AN INTERVIEW WITH AMANI FELA

Amani is a Brooklyn rapper, who previously appeared on the podcast with King Vision Ultra to discuss An Unknown Infinite. Now, Amani is back to talk about his most recent project, A CONSTANT CONDENSATION, which was released on March 15. Amani talks to Teresa and Sam about working solo, the inspiration behind his cover art, as well as finding balance.

Sam: How have you been since [the last time we met]?

Amani: I've been good man. I've just been…  Since An Unknown Infinite, I’ve been really inspired by the project. The love that it got the energy. And just like inspired by a lot of my homies, my peers, just really get into the bag in regards to this music shit over quarantine. I'm in a good place. I've been home, it’s getting warmer outside, been playing some ball, trying to get my physical health back in check. Trying to get that summer body back. Everything's cool.

Teresa: Been good. Today is like the first nice day. It's literally 80 degrees outside and I’m wearing shorts, it's crazy. So, yeah, today has been good. The rest of the week… eh. *Laughs*

Sam: I’ve been good. You're in New York, right?

Amani: I'm in New York.

Sam: Yeah, it feels good that it, like, feels nice again because I feel like New York's a whole different vibe when it's actually nice out.

Amani: A little different vibe.

Sam: The reason why we had you on, obviously, is to talk about the album, and it's incredible. And I didn't even know you were dropping it, and I saw the link on my Twitter timeline and I was like, no way. And then to the first single, and yeah, I was just blown away. It's so unique. But I think my first question was—written, produced, and album art is a flex. I feel like you barely ever see that. But it feels like you had pretty much full control over this project. How was it to have all of that riding on your shoulders?

Amani: I don’t know. I find it easier to work on shit myself. Just not having to answer to anybody, not having to check in with, like, this person for the feature or, like, this person for the beat. Like, can you send stamps? I feel like with An Unknown Infinite, it was dope being able to feed off of Gang. As far as having somebody to architect the sound and kind of do a little bit of the management thing a little more, or just not having it all be on me. I think I used this as a moment to really tap in with what my vision was.

Like, I've been putting off stuff for a minute, but I've never put out anything with this much intention, I guess. Usually when I drop, or all the shit I've been dropping in the past, like, three years, I'll just post about it and not tell anybody to put it out. And then I ended up taking all my stuff down from the internet at one point. So yeah, this project means a lot to me in that sense because this is the first time I put out a solo thing where I really got to just flesh out my vision.

Teresa: So is there anything about this particular moment or recently that I guess made you want to finally like put together a solo project and pretty much take full control over it?

Amani: At the beginning of quarantine I actually said, ‘fuck music.’ And then putting on Unknown Infinite made me be like, ‘maybe not fuck music.’ And then I was like, ‘if I can do this with Gang—I saw the kind of support niggas got from that—if I could do this with Gang, you know, let me just drop some shit. ‘

Like, it was literally like a week from Bandcamp Friday and I just had some songs, and I had the artwork for it too. I was like, let me just organize that shit. Posted it, started promoting it. Yeah, people fucked with it. I definitely appreciate all the support it’s gotten so far.

Sam: When you made a lot of these songs, to me they feel so personal and kind of self-contained. Did you make them for the purpose of sharing them or did you—a lot of the album felt like kind of a form of therapy if that makes sense.

Amani: I would say “Loose Ends,” “Eons,” “Black Men's Therapy.” Those songs in particular were some of the newer songs. Some of the songs on there are old as fuck. But those newer songs are definitely more personal. I was just really trying to tap in with myself on those songs, and those are more recent.

But the older joints, like “I Do Better Every Day,” “TF299,” the “Straightaway Beat” I made like in 2015. It’s similar feels from different points in time. Well, all definitely personal for sure.

Teresa: And can you talk to us a little bit about the title? I feel like it evokes so many images and emotions but you know what does it mean for you personally?

Amani: Word, so when I thought about it, the name kind of just came. Kind of like Constant Condensation. I don't know where it came from. But the idea of just condensing to a tee or refining to a tee, like, get into the most condensed version of something—just like, taking all of my influences and all my pain, condensing it all into one thing—into this one package to show people.

That's kind of like how I wanted it to be interpreted. But, I mean, then there's also the idea of condensation like water. But I mean, I dunno how that makes sense. 

Sam: It's cool that you can see it both ways though, because when I thought about a “constant condensation,” I was thinking of constant, like, tears, kind of.

Amani: *Laughs* I’m about to start saying that shit. I must be like, shout out to Sam for that interpretation.

Sam: No, but I think it's really cool because I think seeing it both ways puts this different spin on things. Because something that I noticed, in the line off of Hopium: “I'm doing bad for all to see, but all of this universe belongs to me.” Like, I feel that way of having, on the one hand, things are bad, and on the other hand, kind of this master of the universe feel. I was like, really on this project, and that's kind of why I thought the condensation was crying. But I was wondering, that seems to be such a center point of the album. Not that line specifically, but that idea of feeling down, but then recognizing your blessings. Can you talk a little bit about how you kind of blended those two ideas and what that means to you?

Amani: Um, I mean just the idea of duality. Balance. Like, I feel like that's a constant theme in my work. Like, I really believe in that, ‘hey, shit might be the most fucked up it is, but I feel like people still have the power to change that. That doesn't take away from the power people have.’ You know, everything has two sides to it.

Teresa: No, definitely. And then also, just in terms of the production, can you talk to us a little bit about the vocal style of the record? Because it often feels very intimate and sort of soft. So is there a reason why you chose that vocal style on this record?

Amani: It just came—what I decided to do once I heard the beat. That's how I decided to attack the beat once I heard it. I don’t think it was like a conscious decision that I made.

Sam: Yeah. And could you talk a little bit more about that duality? I know it's very important in your music and you can definitely hear it all over the record, but is that something that you consciously think about creating or does it just kind of come to you as you write?

Amani: A little bit of both. Like, I definitely try to have content that deals with duality, but that's just what I happen to always end up writing about—just perspective shit. Like, I'm very influenced by writers like…  I mean the Arm and Hammer project just dropped, you know, they just dropped today. I was featured on one of those tracks, shout out to them. But yeah, writers like them, the way they paint pictures like Car Rock. Yeah, I don’t know. It kind of just happens intuitively, I guess.

Sam: Yeah, I haven't gotten a chance to listen to the new Arm and Hammer yet because I've had a midterm today so that's all I've been doing, but I can't wait to listen. But what was that experience like working with them?

Amani: Very, very simple. Just send me the shit, lay a couple different ideas over it, send it back, that was it. I didn’t feel rushed. I didn’t feel like I had to say or talk about anything specific. There was no pressure to do anything. So, I fucked with them for that.

Teresa: It’s like you’re leaving like a good Yelp review for your collaboration. It’s like five stars.

Amani: *Laughs* For real, though, sometimes collaborations be weird. I'm definitely not trying to collaborate with whoever or whenever like I used to be. It be weird, you know.

Teresa: Yeah, and like, is there anything, I guess, that you've discovered about your style or your music through this process of working solo rather than collaborating?

Amani: It's always reminded me that I love rap again. I went through a phase where, like, when I was 18, as soon as I got out of high school I was just rapping. And then I got into live instrumentation and shit. I went on drums and pianos and started learning to produce. So rap just became less appealing to me.

I still did it, but I was definitely focused on my other shit. This project was the first thing I put out that was mostly rap—at least more rap than I been doing. And it just reminded me how much I love I have for it, and I feel like I'm just getting back on my lyricism. So that feels good.

Sam: And yeah, I think you could definitely hear that love was there in this project, but you brought up learning all these like, multi-instrumental skills, and I really wanted to talk about the song, “A Royal End,” because that's like a whole journey. So first, could you talk about what inspired that style because I haven't really heard you make music in that style before.

Amani: I actually made that song two years ago. And I was going for, at the time, a very orchestral, big loud, like, grand kind of sound. I wanted to put out this album where I put out songs, and the videos were just like, on some fucking grand royale shit—that’s why it’s called the “Royal End” because I wanted it to be like big as fuck.

So that's coming from that era of my production shit. Like, I just was really playing a lot of piano. Fucking… Yeah just playing a lot of piano, making a lot of composition and logic, doing stuff like that. 

Sam: What artists inspired that? Because I heard a lot of kind of jazzy, maybe like Flying Lotus influence kind of stuff. Does that resonate?

Amani: Definitely, definitely fuck with Flying Lotus. I don't think he was the inspiration for that kind of, for whatever I was wanting to at the time. I would say it was some strings shit. I would say two people probably. Terry Slingbaum. Slingbaum has this cat—he put a record out last year. With fuckin D'Angelo, fuckin’ Erica Lau, like all these—all these fucking people who—y’all should check them out after this interview—but he put out this record on vinyl only. There was only a limited amount of copies. Like, you can't hear it online at all.

Anyways, he's a crazy dude when it comes to just architecting the sound, and his strings shit definitely inspired me for that. But definitely Esperanza too. I was listening to a lot of Esperanza two years ago. So, shout out to her. She definitely inspires the kid.

Teresa: And also so on your project, we noticed that you experimented a lot with rapping over drumless beats. So how does your like approach change, sort of, when the drums leave you?

Amani: Yeah, that’s interesting. I feel like they haven't really done that. But when I did it, I fucked with it. I fucked with where my mind was going versus, like, being locked into a specific rhythm. I mean, I can't really put it into words right now, but you can hear a difference in some of the beats. I feel like I just got in a particular pocket with these shits.

I also didn't want to do the same thing I've been doing. So yeah, but it definitely gave me a different approach. And I think I like it a little more. I made so many drumless beats since working on this project because it's like, I've been writing to ‘em all. So I'm just like, okay, maybe, I should just keep doing it.

Sam: Yeah, and you talked about yourself like in your artistic evolution as a rapper in the last year and how you'd be falling back in love with it—or longer than last year—but how you’ve fallen back in love with rap. Can you talk about how your production has changed? Like, do you feel like you're making different beats now, or do you feel like you're kind of settled?

Amani: Definitely making different beats. I went from being in the same room, making like Teddy Pendergrass covers like, Michael Jackson “Bad” covers—literally like sitting here fucking playing a Michael Jackson song over and over, trying to hear. I was trying to learn covers because I don't know how to read music yet, so I'm still learning drums, still learning piano.

So, I went from that to just finding sample loops, and the process is much quicker—for the loops, obviously. It's less stressful and more validating, obviously, because it’s quicker. But it's just a different bag, and at the time I was in that pocket, now I’m in this pocket.

Sam: Could you talk about what makes it more validating, because that kind of goes against what I would normally think of.

Amani: It just makes them more validating because I'm generally an impatient person. To give an example, like, I got an electric bike recently, and that shit hits 28 miles per hour. But before that, I was just biking everywhere, but I loved it. Like, nobody could tell me shit. I definitely thought that was the best shit, I was in shape. Now that I got this is like, I haven’t even touched my bike bro. But that's just like the best analogy I can give. Like, I get there quicker and I'm happy. I make raps quicker, I make songs quicker, I'm happy with it.

Teresa: That’s a good analogy because I feel like I'm definitely more of like a manual bike person than an electric bike person because I like the process you know? I like to be moving with my bike. So it's definitely different for everyone, but I really was struck by the colors of a Constant Condensation, just like the very bright light yellow. Can you talk to us a little bit about, I guess, the inspiration for the colors and just the visuals on the album?

Amani: Yeah, I got it. I was getting into, like, drawing. I've always drawn since I was a kid, just as a hobby. I was taking images that inspired me and just drawing them, whether that be tracing them to a tee, or like, making my own renditions of them, or tracing them and then fucking them up. But I was doing that for Constant Condensation.

But before I even knew what the project was, I was just making something that I liked. And once I had it I was like, I wanna put a project with this shit. So then I just kind of started making songs with that intention in mind, thinking about that image. As far as the colors and shit… Yeah, I wasn't really like conscious about that. I was just kinda going with the flow.

Sam: And kind of going back to the album. If there's one thing that you want people to take away from it because I know it's a pretty emotionally heavy album, what would it be?

Amani: Maybe the underlying shit I want people to resonate with is… I would probably say duality, like what we were talking about before. Balance. You know it's like something so obvious. We talk about balance a lot, but I feel like we don’t practice it and seek to really understand the different balances that exist. That’s a good question, I should think about that.

Teresa: And our last question would just be, I mean you just dropped so probably not, but is there anything that we should be looking out for or any music that you would recommend people be listening to?

Amani: Yeah, so by the time this comes out, I'll probably like have this. This is the merch for the fucking album. I’ll have this out. I'll be given, like, probably five people that preordered it. Free T-shirts, free long sleeves or short sleeves. I'm still working on stuff I definitely got a lot of sitting, but I definitely plan on sharing something. I'm not going to say too much.

Sam: Great, we will definitely be looking out for it. I think those are the questions we had, thank you so much for sitting down with us again. We really appreciate it.