's the only place on the
Speaker 7: Internet that still rewards long text posts because like obviously
Speaker 7: on Twitter, you're limited by characters unless you like pay,
Speaker 7: which I haven't used Twitter in almost a year at
Speaker 7: this point, but on Instagram, like you can make a
Speaker 7: long caption. But the point is the photos and TikTok.
Speaker 7: The point is the videos and and Reddit is a
Speaker 7: place where's the there is no photo and I mean
Speaker 7: you can add photos to text posts. But the point
Speaker 7: of it is that you're having these long conversations. And
Speaker 7: I think that's why I'm now drawn to it. I'm like,
Speaker 7: all I want to do is talk dot talk, okay,
Speaker 7: And that's the best place to do it.
Speaker 1: It's the review, stationary stamps, no stationary.
Speaker 8: Makeup, perfume, and the sims. Okay, all right, that's where
Speaker 8: I live.
Speaker 1: What a songwriting come in on?
Speaker 8: Let's no, I don't do I don't need Reddit for songwriting. Songwriting?
Speaker 8: Is I do that on my hed?
Speaker 1: How did you? Okay? Because I feel like you're how
Speaker 1: can I say this, Like you're you're a very good
Speaker 1: songwriter than you in my estimation for what that is worth.
Speaker 1: And I feel like the way you write songs is
Speaker 1: almost a lost art, like you like you write songs
Speaker 1: in the way like great songs used to be written,
Speaker 1: in a sense, like you know, like they're very they're
Speaker 1: not they're not hyper specific, you know, like it's like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of room for interpretation and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like just turns of phrases and ambiguousness and
Speaker 1: that that creates a level of intrigue and and and
Speaker 1: they're really good. So like, how did you become good
Speaker 1: at that? How did you put that together? I get
Speaker 1: how you got into the Yes, yes, I get how
Speaker 1: you've become a makeup maven through Reddit, but yeah.
Speaker 7: With with I always wanted to tell stories, Like I
Speaker 7: just loved being read to as a child, and my
Speaker 7: mom had a thing where we would go to bookstores
Speaker 7: and toy stores and if I went to a toy store,
Speaker 7: I could get one toy, but if I went to
Speaker 7: a bookstore, I get as many books as I wanted.
Speaker 7: And obviously this was a long scam to get me
Speaker 7: to be a reader, and it worked very well.
Speaker 8: And I just always wanted to tell stories.
Speaker 7: And I always sang to myself, like my mom just
Speaker 7: said when I was like very little, like as soon
Speaker 7: as I was talking, I was also just singing to myself.
Speaker 7: And it really was, you know, through the Alicia Keys
Speaker 7: thing of like my mom trying to give me role
Speaker 7: models people who look like me. I just saw her
Speaker 7: and I was like, she looks I'm gonna do that
Speaker 7: because I look like her, so I can do that.
Speaker 7: It was like such a simple, like neurons firing moment.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I just was like that, that's someone something that
Speaker 8: I can do.
Speaker 7: And when I told my mom I wanted to be
Speaker 7: a singer, she's like, well, you have to learn how
Speaker 7: to write songs because that's where all the money is.
Speaker 7: Like there was no discussion of, like, there's no point
Speaker 7: that I don't know great either, my parents work in
Speaker 7: the music industry.
Speaker 8: But she was like, you have to write your own songs.
Speaker 8: And I was like all right.
Speaker 7: So I started taking piano lessons and I went through
Speaker 7: a couple of piano teachers, none of whom I particularly liked,
Speaker 7: and it was because I didn't want to read music
Speaker 7: and I didn't want to do classical music. And we
Speaker 7: found this piano teacher who very dramatically was like, well,
Speaker 7: you know, taking the classical music off the stand, Like
Speaker 7: what do you want to do?
Speaker 8: And I was like, I want to learn Beautiful by Cristina.
Speaker 7: Aguilera, and she was like okay, So she taught me
Speaker 7: how to pick music out by ear and taught me
Speaker 7: how to read guitar charts, and then very quickly thereafter
Speaker 7: was like teaching me how to write songs as well.
Speaker 7: And I would, you know, bring her my small ideas
Speaker 7: about songs and she would help me flesh them out
Speaker 7: and eventually back to the point where I could finish
Speaker 7: them by myself. And I think a big part of
Speaker 7: why I got good at it was because my parents
Speaker 7: instilled so much confidence in me from such a young
Speaker 7: age that I genuinely believed I was writing Grammy worthy
Speaker 7: material when I was like nine years old and there
Speaker 7: was no like. I love the confidence that I have
Speaker 7: in myself now and the you know, my opinion of
Speaker 7: my songs now is the same as it was when
Speaker 7: I was like ten, but the songs were not there,
Speaker 7: simply were not good.
Speaker 1: But I know your dad though, but hold on a second,
Speaker 1: this is why you're dad in your mom's I don't
Speaker 1: want to I don't want to discount your mom.
Speaker 7: No, my parents like they were just so they told
Speaker 7: I mean, they told me they're like, you're the greatest.
Speaker 7: Like when I was like I'm a I'm like, look
Speaker 7: at this song that I wrote it's amazing. They're like,
Speaker 7: you're right, and like I watch videos back because ID
Speaker 7: musical theater too, And I watched videos back of me
Speaker 7: doing musical theater and of me playing my original songs
Speaker 7: when I was first starting to write them, and I'm like,
Speaker 7: these are fine, like for a kid. They're like fine
Speaker 7: for a kid. And I'm like, how I asked my
Speaker 7: parents recently, like how did you know that this was
Speaker 7: going to go anywhere? Like we just did, We just were,
Speaker 7: We just knew they And I'm like that's crazy, Like
Speaker 7: you shouldn't.
Speaker 4: Have, Like I wasn't that good, like it took Like
Speaker 4: do you have siblings?
Speaker 2: I do?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I have an older brother who's my business manager.
Speaker 7: He doesn't do music, and then my little brother is
Speaker 7: my keyboard player and also has his own artist project
Speaker 7: and is astoundingly talented as well.
Speaker 1: Were they as Were they equally as Lata toy?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, very much.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 7: I mean my little brother, he he's like he's one
Speaker 7: of those people that's just good at everything.
Speaker 8: He tries.
Speaker 7: Like both my both my brothers played basketball. So my
Speaker 7: little brother, every single one of his pursuits or most
Speaker 7: of his pursuits were originated and wanted to copy his
Speaker 7: older siblings. But then he's also like this amazing chef
Speaker 7: because he just on his own just like loved food.
Speaker 7: So he was a person that everything he touched he
Speaker 7: was just great at. And keep the piano was like
Speaker 7: one of in particular. He was just so exceptional at that,
Speaker 7: and like he just wants to sit and play the
Speaker 7: piano for hours and hours and hours, and that like
Speaker 7: makes him happy. And my parents definitely encourage that because
Speaker 7: they were like he had boundless energy, so like we're
Speaker 7: gonna put you in basketball to burn off all that
Speaker 7: physical energy, and you're gonna be in these piano lessons
Speaker 7: to burn off all that mental energy and then maybe
Speaker 7: you'll finally go to sleep. But yeah, they're they're incredibly supportive.
Speaker 7: And I think if my older brother had wanted to
Speaker 7: do something creative, they would have been really supportive of
Speaker 7: that too. Like that was why my dad became a lawyer,
Speaker 7: because he was like, I want to give my kids
Speaker 7: full options, Like I don't want them to do anything
Speaker 7: because of money, Like I want them to make all
Speaker 7: their life path choices based on what they're really truly
Speaker 7: passionate about and what they're good at.
Speaker 8: And not just what they think is like the safe.
Speaker 1: Bet that's great. Yeah, that's amazing. I feel like we
Speaker 1: should line your dad out to like I feel like
Speaker 1: your dad needs to start a service.
Speaker 8: Like I don't know, all he wants to do is
Speaker 8: tell people how to live their life.
Speaker 7: Like his number one passion is like if I have
Speaker 7: a friend over or something, he's like asking them what
Speaker 7: they're doing, and it's like, Okay, so here's what you're
Speaker 7: gonna do, and here's your five year plan.
Speaker 8: Like he's ready to falk in.
Speaker 7: That's and I hope, I do hope when he retires
Speaker 7: that he gets the opportunity to just like dispense wisdom
Speaker 7: to young.
Speaker 1: People, get them on TV. I feel I know it's
Speaker 1: gonna be good. We'll be back with more from Jensen
Speaker 1: McCrae after the break. So your mom was showing you
Speaker 1: mixed race women specifically for you to identify with and
Speaker 1: and Alicia Keys. It does seem like you like and
Speaker 1: just also judging by some of some of the songs
Speaker 1: like on your first album, like the sort of trilogy
Speaker 1: of songs uh headlock uh, Like there was clearly a
Speaker 1: I Am where you you were struggling in your identity
Speaker 1: and who you were and wouldn't you know, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean growing up.
Speaker 7: I grew up in LA and I went to private
Speaker 7: school my whole life, and I was surrounded by mostly
Speaker 7: white people, and yeah, I did not feel like I
Speaker 7: belonged at all. And it felt like just this frustrating
Speaker 7: liability to be darker skinned, Like it just felt like
Speaker 7: it was boxing me out of social opportunities and it
Speaker 7: just like made people underestimate me.
Speaker 8: And I felt like I was ugly, Like I just
Speaker 8: didn't like what I looked like at all.
Speaker 7: And it's crazy to think about now because like I
Speaker 7: just I just no longer care like about like the
Speaker 7: white beauty standard.
Speaker 8: It's just totally relevant to me.
Speaker 7: But when I was a teenager, like obviously, it felt
Speaker 7: like the most important thing in the world, and my
Speaker 7: parents were very It was in spite of my parents'
Speaker 7: best efforts to ensure that we all thought like that
Speaker 7: black is beautiful, like they were they were hammering that
Speaker 7: home really hard.
Speaker 1: But the world seeped in.
Speaker 7: The world is just so loud, you know, especial for
Speaker 7: teenage girls. I think it was a little easier for
Speaker 7: my brothers, but especially being a teenage.
Speaker 1: Girls marked difference for yeah, well because they.
Speaker 7: Were also because they were both athletes, like they were
Speaker 7: the they were a form of black manhood that was
Speaker 7: very comfortable for people. Like also, they're both lighter than
Speaker 7: I am, Like I'm the darkest of my siblings, and
Speaker 7: so I think like having like a light skin black
Speaker 7: man who's tall and fit and good looking and good
Speaker 7: at basketball and good at school.
Speaker 8: Like they were just checking all the boxes and people
Speaker 8: just love them.
Speaker 7: And I was like darker skinned and like not an athlete,
Speaker 7: and like the music I made was like not what
Speaker 7: people would expect my music to sound like. And I
Speaker 7: was just so loud and opinionated, and it was like
Speaker 7: it was you know, it's not something I wasn't palatable
Speaker 7: to the people that I was around, and I sort
Speaker 7: of like dug my. I didn't really feel like I
Speaker 7: had a way to conform, so I just dug my
Speaker 7: heels in. It just became like even more antagonistic and
Speaker 7: oppositional to those standards. But yeah, those writing those the
Speaker 7: Headlock Trilogy was kind of me pross using in real
Speaker 7: time in college, Like how hard my parents worked to
Speaker 7: try to protect me from that kind of self hatred
Speaker 7: and just like getting so emotional at like how much
Speaker 7: they loved me and how much they just like it
Speaker 7: was the putting in so much effort to try to
Speaker 7: stop the world from getting in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did did that? Like did they have a sense
Speaker 1: of how much you were struggling with that?
Speaker 7: They figured it out at a certain point, because like
Speaker 7: they came in my room one night and I was
Speaker 7: looking at like skin whitening cream on Tumblr, and I
Speaker 7: was like I'd been caught red handed. And we had
Speaker 7: like this really long conversation and they were just like
Speaker 7: like what do you like?
Speaker 8: What do you what is this?
Speaker 4: Like, what do you mean?
Speaker 7: And I couldn't even really fully articulate like what I
Speaker 7: was feeling or was wrong, because it was like so
Speaker 7: shameful and so big. But they had, Yeah, they knew,
Speaker 7: they knew that I was struggling socially, and but the
Speaker 7: thing that they just kept saying to me was like,
Speaker 7: when you get to college, it's going to be different,
Speaker 7: Like I just just please get through high school, like
Speaker 7: we know it's so bad, but I promise you when
Speaker 7: you get to college it'll be different.
Speaker 1: And it was.
Speaker 8: It was immediately different. It was immediately so much better.
Speaker 1: I don't know why that is the case, but it's
Speaker 1: so it's night and day.
Speaker 7: Well, especially in my case, like going to music school,
Speaker 7: the things that it was nothing was more heavily rewarded
Speaker 7: in music school than being different, like whatever made.
Speaker 1: Oh your liabilities throughout high school. All a sudden it
Speaker 1: become like like like the thing to like lean into. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what flips I mean.
Speaker 7: I just remember like all the kids who were like
Speaker 7: closeted gay kids in high school that came to music school,
Speaker 7: they were out and proud and found community immediately. All
Speaker 7: the kids whore ethnic minorities immediately it felt like it
Speaker 7: was well a little bit safer.
Speaker 8: Some people had different experiences than others.
Speaker 7: I went to USC, so outside of the bubble of
Speaker 7: music school, it was not always safe. But yeah, it
Speaker 7: was like and then like even just like on a
Speaker 7: very simple level, like how you dressed, like I was
Speaker 7: like normcore in the way that I dressed in music school,
Speaker 7: like I was dressing like boring, and all the kid
Speaker 7: was like a competition of who could wear the most
Speaker 7: eccentric clothing.
Speaker 8: It was like these are things I would never dreamed
Speaker 8: of when I was a teenager.
Speaker 7: But all of a sudden, you get to college and
Speaker 7: it's like, oh, you're supposed to be as yourself as possible.
Speaker 8: That is your ticket to success.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's a great. It's such a great. It's
Speaker 1: like the most underrated part of college is that part
Speaker 1: of it, the deconditioning that happens.
Speaker 8: Yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 1: Was there an inciting incident to the skin lightning cream?
Speaker 8: No, I don't think so.
Speaker 7: It was just like I was just on Tumblr, which
Speaker 7: is like, it's funny now because like now TikTok is
Speaker 7: the thing that all the teenagers are on, and they're
Speaker 7: just rehashing a lot of the same kind of bs
Speaker 7: that was happening on Tumblr. And I'm sure I just
Speaker 7: went down like a rabbit hole in the same way
Speaker 7: that you can go down like eating disorder rabbit holes
Speaker 7: or like you know, people get radicalized to be like
Speaker 7: racist or whatever on other platforms, Like you just get
Speaker 7: you start looking at certain images and then the algorithm
Speaker 7: just feeds you more of it. And I don't think
Speaker 7: I was ever serious about it, Like I don't think
Speaker 7: I ever was gonna meaningfully change what I look like.
Speaker 8: But I just was like I was like, I didn't
Speaker 8: know this was the thing that people did.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and it turns out that there were people more
Speaker 7: desperate than I was who were like really trying to
Speaker 7: erase who they were.
Speaker 8: And it made me really sad more than anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so sad. There's a song on you first, some
Speaker 1: white boy that I feel like dovetails nice when where
Speaker 1: we're at in this conversation, would you would you mind
Speaker 1: playing some little plane or some of it comfortable? M m.
Speaker 2: M oh. My hair smells like smoke. Something's burning. I
Speaker 2: don't know what it is. I won't laugh, you dumb
Speaker 2: ass chokes waite boy. I don't know you anything. I
Speaker 2: am learning not to sing for you. The cage is
Speaker 2: not my Zulus, white boy, you still got a great
Speaker 2: barn Me sore the h.
Speaker 4: And God bring me to my knee the first and
Speaker 4: DEVI leading if ire WoT you ask me to be?
Speaker 5: Boy?
Speaker 4: Boy? Will make of me?
Speaker 2: Passion play almost biblical? Why girl rives, I turn invisible?
Speaker 8: I don't like.
Speaker 2: Who I am?
Speaker 4: The white boy.
Speaker 2: Trance Stay, You're a hypnotic twillow my watch, my voice
Speaker 2: shop the autive?
Speaker 4: How to lie?
Speaker 9: Who are you?
Speaker 5: What by?
Speaker 4: You still got a great boy? Me sore Di and
Speaker 4: God bring me to.
Speaker 5: My name.
Speaker 4: First and down. If I her believe, if I would
Speaker 4: you ask me to be boy boy will make of me.
Speaker 5: You still.
Speaker 4: Out of a good uh sweet? And the girl bring
Speaker 4: me to my name you last?
Speaker 5: If I believe, if Ian would you last me to
Speaker 5: be my boy, will make of me?
Speaker 4: William Ma me, William.
Speaker 2: Ma, go me.
Speaker 1: Gorgeous. But it's like, where did you learn? It feels
Speaker 1: like you're breaking rules, Like how do you make a
Speaker 1: song of that gorgeous? And then it's like and then
Speaker 1: get the the gumption for the tax to be like
Speaker 1: white boy. It's like it's it's it's not. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: I don't think people are supposed to do that. I
Speaker 1: thought to do it, but how the funk do you
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 7: That's what I felt like when I wrote it, because
Speaker 7: I wrote almost twenty and it was the first song
Speaker 7: I ever wrote that. I felt like I was the
Speaker 7: only person who could have written it, And in the
Speaker 7: immediate aftermath of writing it, I was like, surely I
Speaker 7: can never play this live, Like this is crazy. This
Speaker 7: is not a song that's meant to see the light
Speaker 7: of day. And I but I think I spent like
Speaker 7: two months sitting on it, not showing it to anybody,
Speaker 7: and then I came home for winter break and I
Speaker 7: played it for my mom and she was like, whoa,
Speaker 7: you have to share that with people? And I was
Speaker 7: like yeah, yes, And then I started playing it at
Speaker 7: shows and it ended up being the song that led
Speaker 7: me to my team because my first manager she sent
Speaker 7: me like a cold email asking me to play a show.
Speaker 7: I said that I would do it, and I played
Speaker 7: this song among others and she filmed it and put
Speaker 7: it on her Instagram.
Speaker 1: Story like it just a show, just like a private
Speaker 1: or was it?
Speaker 8: It was like at this.
Speaker 7: Little space in West Hollywood that she was renting at
Speaker 7: the time, and like it was me and a couple
Speaker 7: other artists, and her original ask was like can you
Speaker 7: bring twenty to twenty five people? And I was like no,
Speaker 7: She's like can you bring And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 7: I bet I can bring three. And I thought I
Speaker 7: would bring my mom and my little brother and then
Speaker 7: a friend from school. Now my friends from school came
Speaker 7: and my little brother had homework, so it was just
Speaker 7: my mom and the other artists had brought whatever their
Speaker 7: handful of people were. And after I finished, I just
Speaker 7: like ran out because I was like, I didn't bring anybody.
Speaker 7: I failed, I flopped and she tried to stop me.
Speaker 8: She's like that was incredible, and I was like, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 8: cause I didn't recognize her. I didn't know who she was.
Speaker 7: I was like, I just blew her off and I
Speaker 7: left and I went home thinking that I was gonna quit.
Speaker 7: I was like, I ain't do this anymore, Like I
Speaker 7: can't keep playing shows to no one, like it just
Speaker 7: feels insane. And but she had filmed me and put
Speaker 7: it on her Instagram story and within seconds of posting it, Rocky,
Speaker 7: the man who ended up producing my first album, Massagarin,
Speaker 7: was like, who is that?
Speaker 8: What is she singing? What is going on? And she
Speaker 8: was like do you want to meet her? Like we can.
Speaker 7: So she ended up facilitating a meeting for us and
Speaker 7: have we had our first session, and in my first
Speaker 7: our first session together, I wrote my song Adam's Ribs,
Speaker 7: and then we made another session right after that when
Speaker 7: I wrote starting to Get to You, and it was
Speaker 7: just like we just immediately clicked creatively.
Speaker 8: But it was because of white Boy.
Speaker 7: He was like I just had never heard anything like
Speaker 7: it before, and like he's black and his wife is mixed,
Speaker 7: and he was like I just knew that, Like I
Speaker 7: could just see her story in her life, and like
Speaker 7: it was just so many there were just so many
Speaker 7: layers to it for him and then of course for me.
Speaker 8: But yeah, it felt like I wasn't allowed, like writing
Speaker 8: that song. It felt illegal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well no, because it's like I don't I mean
Speaker 1: maybe in the annals of songwriting history there, but it
Speaker 1: just it feels very unique, you know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I was recently watching the music video for
Speaker 7: it back, and the music video is also wild, Like
Speaker 7: I came up with this whole treatment of like cause
Speaker 7: the kind of the impetus for the song was I
Speaker 7: went to this party in college and I was introduced
Speaker 7: to this white boy alongside my white friend, and the
Speaker 7: boy basically completely ignored me and just talked to my friend.
Speaker 7: And I left the party after that cause I was
Speaker 7: like I can't. Yes, I was like, I can't be
Speaker 7: here anymore. So I was like, I want to recreate
Speaker 7: that scene in the video. So we did that, and
Speaker 7: then we also had a scene where we had some
Speaker 7: contemporary dancers and the end, one of the ending shots
Speaker 7: of the video is me standing in front of all
Speaker 7: of the white boys that we had cast as extras
Speaker 7: at the party, and it's just me singing the end
Speaker 7: of the song with them all standing behind me, stone faced,
Speaker 7: and I'm like, that was my first single when I
Speaker 7: was twenty.
Speaker 8: Two, Like that that's intense. Like I didn't know at
Speaker 8: the time. I was like, I'm just doing just following
Speaker 8: my bliss. I'm just like making my heart.
Speaker 7: But now five years later, like you know, I'm doing
Speaker 7: a roll out for another album and putting out this
Speaker 7: other music. I'm like, that was an intense way to start,
Speaker 7: and I'm so glad it is. It's how I did it,
Speaker 7: but it was it was crazy that that was my
Speaker 7: first thing.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you knew no better because it's like.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's nothing, Like I just didn't think for even
Speaker 7: a second, Like I mean, I knew that it was
Speaker 7: like a I knew it showed my personality and it
Speaker 7: showed my style.
Speaker 8: But like I just look back now and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 8: Like I came out swinging, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: That is incredible. I feel like there's a lot like
Speaker 1: an underlining, I mean and not a lot, but that
Speaker 1: is like even in Savannah, like there is some there's
Speaker 1: some like antagonism going on, you know, like, and it's
Speaker 1: like it is a really cool feature of your songwriting,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I'm not like a I wouldn't say
Speaker 7: I'm not a confrontational person. I'm very capable of doing confrontation.
Speaker 7: It's obviously not something I relish, I don't know that
Speaker 7: anyone does, but something I'm capable of. But I feel
Speaker 7: like the safest place for me to express those confrontational
Speaker 7: feelings isn't a song, because in addition to the fact
Speaker 7: that I'm not speaking directly to anyone, like I can
Speaker 7: collect my thoughts, I can create an argument that's more
Speaker 7: concise and like I can deliver. I can think exactly
Speaker 7: about what I want to say, and I can say it,
Speaker 7: and then that can be the last word and I
Speaker 7: can feel like I've said my piece and I don't
Speaker 7: need to like get a response back about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Alicia Keys is a love Lisha Keys,
Speaker 1: big fan Oflicia Keys. But like your songwriting doesn't really feel.
Speaker 8: Like I diverged a lot since I was a kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it is different. You did write more like that,
Speaker 1: I would say, So, I.
Speaker 7: Mean, like I was, you know, a little kid, so
Speaker 7: like I wasn't writing anything like that profound, but I
Speaker 7: was definitely trying to sound like her, and I was
Speaker 7: everything was on piano, and I would say like as
Speaker 7: I've gotten older, like I mean, Phoebe Bridges was like
Speaker 7: a big, big influence on me, especially in college when
Speaker 7: I first found for music, And like, my favorite band
Speaker 7: is this band Muna, who also went to USC and
Speaker 7: two of the members were in my program, and I
Speaker 7: definitely ama, they're like a they're a trio there. It's
Speaker 7: like it's basically just pop music, but it's like len yes, yes,
Speaker 7: And I feel like I definitely am emulating them a lot.
Speaker 7: And Sarah Burrellis was really big for me for a while.
Speaker 7: John Mayer was big for me a while for a while.
Speaker 7: Bonie Ver has is and always has been really big.
Speaker 8: Casey Muskraves.
Speaker 7: There's so many people who have kind of warmed their
Speaker 7: way in, but one of the biggest things Rocky taught
Speaker 7: me was like trying to sound like myself as opposed
Speaker 7: to constantly trying to sound like other people.
Speaker 1: Like any of those people, yeah, like they're like I.
Speaker 7: Feel like you can hear them and the influences are there,
Speaker 7: but I feel like I've really started to find the
Speaker 7: McCrae like toolbox and the Jensen McCrae universe, and I
Speaker 7: feel like I'm writing in there all the time.
Speaker 1: Is it anything you can enumerate or is it kind
Speaker 1: of just more of a feel.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 7: I think obviously, lyrics are paramount. I think one of
Speaker 7: the biggest pieces of advice I give to people with
Speaker 7: songwriting is that your lyrics have to sound good when
Speaker 7: spoken without any melody or production, and if you don't,
Speaker 7: if it doesn't sound good as a poem, you have
Speaker 7: to go back and try again. I think obviously use
Speaker 7: a lot of literary references, a lot of biblical references.
Speaker 1: Where does that stuff come from?
Speaker 8: Honestly, the biblical references, I don't know. Because my mom
Speaker 8: is Jewish.
Speaker 7: My dad converted to Judaism before I was born, and
Speaker 7: like I went to Jewish school for a while, and
Speaker 7: then after we left that school we kind of stopped practicing.
Speaker 7: So there's like not really been a big religious presence
Speaker 7: in my life. But I just find the stories in
Speaker 7: the Bible to be really compelling and evocative in educational Like,
Speaker 7: I think they're really valuable as stories, And then I
Speaker 7: mean as far as like literary references like I just
Speaker 7: I'm a huge reader, like I just love I love
Speaker 7: my I love my songs to feel like either they
Speaker 7: could they've been lift from books, or that they could
Speaker 7: be set alongside scenes from books, and I really want.
Speaker 7: I fangirl hardest when an author follows me on Instagram
Speaker 7: way more than any other, like famous.
Speaker 1: Person, who are some of your ocean.
Speaker 8: Vuang He followed me a while ago and sent me
Speaker 8: a copy of his new book that was really huge.
Speaker 8: Carmen Maria Machado followed me right after I read her
Speaker 8: book In the dream House, which was like one of
Speaker 8: the most important books I've ever read. That really I
Speaker 8: was gagged about that.
Speaker 7: Probably the thing that was the most emotional was when
Speaker 7: I was a teenager, I read a lot of John Green,
Speaker 7: the young adult author who wrote that book The Fallennar Stars,
Speaker 7: and he followed me on Instagram recently, I think because
Speaker 7: I mentioned him on another podcast and that was like
Speaker 7: I freaked out about that, and I sent him a
Speaker 7: really long I sent him a message that was so
Speaker 7: long Instagram wouln't let me send it, so I had
Speaker 7: to edit it down.
Speaker 8: That's like the making music that authors love is probably
Speaker 8: my genre, Like making music that authors want to put
Speaker 8: on their playlists while they're working on their books. That's
Speaker 8: my dream.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: Like part of what I've been setting out to do
Speaker 7: is I want to bring together the world of like
Speaker 7: the great songwriters whose songs are independent of who's singing them,
Speaker 7: just work, and then the great vocalists who they could
Speaker 7: sing the phone book like it would still sound great.
Speaker 7: I'm like, in an ideal world, I would be able to.
Speaker 7: I want to be excellent at both of them, Like
Speaker 7: I really want I want my songs to stand alone
Speaker 7: and for my voice to stand alone, in for both
Speaker 7: those things together to be this extra powerful thing.
Speaker 1: Do you ever do covers? Give her?
Speaker 8: Sometimes? Yeah, I play cover. I do covers at most
Speaker 8: of my shows I've been doing.
Speaker 7: Taylor Swift is obviously another huge influence on me, and
Speaker 7: I've been doing a cover of a song from her
Speaker 7: most recent album at like all my shows.
Speaker 1: What do you hear in Taylor's music?
Speaker 8: I mean, where do I even start?
Speaker 7: I love her so much, Like she is so good
Speaker 7: with narrative, Like she obviously started as a country artist
Speaker 7: and writer, and like so much of country music is
Speaker 7: just story, and like that carries through even.
Speaker 8: As she's genre shape shifted.
Speaker 7: She's not afraid of like vocabular which like to sometimes
Speaker 7: I'll say, like sometimes I can read clunky, like it
Speaker 7: doesn't always work, But I just love like that she
Speaker 7: is willing to go there and like she's not trying
Speaker 7: to dumb her She's never had dumb herself down for anybody.
Speaker 7: I love how genre expansive she is. And there's just
Speaker 7: so many like single lines that just like haunt me forever.
Speaker 7: Like one of my favorites is off of Midnights on
Speaker 7: what I could have shown have and she says, give
Speaker 7: me back my girlhood.
Speaker 8: It was mine first. Like that's like one of the best.
Speaker 7: Like I am mad when I heard that. I was like,
Speaker 7: I can't believe I didn't write that, Like that's like
Speaker 7: one of the best. That's so good, And like there's
Speaker 7: a million other ones, but like there's just I'm so
Speaker 7: impressed with like Speak Now, which was her album that
Speaker 7: she wrote entirely by herself.
Speaker 8: When she was like nineteen years old.
Speaker 7: It's just incredible, like the and the and the it's
Speaker 7: the volume as well, because that's the thing that I
Speaker 7: pride myself on, is my volume like I'm like, I
Speaker 7: want to just keep creating, whether it's songs, whether it's
Speaker 7: the other types of writing that I like to do.
Speaker 7: Like I want to be a person who's just always
Speaker 7: having a high volume of output, and she is that,
Speaker 7: and it's just astonishing that she manages to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: Wow, have you the pace that you've set for yourself
Speaker 1: so far you feel like you've been able to keep it.
Speaker 7: I definitely am bummed that I haven't written as much
Speaker 7: this year, like because of you know, partly because of
Speaker 7: the album coming out and the touring, but also because
Speaker 7: like obviously this year started with the fires in LA
Speaker 7: and that was like really disruptive to everyone's life in
Speaker 7: a million different ways, and especially I feel like as
Speaker 7: a creative it was like I mean I wrote a
Speaker 7: song about the fires as they were happening, but like
Speaker 7: it definitely like it tanked my mental health for a while,
Speaker 7: and like I didn't feel as productive and creative. And
Speaker 7: then obviously, like politically, the world is also like really
Speaker 7: in America specifically, is really in a lot of turmoil,
Speaker 7: and like I've written about that to an extent, but
Speaker 7: that also makes it hard to like tap into the
Speaker 7: creative life work sometimes. And it's weird because I've never
Speaker 7: been a person who's ever struggled with creative blocks, and
Speaker 7: I don't even think of myself as experiencing writer's block.
Speaker 7: I just think I'm not in a season of high
Speaker 7: output right now, and I think that's like not that crazy,
Speaker 7: Like I have made so much over so many years,
Speaker 7: and it's like I just am I really trust that
Speaker 7: it's going to come back. And I have written a
Speaker 7: couple songs I love in the last couple of months,
Speaker 7: but it's just not at the same clip.
Speaker 1: Are you goal oriented? Yes, yes, I want to assume.
Speaker 7: But I mean I'm both goal and process oriented, Like
Speaker 7: I love the journey. But there's definitely a lot of
Speaker 7: stuff that I want to do.
Speaker 1: What are some of those?
Speaker 7: I love to win a Grammy, of course, I'd love
Speaker 7: to win a Grammy. I really want to publish a novel,
Speaker 7: really badly. I really want to get a screenplay that
Speaker 7: I've written produced.
Speaker 1: Have you written one?
Speaker 8: I've written a lot.
Speaker 7: I've written a lot of screenplays and a lot of
Speaker 7: novels and none of them have gone anywhere, but one
Speaker 7: day one of them will. And I also, I love
Speaker 7: I love to act I found I want to. I
Speaker 7: want to I want to do some acting.
Speaker 1: How did that escape you? I feel like you're I
Speaker 1: just didn't want to do it for.
Speaker 8: A really long time.
Speaker 7: Like I when I was a kid, I did musical
Speaker 7: theater and then when I stopped, I was like, I
Speaker 7: have the only reason I did musical theater was to sing,
Speaker 7: like I didn't care about the acting part. And then
Speaker 7: I never thought about it at all in high school
Speaker 7: or college really, And then when I started working with WMME,
Speaker 7: they were like, of course, like they're, you know, a
Speaker 7: huge agency, they represent everybody doing everything, and they were like, okay,
Speaker 7: so acting and I was like no, and they were
Speaker 7: like what do you what do you mean?
Speaker 8: And I was like I don't want to do that.
Speaker 8: And I'm like, well, we'll just send you some stuff.
Speaker 7: Have they sent you anything, Like, well, they said, in
Speaker 7: the last five years, they've sent me a couple of auditions.
Speaker 7: And when I when I first started receiving them, I
Speaker 7: did a bad job, like I would send them a
Speaker 7: not on purpose, but.
Speaker 8: You know, I was like I didn't know.
Speaker 7: I didn't know what it meant to like a script,
Speaker 7: Like I was just doing what I was told and
Speaker 7: like I remember like trying really hard at the auditions
Speaker 7: and then they wouldn't say anything to me about it.
Speaker 8: Afterward, and I was like, I don't think I did
Speaker 8: a good job. And then I started to get more
Speaker 8: into it.
Speaker 7: I started doing self tapes for other people and started
Speaker 7: to really enjoy that process. And then I got an
Speaker 7: audition after having done kind of a lot of self
Speaker 7: tapes for other people.
Speaker 1: And say, self tapes for other people that you would help, yeah.
Speaker 7: I would like read for them while they auditioned, And
Speaker 7: I did one after doing that a lot, and it
Speaker 7: was the first time my acting agent was like, hey,
Speaker 7: that was good, and I was like, not me being
Speaker 7: good at acting.
Speaker 8: And so then now when I get tapes, I.
Speaker 7: Like really enjoy doing them. It's really fun, Like I
Speaker 7: lose track of time. I just lose hours, like trying
Speaker 7: different things. And it's made me now want hopefully like
Speaker 7: when I to get if I get one of my
Speaker 7: own scripts, made like I'd love to act in a
Speaker 7: movie that I write, which I never would have thought
Speaker 7: I would want to do before, but now I really want.
Speaker 1: To hold up you met Spike Lee, I did like that.
Speaker 1: I feel like, did you did you ask him any
Speaker 1: about anything. Did you pick like next question, did you
Speaker 1: ask him about? Did you pitch a movie?
Speaker 8: Did you ask Spikes?
Speaker 2: Great?
Speaker 7: Spike's been very supportive and why he just found my
Speaker 7: music online. He just like found He literally just started
Speaker 7: liking my posts on Instagram from a kid, baby, That's
Speaker 7: what I thought, but I don't know, Like it wasn't
Speaker 7: even one of my viral videos. He just like found
Speaker 7: he just found one of my songs and was just like,
Speaker 7: this is great, and I was like, thank you so much,
Speaker 7: appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I got.
Speaker 8: I get random.
Speaker 7: It's always the most random people, like I got, like
Speaker 7: Kristen Bell messaged me after I posted my song about
Speaker 7: the fires, and like Julia Roberts posted one of my
Speaker 7: songs on her Instagram. Creed like it's all these people.
Speaker 7: I'm like, I don't know how you're finding this stuff,
Speaker 7: but like so much love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Spike's the coolest one.
Speaker 8: He's very cool. He's very very cool.
Speaker 1: And you know, he's like great in his own movies too,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. He hasn't really been in
Speaker 1: one in a while, but he should get back in there.
Speaker 1: I agree with you.
Speaker 8: I agree with you, but that's like kind of I would.
Speaker 7: I love the idea of writing something and getting the
Speaker 7: opportunity to act it myself, which like because when I
Speaker 7: first started writing movies, people would be like, Oh, you
Speaker 7: want to play this part and I was like no.
Speaker 7: And then now when I'm writing things, I am often
Speaker 7: writing with myself in mind.
Speaker 1: Do any of those things feel like I guess music
Speaker 1: is probably takes?
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's number one.
Speaker 1: Number one. Does any of the other stuff feel like
Speaker 1: a distraction or does it feel like it feeds? Does
Speaker 1: each one feeds the other?
Speaker 7: And it all They definitely don't feed each other. I
Speaker 7: used to wonder if I was doing a disservice to
Speaker 7: myself by having all these other interests. But I had
Speaker 7: a professor my sophomore year of college who about that,
Speaker 7: because I was feeling very adrift and I was questioning
Speaker 7: my place in the program and I felt like everyone
Speaker 7: else with like eight slept breathed music, and I was like,
Speaker 7: how all this other.
Speaker 8: Stuff I really like?
Speaker 7: I was like, do you think I should give up
Speaker 7: on those things and just focus on music? And he
Speaker 7: was like, never make yourself small, Like you need to
Speaker 7: do everything that you're passionate about and everything that you're
Speaker 7: good at. Everything, like, do all of it and it
Speaker 7: will all be in service to each other. And I
Speaker 7: was like, Okay, well I got permission from my teacher,
Speaker 7: so I can keep doing it.
Speaker 8: And now.
Speaker 7: I mean, the thing that I often say is that
Speaker 7: like when I'm writing, Like sometimes i'll be writing, I'll
Speaker 7: write a line and I'll be like, is this a song?
Speaker 8: Is this a poem? Is this a line of dialogue
Speaker 8: in the screenplay? Is this like a passage in a novel?
Speaker 7: And Like, if I'm working on one thing and it
Speaker 7: feels like I'm getting stuck, I just pivot to another medium.
Speaker 7: And so for me, it's kind of the way that
Speaker 7: I've gotten out of writer's block is by having all
Speaker 7: of these different things that I enjoy writing. Is if
Speaker 7: anything ever starts to feel stagnant or like it's not working,
Speaker 7: I just switch to something else and immediately feels fresh.
Speaker 1: Who are some of your inspirations in terms of dialogue
Speaker 1: writers specifically, Well, my favorite.
Speaker 8: Book of all time is The Idiot by ELLEF.
Speaker 7: Batuman, which is about this girl who's a freshman at
Speaker 7: Harvard in nineteen ninety five. There's very little plot, It's
Speaker 7: just her going through her freshman year, making friends, trying
Speaker 7: to find her voice as a writer, and developing this
Speaker 7: ill fated crush on this older boy who's not interested
Speaker 7: in her, And I just remember feeling like reading that
Speaker 7: dialogue felt so much more real than anything I'd ever
Speaker 7: read before, And it was because it was teenagers who
Speaker 7: were really, really smart, but they weren't pretentious.
Speaker 8: And I had never really read.
Speaker 7: Anything that was that good at echoing the kinds of
Speaker 7: conversations that I had experienced and had as a teenager.
Speaker 1: I will ask, though, can teenagers be smart and not
Speaker 1: be pretentious?
Speaker 7: I felt like the reason why I felt a lack
Speaker 7: of pretension was because it felt like they weren't performing
Speaker 7: for adults. They were just performing for each other, okay,
Speaker 7: which I feel like.
Speaker 1: Was so smart for their cohort not necessarily performatively small.
Speaker 7: They were not performally smart. And you know what the
Speaker 7: other key difference is is that they asked a lot
Speaker 7: of questions. It wasn't kids who pretended to know everything.
Speaker 7: It was kids who were really deeply curious about the world,
Speaker 7: and they asked really smart questions, but they didn't pretend
Speaker 7: to know more than they than they did. And especially
Speaker 7: the narrator, like at the end of the book. I
Speaker 7: mean it's called The Idiot, which borrows its title from
Speaker 7: Adostoevsky work, And at the end of the book she
Speaker 7: basically says like, I'm dumb. I don't know anything, Like
Speaker 7: I've spent a whole year in college and had this
Speaker 7: whole summer break and I don't know what happened. Like
Speaker 7: that's how the book ends. And that just felt I
Speaker 7: read that book when I was twenty for the first time,
Speaker 7: and it just felt so real to be like, yeah,
Speaker 7: like I don't know anything. Like I'm asking all these questions.
Speaker 7: I'm going out in the world, I'm meeting all these people.
Speaker 7: I'm trying to make sense of everything, and I've been
Speaker 7: left with yet more questions than I had when I started.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, last break and leave back with Jensen McCrae.
Speaker 1: What does winning a Grammy do for You're clearly like
Speaker 1: I mean, take out song, take out the music career.
Speaker 1: You're an impressive person. Thank you, very clearly, like you
Speaker 1: have a lot of interests, very adept at a lot
Speaker 1: of things. What does a Grammy do for you? Why
Speaker 1: is that like you're driving force? Why is it not drive?
Speaker 1: But why is that one of the things, many things
Speaker 1: that you want to accomplish.
Speaker 7: There's one component, which is that not that many black
Speaker 7: women have one album of the year. Beyonce winning this
Speaker 7: past year.
Speaker 8: It was only the fourth time it's ever happened, and
Speaker 8: so there's a part of me that just wants to
Speaker 8: I want to prove it.
Speaker 1: We're back to that.
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, that's really part of it.
Speaker 7: Is really like I didn't know that when I was
Speaker 7: a kid, and I'm like, oh wow, like if I
Speaker 7: do this, like it's historical in.
Speaker 1: A lot of ways, Beyonce, laurn Hill.
Speaker 7: Natalie Cole, and then there's another one. But I know
Speaker 7: that Rihanna's never won it and Alicia Keys has never
Speaker 7: won it, which is crazy. That's a component of it.
Speaker 7: There's also the part of me that's like I've always
Speaker 7: been academic. I've always been very academically inclined, and I
Speaker 7: like gold stars. I want the institution to give me
Speaker 7: a gold star.
Speaker 8: Like that's just true.
Speaker 7: Like I just love when authority recognizes my and like,
Speaker 7: I know it's not that's not what gives my work meaning.
Speaker 7: I think my work has meaning because I make it
Speaker 7: and because it's reaching people who are touched by it.
Speaker 7: That's the most important thing. But to me, it's it's
Speaker 7: a milestone that I like achieving is getting that stamp
Speaker 7: from like an entity that's larger than me and that
Speaker 7: has a track record of anointing people like I like.
Speaker 7: And if I if I go my whole life without
Speaker 7: winning any kind of awards for my music, that's fine,
Speaker 7: Like I won't feel like I failed. But it's just
Speaker 7: something that I've always I've always liked the idea of
Speaker 7: It's something that like makes it will make me feel
Speaker 7: like it's just an it's another thing to have achieved,
Speaker 7: and it's another thing to feel like I've worked toward.
Speaker 7: And there's like a system in place that you can
Speaker 7: work to increase your odds of winning it. And I'm like,
Speaker 7: let me just try, let me try to think you
Speaker 7: not really, I don't really know what it is, but
Speaker 7: I know that like a lot of it is just
Speaker 7: like being involved in like the music community, and like
Speaker 7: being involved in the Recording Academy, and like why not
Speaker 7: for more community and why not like be more involved
Speaker 7: in like music advocacy and music education, Like those are
Speaker 7: all things I want to do anyway, and like just
Speaker 7: as involved as I can in that network, I think
Speaker 7: is something that will bear fruit regardless of whether or
Speaker 7: not I won an award.
Speaker 1: So aside from wanting to win, the things that it
Speaker 1: might take to win are appealing to you to achieve
Speaker 1: a filled just to do, whether that's the networking or
Speaker 1: the helping the musical education part helping on this.
Speaker 7: I went to Grammy camp when I was a teenager,
Speaker 7: which is like the part of the recording academies, like
Speaker 7: philanthropic wing is like I don't know what the form
Speaker 7: of the camp takes now, but when I went ten
Speaker 7: years ago, it was a ten day residential camp where
Speaker 7: you go and you have all this instruction with these
Speaker 7: high level instructors, and then at the end of it,
Speaker 7: we did a showcase at l Ray, which is you know,
Speaker 7: I ended up playing there this year myself, which was
Speaker 7: incredible and it totally changed my life, Like was what
Speaker 7: cemented my dream of becoming a musician in a way
Speaker 7: that was like so much more tangible than it had
Speaker 7: ever been before. And all I want is to keep going.
Speaker 7: I think what I want to give is the gift
Speaker 7: of this dream to more people. And I think that
Speaker 7: by winning a Grammy give the gift of this dream
Speaker 7: to other black girls. I've had so many great mentors
Speaker 7: and so many great opportunities, and I just want to
Speaker 7: keep I want to pay it forward more.
Speaker 8: I want to show more people that as possible.
Speaker 1: That's so cool.
Speaker 7: Honestly, before Grammy Camp, I didn't think I was going
Speaker 7: to go to music school. I thought my plan was
Speaker 7: to apply to colleges and big First of all, I
Speaker 7: thought I was going to leave LA and my plan
Speaker 7: was to apply to colleges in big cities and do
Speaker 7: music on the side. Like I thought I would maybe
Speaker 7: go to NYU or I was like looking at Emory
Speaker 7: because it was in Atlanta. I was like, I'll go
Speaker 7: somewhere that has a music scene and has a big city,
Speaker 7: and like I'll just study English or something and then
Speaker 7: I'll play shows on the side. Like that was what
Speaker 7: I thought I was going to do, because the only
Speaker 7: music schools I knew about were like conservatories, and I
Speaker 7: was like, I really want to get like I wanted
Speaker 7: to sync my teeth into a great academic education because
Speaker 7: I loved school and I didn't want to sacrifice that
Speaker 7: to study music. And then I found out about USC
Speaker 7: and I learned that I could get that Conservatory Education
Speaker 7: and I could still take USC's general education classes, and
Speaker 7: I was like, this is the perfect place.
Speaker 8: And Grammy Camp was the was what I saw. I
Speaker 8: saw as a stepping stone.
Speaker 7: And also it was the first time I was ever
Speaker 7: around anyone who cared about music ever, and it was awesome.
Speaker 1: What was I like to connect with other people like that?
Speaker 8: It felt like it was my taste of what it
Speaker 8: would be like to go to college. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 8: the people here like me. Everyone likes me.
Speaker 7: Like in high school people didn't like me, and I
Speaker 7: went to music school and everyone or I went to
Speaker 7: Grant Camp and people liked me.
Speaker 1: Was that like a thing, like, you know, I think
Speaker 1: to some I think everyone feels a little marginalized in
Speaker 1: high school, even the popular and whatever. But like, but
Speaker 1: you really, like, truthfully, you think I had friends in
Speaker 1: high school.
Speaker 8: But I mean people told me they didn't like me
Speaker 8: to my face, like I knew.
Speaker 7: I knew that they didn't and it was mostly because
Speaker 7: of all, you know, being super opinionated and talking about politics.
Speaker 7: That was like a big part of why people didn't.
Speaker 7: They thought I was like annoying and shrill and going
Speaker 7: to mute. And also people I also sang all the time,
Speaker 7: which is annoying. Like I just sang to myself all
Speaker 7: the time. You go to a music camp, everybody's.
Speaker 8: Singing themselves all the time, as it turns out, and
Speaker 8: that is welcome. Yeah, I loved it. I was like
Speaker 8: the happiest I'd ever been. I was so sad to leave.
Speaker 8: I loved it there.
Speaker 1: Wow, what gives you a confidence?
Speaker 7: I mean, honestly, my family, Like, my family did such
Speaker 7: a good job of making our house a safe space
Speaker 7: that like, whenever I feel defeated or less than, we're insecure.
Speaker 7: It's like if I go to my parents' house, they
Speaker 7: build me up so much, Like I'll be sad about
Speaker 7: something and I will tell them about it, and my
Speaker 7: dad will start laughing.
Speaker 8: Because I'll be like that, you know that's so stupid.
Speaker 8: You know that that person's opinion doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 7: Is that person signing your checks? Why do you care
Speaker 7: about their opinion? Like he will just immediately just make
Speaker 7: it so simple. And my parents will be like, do
Speaker 7: you understand that you're the most.
Speaker 8: Beautiful, intelligent, funny, like you have everything going for you,
Speaker 8: like no one can tear you.
Speaker 7: Like to them, it is a no brainer. And it's
Speaker 7: a shock that I would ever feel bad about myself ever.
Speaker 7: And it's their unwavering confidence in my superiority that allows
Speaker 7: me to feel medium like I don't think I'll ever
Speaker 7: see myself the way they see me, obviously, because that's
Speaker 7: probably not healthy. But if I'm feeling bad and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 7: like I'm not where I'm supposed to be in my career,
Speaker 7: I'm feeling ugly today, like I'm feeling insecure, I'm feeling
Speaker 7: like I'm whatever. If I can take even ten percent
Speaker 7: of their support and their love, it just bumps me
Speaker 7: back up to like, oh no, I'm fine, I'm gonna
Speaker 7: be fine, and it really I attribute it mostly to them.
Speaker 1: That's great, that's really great. Should do we should do
Speaker 1: another song?
Speaker 8: All right, I'm gonna tune this guitar really quick.
Speaker 7: But I feel like the next song that I'm gonna
Speaker 7: play is kind of on this topic because one of
Speaker 7: the things that I have struggled with in my life
Speaker 7: is forgiving myself for making mistakes and just being overly
Speaker 7: hard on myself.
Speaker 8: And so I wrote this song about that.
Speaker 2: It's called let Me Be Wrong, just my guton belly flaw,
Speaker 2: call the cow just it's.
Speaker 4: Good every word, the cars, food, dance.
Speaker 2: On glass, when my shoes are Something riding in my
Speaker 2: brain tells me to it anyway and dune, I feel
Speaker 2: the long decay and down its God, It's okay. Let
Speaker 2: me be wrong, ride out to the wheels fall, rather
Speaker 2: delusional cloud out a funeral. Let me be last, hardways
Speaker 2: away and I've been good too long.
Speaker 4: Let me be wrong, freeing.
Speaker 2: My tongue, broget me like those schools at seven scene bake,
Speaker 2: got glass ceilings, enterings.
Speaker 5: Fuck those girls got everything. Something twisted in my chest
Speaker 5: says good.
Speaker 4: But not do the best when I was young, knocks.
Speaker 5: Me out and nothing really shakes me now. Let me
Speaker 5: be wrong all Julie's farm, rather delusional.
Speaker 4: Lut at the funeral.
Speaker 5: Let me you lost hard ways the way I w
Speaker 5: and I'll be good too long.
Speaker 9: Clell be wrong, Lelly be roight here here here here,
Speaker 9: let me be right, Let me be roight ya here
Speaker 9: here here, let me you rare.
Speaker 2: I love to la ribe but dousionout of funeral, hard
Speaker 2: ways the way I want, and I've been good to.
Speaker 9: Let me be wrong.
Speaker 1: Great song, thank you. I love that. I love the
Speaker 1: western feel of that's it feels like there's like a
Speaker 1: like a I don't know what it is, but there's
Speaker 1: there's a little something in it that feels like a
Speaker 1: you know, a really great country song. Thank you.
Speaker 8: I like having a little country, little country moment here
Speaker 8: and there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good. Thank you so much for this is incredible.
Speaker 8: This has been such a great conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for for coming by, for making
Speaker 1: the music.
Speaker 8: Yes, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Cool. In the episode description, you'll find a link to
Speaker 1: a playlist of our favorite songs from Jensen McCrae, as
Speaker 1: well as her latest album I Don't Know how but
Speaker 1: They found It. Be sure to check out YouTube dot
Speaker 1: com slash Broken Record Podcast to see all of our
Speaker 1: video interviews, and be sure to follow us on Instagram
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Speaker 1: by Leah Rose, with marketing health from Eric Sandler and
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Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond.