HHW: When would you say your musical journey began?
Russ: When I was like six or seven, I got the Eminem and 50 Cent bug, that’s when I fell in love with Hip-Hop. I would perform the songs for my brother. When I was 13 or 14, my grandfather taught me how to play guitar, that opened the door of music to me. Then I taught myself drums and piano, then I started making beats on Garage Band, so it was a natural progression. It’s been an everything day thing since, but I don’t use Garage Band anymore, I’m on Logic now.
HHW: When did you start making music and letting people hear it?
Russ: When I was in high school, I was putting my beats on Youtube. I used to sneak into the music room in the morning with my friends and jam out. Eventually we scraped together and got some equipment to build this janky *ss bullsh*t studio in the basement, but we was astounded with it though. I would make beats for people who came by the house. That’s all I used to do, was make the beats, I wasn’t rapping. We formed a crew my senior year, we printed up t-shirts and sold them in the parking lot. I went to Valdosta State University for a semester and my friend [DIEMON co-founder] Bugus went to Morehouse. While I was away I started messing around and recording my voice on the Mac, I thought it was cool. I was always helping the crew with hooks, flows and lyrics, but never rapping myself. One day I asked everybody if I should rap and they all said sh*t yeah. After that we put out soooooo much music. I put out 11 albums through our website, before we had a Soundcloud page.
HHW: How are you putting out all of this music though?
Russ: I’m able to do that because I don’t have to pay for anything. I can do everything myself. I can engineer, mix, everything. I don’t have to call anyone to make it happen. I just do everything at my friend’s house.
HHW: We hear you, but we’re asking how are you actually creating all of this music?
Russ: My music is like an autobiography. I make music everyday just talking about my life. People ask me how do i make soooo much music. My response is always, isn’t everyday a new day? Realistically I can make a song everyday. It doesn’t seem like something so wild to me because there’s always something different or changing. There’s always a new emotion, a new situation, there’s always so much sh*t going on in life if you pay attention. I never feel like I’m running on fumes, there’s so much sh*t to talk abut bro.
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Photo: Instagram
