Shawn Reidy is a 24 year old self produced rapper (and much more) from our very own Oklahoma.
J: Musical beginnings?
S: Well yeah, I don't ever really tell many people this story but it was actually when I was in the sixth grade, and I was having one of those moments that you have at bible camp where like all of these emotions and spiritualness is happening around you and I close my eyes and I was like "God what do you want me to do?" and I open my eyes and see the worship band playing in front of me and that was for-real the first time I'd ever been like oh and then you know thirteen years later I'm still doing it. So after that I asked for a guitar and I got one for Christmas and I learned how to play a crap-ton of blink-182 and then I wrote a song for a girl that I played at a seventh grade talent show. And then I wrote songs about girls all the way until I was about 18 years old because when I was 18 I had a really nasty breakup so when I was 18 I was like I want to write songs with MEANING! That's when I started rapping and I'm still rapping. (J - So you just wrote love songs at first?) Yeah my whole high school I don't think I wrote one song that wasn't about a girl my entire high school career. And I got tired of it. I got out of a breakup and I just literally didn't know how to write songs about anything else and so I started rapping. (very poorly mind you) I had just heard this record by Open Mike Eagle called dark comedy, and I had always listened to Mac Miller, and Lupe Fiasco and people like that but Open Mike Eagle made me realize that you could be really artful in the way that you rap. And I really wanted to do that so I tried and failed miserably and eventually just got to my own sound that I kind of have now.
J: So how did you get into the rap scene?
S: You know it's funny because like I was just a big fan of the hip hop scene in Oklahoma City for a long time. When Joshua Lee and this guy named Privilege who used to do shows in Oklahoma City, but like they used to do shows around here all the time so I would just go to those and make connections but I think it's funny because I think everyone saw me as a weird fanboy for a long time because I was just super into what was going on. At first it was kind of hard to transition from being a total fan boy into trying to be a serious artist but I just started by going to a ton of shows my freshman year of college.
J: The idea of being a "soundcloud rapper", your opinions?
S: I think besides all the criminal activity and domestic abuse I think it's cool. The culture itself, and the vapid drug use is a little wild, so there's things in the culture that a little.. uh... But the music itself is pretty good. Some people that would assume that if I heard a dude talking about money and women in a song with high hats and booming bass and his triplet flow that I would hate it, but money and women are also things that I'm interested in, I'm not above it. The music itself, I think is great.
J: What are your end goals with rapping?
My friend Jonathon Brown came through from New Orleans recently and I asked him that same question and he was just like, "I'm just gonna rap until it's not fun anymore." And I think that's it. I don't want to be famous, I don't be a recognizable face enough to pay my bills by paying rap music but I would never want to be Drake that's just not interesting to me. Really the only perk to being rich and famous is being rich it seems to me. I'm not interested in being super star court-side at a basketball game famous and I don't really even care about money that much. I really just do it because it makes sense to me and I just never really ever loved anything else like that in my life. Music is the one thing I can't let go of. I really want to speak to people, a lot of my music is about anxiety, depression, existentialism, which are really heavy to talk about and I really want people to know that they're not alone in their soul journey and all that.
J: When you get into your car, what are you going to listen to?
S: I really genuinely listen to everything. Me and my friend are in a folk punk group called Elderly Smackdown and we started that band because we really like bands like Apes of the State and Walter Etc, Days and Days stuff like that. I'm also just a really big punk fan I like bands like Minor Threat and Government Issue. The list really goes on.
J: Have you ever thought about doing another genre besides rap?
S: Yeah! I write other genres songs all the time. I have another side project called Dom Reid where I make hardcore punk music with that, I've made folk punk, I've made pop records and country songs for fun. I write other genres all the time because it's fun. Rap was just something that really spoke to me five years ago if I had started music today it might be completely different. I'm always making music, I love music all together more than anything so making it is just part of that, you know what I mean? Like it's just part of my love for music is making it.
You can keep up with Shawn on Instagram and Twitter @ShawnReidyMusic and check out his new album 'A Mixtape' on Spotify!
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