Season 1, Episode 1: Explaining One Side to the Other, Featuring Oddisee.

ODDISEE: At heart I'm very much a procrastinator, right? I don't really want to do anything that I'm actually doing right now. I wish I could like, automate everything. Um, but I can't, but I can't. And, um, so how do I combat that you know, for me it was regiment.

Monday through Friday. 830 to 4. I'm in the studio. And when I'm in the studio, it's structure. so, you know, I'll, I'll make beat. I put them in different folders, upbeat, downbeat, jazzy, boom-bap, et cetera. And then once I accrued a large amount of them, I'll arrange them from first track to last track. And I write from track one all the way to the last track. And once I'm finished writing, then I record in order track one all the way to the last, and then I mix an order as well. And then I turn the record in. It's just a system that I created just to literally just combat my, what I really want to do, which is nothing

MEKLIT INTRO: I’ve always had a special layer of respect for the artist who does everything themselves. Prince was famous for this, he’d play his own drums, bass, piano, guitar and produce… This approach guarantees clarity of vision, cause no translation ever had to happen between the inner world of an artist and my ears. Oddisee has this clarity, and he’s got a process to back it up. Listening to his music is sometimes a sharp analysis of political commentary, sometimes witty observation, sometimes a vast emotionally urgent landscape, but always beautifully crafted rhyme that takes you on a journey. 

MEKLIT: Would you start out by introducing yourself?

ODDISEE: Start? Absolutely. Uh, I'm Amir, uh, known by my artist name is Oddisee. I am a hip hop artist from DC area, DC, Maryland, and Virginia, specifically Prince George's County, Maryland.

MEKLIT: can you tell us a little bit about Prince George's County, like when you were growing up? Uh, and, and, and maybe for the folks who aren't too familiar with it, can you give us a little background on it?

ODDISEE: Sure, sure. It's, um, I guess you could say it's Mid-Atlantic and it's, um, very much a hybrid of, of the culture between north and South, you know, not, not quite southern to, deep southerners and not quite northern to people from, you know, New York and above. It's a place with a very, very rich, vibrant black culture, you know, that, I haven't seen in many other places in the states. Uh, more so just to do with the fact that many parts of the DC area and the surrounding areas are majority black. Um, so yeah, it, it is a very unique experience to grow up where everyone looks like you, you know, from your, your teachers, your doctors, the lawyers, the police officers, people working in shops, et cetera. Uh, you see a constant reflection of yourself in all aspects of life and in a full spectrum from positive to negative. So you, um, the best way I would sum it up is to be, to say it is one of the few places in America where you're a person first instead of a black person.

MEKLIT: Wow. That's very powerful. That's very powerful. Yeah. It's reminding me of… I'm from Ethiopia originally. My father is from the south of the country. I look a lot like him. Um, the first time I went to Ethiopia, as an adult, I was 21 years old and I had just, the year before, I had cut off all my straight hair and, you know, let my afro shimmer its way into the sun and I'd also dyed it red. And then, and then like a year later, the, the tips were like bright orange

ODDISEE: like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

MEKLIT: so I went to Ethiopia and when I was in Addis Ababa, man, people were staring at me, staring, staring, staring, staring. It was really funny.

Oddisee: Yeah. That, that, that would be very much a shock for a lot of people. Yeah, for sure.

Meklit: But people still would look at me even in Addis like I was an outsider. It was really interesting. But then the first time I ever had the experience of looking like everyone around me was, when I went to Southern Ethiopia, I was looking around, I was like, oh my, this is an experience. Do I look like everybody here? And it was, it was a very interesting feeling.

ODDISEE: Interesting, yeah. That's the, I mean that's the beautiful thing about America and our history is that, you know, with the exception of Native Americans, we all originate from someplace else. So there's some other part of the world where if you're, you're lucky enough, everyone looks like you to a lesser extent, you know…I'm Sudanese, my father's side is Sudanese, my mother's side is Black American. So I share similar, um, experience with going back to Sudan and getting off the plane and things that were only for you and in your household back in the states, suddenly were just normalized. You know,

MEKLIT: like what?

ODDISEE: Uh, the food, the smells was one of the first things, you know. I would oftentimes go to school and I would just reek of cumin and garlic and whatever else we were cooking in our kitchen. And you go back to Sudan or, you know, whatever respective country you're from, and those smells that you really only associate within the home are everywhere, you know? Um, that was one of the first things. First memories I remember is just the smell of everything feeling very, very familiar in a place that I wasn't born in.

MEKLIT: Right on. What, what was the music like in your house growing up?

Oddisee: Oh, man. Music in my house was great. My parents divorced when I was three, so I was raised by my father and my father remarried my stepmother, who's also from Sudan. I saw my mom on weekends, my mother, funny enough, she… how would you describe it? She listened to a lot of music that her peers or her sisters and brothers weren't necessarily listening to. When everybody else was jamming to Teddy Pendergrass, she was listening to Carly Simon. So she, she would listen to a lot of that type of music. My dad would be listening to a lot of urban soul, R&B, Jazz, Funk, and then the Sudanese element as well was always there. And, um, I was very lucky to grow up neighbors with Garry Shider, who was a musician in Parliament in Funkadelic. And it was my dad who recognized him when he first moved in. And I became friends with his two sons, Marshall and Garrett. And that really started the course of when we would get outta school, we would just hang out in Mr. Shider’s studio in their house and just jam out, freestyle rap, make beats, et cetera. And he would, you know, he would tutor us on how to record, how to mix, et cetera. So that, that started me doing it as a hobby.

High school, a lot of my peers are into music. I meet a brother named Sean, who is an upperclassman a year older than me, and he's like, oh, I heard you rapping in the lunchroom. You're nice. Why don't you come to my studio? Let's work on some music. Came to the studio and I'm looking around. I'm like, where's your drums? Where's your keyboards? He's like, oh, I sample. I’m like, what's that? He's like, you don't know what sampling is? And he just sits me down for hours playing the original breaks from songs that were sampled and turned into hip hop music. And I just became fascinated with it and very much begged him to teach me how to make beats.

MEKLIT: It's really interesting to hear you talk about the kind of light bulb of sampling because when you, when you were describing your neighbor being a part of Parliament Funkadelic, it's like, that music is in so many samples. Like Sean was person was probably playing you a Parliament sample at one point, and then there you were, earlier, jamming with the, with that family is there. It's almost like you, you are describing - in community - the through line of hip hop, like with the people around you.

Oddisee: Yeah, it is, it is pretty trippy when, you know, I look back on it, and seeing how many different facets of the culture that I had access to, um, and how this very roundabout way that I discovered things. I would say I discovered sampling late too. I don't know what assumption I had cuz Mr. Shider wouldn't let us sample anything. We were playing everything in the studio when we were composing things. So I guess I just, um, assumed that people replayed everything, you know, yeah.

My production process has me start off sampling and um, then I gradually have my band replay the samples, and a lot of times I remove 'em, sometimes I keep 'em in depending on what the sample is. I'm a child of hip hop, right? So I love the aspect of sampling and, and, um, I'm from the East coast, so it's, it's very much a New York centric style of production. But being from the DC area where we have go-go music, live bands are just everywhere, and live bands are very, very important. They're probably more important than electronic music in DC to this day. So, I have a style of production that has a higher level of musicality in it. And it's not just restricted to loops. So as much as I love the loops and chopping up breaks, et cetera, I wanted to do a little bit more.

MUSIC: SAMPLED BEAT

MEKLIT: Can you tell us a little bit about the story of the new album “To What End?”

ODDISEE: Yeah, this record was the first full length album that I had released in five years.

MEKLIT: Wow.

ODDISEE: And I guess this album is about why it took so long, what I was going through in the form of music, you know. I had experienced, for the first time in my career, self-doubt during the making of this record. And in its early inceptions When I started work, I started, I've been working in the past five years, but I got to this point where I didn't like anything that I was making. And I felt that I had lost the ability to connect with an audience and make music that other people would like to listen to. Um, so hundreds and hundreds of beats, I'm producing song ideas, sketches thrown in the trash, and I'm like, oh, I don't like this. I don't like that. I don't like this. And, my daughter was born in 2017. My son was born in 2021. We had the pandemic in the end of 2019, going into 2020, 21. So my life was in a flux. I gotten out of the rhythm of making music with a deadline in mind that I had to meet, turning that record in, promoting that record and touring for about six months in total of a year. And that had been my life for over a decade. You know, come home. I got three, three months to make this record. Make the record, put it out, go on the road. And I just kept doing that year after year after year. And then suddenly I take a break when my daughter's born, and then I take an even longer break that I didn't plan on with the pandemic. And in that time of all that time off, I had too much time to think. And I had become victim of a, a paralysis through analysis, you know…

MEKLIT: Mm-hmm.

ODDISEE: Really just overthinking everything. I had sought therapy, um, and, you know, began to kind of dive into my personality and why would I be in this position right now? And I guess a lot of people were [doing that] during that time. And, um, you know, I come to the realization that necessity is why I started to do these things. Do I need to produce and create to live? Yes. Do I love to do it? Yes.

So that was my why. You know, I love it and I need to do it, and how far am I willing to go for that? Why? And that's when the subject matter was born and the title of the album was born “To What End.” So every song on the album is about why and how far I'm willing to go for that. Why, whether it be for love or for economic gains or respect or appreciation, et cetera.

Um, they're all different examples of why I or I feel my observations of why people do what they do in life and how far they're willing to go for it, for better or for worse.

MEKLIT: I do think that a lot of people went, you know, I mean we all went through so much in the pandemic, especially artists went through a particular filter of experiences. Um, and it's also like, I just wanna reflect that like, you know, going to therapy is —— first of all, I think everyone should go to therapy —- but that's not always in our cultures. You know? So how did you get through that, that cultural barrier to going to therapy?

ODDISEE: Sure.

MEKLIT: You also don't have to answer that question if you don't want to like, just be like, I don't wanna talk…

ODDISEE: No, that's fine. That's fine. That's fine. Um, my parents don't even know I'm in therapy. Neither of 'em, you know, they, they don't know that I seek counseling, so I, that's not even a question that I've even entertained about, um, you know, asking them or getting their 2 cents on.

I know who they are. You know, I, I know that. They did what they did so that I could have emotional articulation, you know? And that's something that I think is a disconnect with a lot of generations between children and their parents, whether they be from the same culture or third culture kids is again, with the why, you know?

I know my father's understanding on what success is, uh, and what happiness is, is based on a culture that is in another place and, and another, in another time. You know, for example, you know, my father wouldn't conceive being a musician for a living because that is not a viable living in Sudan. So that wouldn't be something that he would just say to me, you should do, because what he saw growing up there was doctors, lawyers, engineers are sure bets to make a lot of money and survive.

There was no graphic designers. There was no photographers that were making a living. So why would those be examples that he would give me? So I won't hold it against him if I wake up in America and decided these are the things that I want to do and he doesn't understand. Um, and to a lesser extent, even my mother, you know, my mother's American, my mother's Black American, and my mother grew up in poverty.

And a lot of the things that I have access to, she didn't. Whether it be just time in a in a different era or even knowledge. So I do my best to articulate to my parents that I'm happy and I'm successful. And these are things that they can comprehend and understand. And that's not lost in translation over language, culture, or generation.

But therapy is, for me. The end result is for me to be happy, and to enrich the lives of people around me, and they don't need to know that I'm in therapy in order for me to do that, you know? So, uh, I just, I don't even bring that up on the table. They, they have no idea and they, they won't listen to this interview anyway. They won't even know it exists. So it's fine to talk about it.

MEKLIT: That's interesting. It's really beautiful though. The way you described your parents, it has so much empathy in it, you know. I almost wanna use the word generous, but it's not about generosity because it, it's more about like, uh, it's like, it's like the kind of thing people have to meditate to get to, you know…

ODDISEE: Well, you know, for better and for worse, that is the gift my parents gave me when they got together. It stems from my early childhood memories on having to explain one to one side of my family about the other, right. And to have this different , unique perspective on being in the middle of a myriad of conversations and stereotypes and topics, et cetera.

So, you know, I'm in Sudan and they have all these ideas on what America's like and you know, what black Americans are like and why. And I'm with my mother and my mother's family at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and they have all these ideas on what Africa is like and what foreigners are like. And as you can imagine, oh, they've been here for 400 years and look what they've done. And oh, they come here and they take our jobs. And I was always in the middle saying — WELL ACTUALLY - you know, and that - well actually - is everything. It's the subject matter of my music. It's me. And I'm always trying to provide the other perspective. And with that comes an understanding of other people's perspectives. So the empathy for my parents, it comes from them being different, you know, um, and me being a combination of both of them.

MEKLIT: Wow.

ODDISEE: I mean, I think it would be easier if I… sometimes I used to wish I was just born into one culture, it would make everything really easy. But fast forward it, it was a huge blessing, you know, because I can listen to my music and imagine what someone will think about it, you know, using that same tool of empathy. So it's been great for my career and, and difficult for my personal life I'd say.

MEKLIT: The album is “To What End,” by Oddisee, and we’ll play you out on a track from it called Many Hats, that was actually inspired by  Amir’s therapy sessions.

Movement is produced by Ian Coss and myself, Meklit Hadero. Our co-creator and podcast godmother is Julie Caine. Our broadcast partner is The World. We are supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Geographic Society and distributed by PRX.