HHW: I read somewhere that you had your sights on TDE prior to signing. What made the label so appealing?
Isaiah Rashad: Before I signed, I had always looked up to TDE. They had always been people I had kind of admired and looked up to their business model they had done, and the music, the quality. That’s what really attracted me to the label and the group; quality over quantity. They just move different. They some real dudes. You can tell.
HHW: You’re the youngest member of TDE, correct? With that in mind, what do you bring to the clique?
Isaiah Rashad: Yea I’m the youngest out of TDE right now. If I can think of anything I brought to TDE, it would be a little bit of naivety, you could say. I’m new to stuff, and they’re real seasoned. I can come off as seasoned sometimes, but I’m just the young one. I guess it can be fun for them to teach me some stuff, since they already been schooled by the game already.
Freshness would be the world [I’d say]. Something like that. Not something necessarily better, but something added to it.
HHW: Doubling back to the EP, did Cilvia Demo come out as you planned, or is there something you would change?
Isaiah Rashad: What’s cool about the Cilvia Demo is that it came out exactly how it was supposed to come out. Every song on the project was like one of our favorite song for at least a month, weeks at a time. It’s like, when we recorded, it was the only song we listened to.
I feel like it came out and it sounds a type of way. And we’re getting reception from it about how everyone says they feel in any given day. I think we put it out pretty good.
HHW: Last question. One line that stuck out to me was on “Modest.” It says, “I’m too young and wild to be the savior.” Could you explain that?
Isaiah Rashad: The line that you’re referring to — “I’m too young and wild to be the savior” — was really for me. I don’t really look up at the expectations other people put to me now. The expectation I really had for myself was to make this project and to complete something. All the stuff that comes with doing what you’re doing, and coming from where I come from, they saying stuff like I’m the first one in a long time coming out of Chattanooga putting on for this and putting on for that.
I accept all that, but at the same time, I’m just going to be me at the end of the day. I’m not worried about that.
