AN INTERVIEW WITH PSALM ONE

Psalm One is an artist from Chicago who has been named one of the nation's Best Artists by The Chicago Tribune, and made her television debut on MTV's series, Made. She made her debut album, Bio: Chemistry while studying chemistry at the University of Illinois. She is also part of groups Nacrobats, Rapperchicks and Big Silk. In 2019 she released her album, Fight of the Wig, and recently debuted her single, "Anxious, Nervous, and Imperfect." Psalm One talks to Teresa and Sam about focusing on community, her album covers, as well as the lyrics behind her newest single.

Sam: We're super excited to have a Chicago legend with us today. We're both from Chicago. So we'd love to just talk to you about some Chicago stuff, and then a lot of the new music if that's cool. 

Psalm One: Yeah, that's fine. 

Sam: What part of the city did you grow up in?

Psalm One: I was born on the north side, like Ravenswood area but I grew up in Englewood. So from age nine through 19 or so, I was in Englewood.

Sam: Awesome, Awesome. And how did you see the city, and maybe that part of the city influencing your music specifically?

Psalm One: It was weird because growing up in the hood it was a lot of gangsta rap. You know, in the 90s, it was like crazy gang wars going on in Chicago, especially in Englewood. And you know I didn't want any part of that because you know, I was a little nerdy kid.

So for me it just felt super, super dangerous and kind of irresponsible. I mean, I know different now as an adult. But it influenced my music in a way that I want to be more intellectual with it, especially considering I was going to advanced placement classes and going to like magnet schools, and then going to Whitney Young, which is a smart kids school or whatever. So it’s like for me it was having that duality of knowing that even though I grew up in the hood, my intellect could get me out of that situation. So yeah it influenced my music by being like, I want to stay in the hood.

Teresa: Yeah. Does that feel like a completely different lifetime now or is it still something that you think about a lot?

Psalm One: Well no, because, you know, my grandmother refuses to leave Englewood. We have a home there and it's like the family home, it's paid for. So she's like, I'm not leaving, this house paid for. So, I still, you know, had ties to Englewood. A lot of my family still stays in different parts of Englewood. And now I'm living in North Minneapolis, which I think arguably isn't like comparatively as bad. I love living in North Minneapolis because it's diverse. But there are some, like, some real dangerous parts of it. So I can never get away from, no matter where I live or no matter how far I go up the food chain, I’ll always have you compassion or a stake in the hood as it were, because that's where I'm from.

Sam: Yeah, that totally makes sense. And kind of talking about that early Chicago scene, I was born in 1999, so I grew up a little bit after a lot of that stuff went down. And when I was growing up, I noticed that it was almost impossible to find anything out about those early Chicago Hip Hop days. Like not in the way where I feel like New York really remembers its legends, all of that. Do you see that problem where Chicago doesn't really have this like chronicled history in the same way as other cities?

Psalm One: I think it's starting to happen. I was in a crew. I’m in a crew called Nacrobats. They started in 1993. I didn't join the crew until like, 2000. So that was my Chicago history, you know, hip hop history. And right before the pandemic hit we had a show at Emporium where it was really celebrating all the crew members that came before me like in the early 90s. So yeah, you're right there isn't a ton of chronicling of early Chicago hip hop, but I think that people are starting to get the idea that if we don't do it, it's not going to get done. You know, so I think it's happening as we speak.

Teresa: Sort of going off of that, I feel like that's reflected in your music, because you've never really shied away from talking about real topics. How do you think that your music is changing as you sort of get to know better what you want, and have been in the scene for longer?

Psalm One: I think, as a younger person doing hip hop, it was more about trying to be impressive. Because I came up in like the golden age, which means it’s just like - at Whitney Young I can just remember everybody just trying to have the biggest words and the longest metaphors and trying to sound the smartest as it were. And then when I signed my first deal in 2007, it changed me. When you sign a record deal at any kind of label that sells records, it's like now you want to sell records. I never really necessarily wanted to be on the radio, but I always wanted to sell a ton of records and that can dictate how you make music.

Fast forward to now, I don't care about necessarily selling a million records. I care about the micro community of people that I’ve built, like on Bandcamp and on things like that, where people who I know are listening to my music and they appreciate it. Especially considering selling tons of records as a rapper isn't necessarily the thing that’s going to keep me fed.

I have a degree in chemistry, I'm on the board of an organization, I can do a lot of things to take care of myself. So when it comes to the music, I just want to remain true to my story. And whereas before I was just trying to be impressive or sell records, now I'm just trying to be honest about my life and rap about my feelings and my experience. And I think that's the difference as you get older.

Sam: That totally makes sense, and you were talking about kind of cultivating this community on Bandcamp. Your Bandcamp is elite. It's so exciting to look through. But what does it mean to kind of cultivate that community? How do you continue to keep growing it, without feeling like you're just doing things to sell records?

Psalm One: Yeah, good question. Someone asked me the other day, like, how do you get your Bandcamp popping? And I'm just like, man, it's wild because I started my Bandcamp when my label was ignoring me. So it was just a way for me to put out music and not have to worry about - like around 2008, 2009, it was really difficult to get music on iTunes and Spotify wasn't really a thing yet. It was like Pandora and it was like iTunes. And streaming was so new and a lot of independent artists did not know how to get their music on there, myself included. And as far as digital streaming, my label had all the rights to that.

So a friend of mine just said, hey, you're gonna lose all your fans if you don't put out some music soon. And I kind of took that to heart, so I started making mixtapes and putting them up on Bandcamp for free, or pay your own price. And most people just downloaded it for free. But there were some people who would spend $10-20 even $100 on a project and I thought that was insane, like why would you do that? But a lot of people wanted to support because they knew that this music was free. 

And fast forward to 2019, where I put out my EP Don't Get Lazy Now, I decided to put up a paywall for everything on my Bandcamp. It would still be cheap, it wouldn't be like insane prices or anything, but I decided that, okay, I've given away music for 10 years. Like literally on this platform. So let me see what will happen if I start charging. And it worked. And I think part of it was because the quality of the music went up, and also because fans of my Bandcamp knew that they were getting all this music for free. So, you know, it wasn't a big deal for me to start asking them to pay a small fee for it.

So that's like bad advice for someone who wants to get their Bandcamp poppin’ like right now, but I think a good thing is to, you know, give away some music and then charge for the stuff that you put more into.

Teresa: Yeah, and kind of like looking at your page right now, it looks like a cool Instagram feed. All your album covers are so different, and some of them are sort of cartoonish and then some of them, you know, feature different designs. So can you talk to us a little bit about all your different album covers? Because I feel like there's no common thread that goes through any of them. 

Psalm One: No, absolutely. I mean, I'm starting to get into more conceptual stuff, like to tie in singles to the whole project. But starting out on Bandcamp, we were just learning how to take pictures ourselves, and I remember I had gotten a MacBook Pro and was just trying to like do everything myself. So some of those album covers are just like me and maybe a photographer friend just getting it done.

I'm going to go on my Bandcamp right now so I can see what you all are seeing. I always like to employ my friends, my artist friends, to do some covers, so I feel like the P.O.L.Y. cover - that was my homie. And he just had a child, and I wanted his kid to help with the artwork. So it was just very familial. Once we get past P.O.L.Y., the Rapperchicks cover was just super crewed because we wanted the music to be the most striking thing about it. And then Don't Get Lazy Now is where I started to be way more intentional and deliberate about stuff.

But like actually going back down, there is some continuity between Get In the Van 2 Pt. 1 and 2. Yeah, and then we took pictures ourselves for Woman @ Work. That whole series was kind of what started my Bandcamp. For Woman @ Work, the producer who did most of the songs on there did the actual artwork.

Child Support was when I worked at America Scores, which is an organization that does poetry and soccer. I was an instructor for them when I lived in San Francisco, and that's actually a picture that I took with my iPhone. Regular Black Girl, that was… I feel like that's when Odd Future and stuff started doing like, “Oh, we're just gonna have this old picture.” That was my attempt at that. I made that cover, that's why it's a little off. But I'm still proud of it.

And Free Hugs was my rad friend ProbCause, he actually did the animation on that. And that was like me adopting a pseudonym. So Hologram Kizzie was me putting out an actual like full length album. My label was still ignoring me, but I didn't want to put out any more mixtapes, I wanted to put out more original stuff. So Free Hugs and Hug Life was my attempt at that. And then, yeah, Shitty Punk Album, it’s funny because we just wanted to have a shitty cover too, so that's what that is. But I think, minus Where You've Been Hiding, I started to get way more deliberate about my covers. Don't Get Lazy Now was commissioned by a Chicago-based artist named Kawaii. She's amazing. She does a lot of like not safe for work stuff with women focused art. And then Flight of the Wig, I think, is probably one of my best projects as a whole.

And the What I Get for Being Brilliant, I wanted it to look extra black, so it's like a black brain with a black fist. Because that was like, at the height of the uprisings here last year. But then Anxious, Nervous and Imperfect was, I think, probably my most intentional cover. Because this song is so important to me. And it's just so incredibly emotional. And the artist had done a painting of me from a picture that I put on Instagram. And I asked him if I could use the painting and he was like, well let me repaint it because I've gotten better. Because the song I wrote years ago, but it was just so fitting for now. So, yeah I commissioned the artist to paint another picture and I think it came out really dope.

Sam: Yeah, I'm really happy we ended on that song, because I heard it earlier this month, and I've listened to it like probably 100 times since then, this song. 

Psalm One: Thank you!

Sam: And I think a big theme of that song is the idea of forgiveness. You say a lot on the song, “that's okay now.” I kind of saw that as like you going through a journey. Could you talk about the idea of forgiveness and what why that song means so much to you?

Psalm One: Yeah, because I moved to Minneapolis to kind of get away from a really bad domestic violence situation. And it was the end of the Rapperchicks as well, that all happened around the same time. And Rapperchicks was such a tumultuous time for me, because we took off real fast. We were getting offers and we did like a 100 shows in like a few months. And it was like we're going everywhere and everyone was loving us and stuff and like we actually thought that we might have had a shot to blow up. 

But we had so many internal issues that it was just…  It was messed up. And one of our original group members actually passed away. And that was just so sad, and that's where kind of Big $ilky came from, because we didn't want to continue with Rapperchicks with such a sad past. And moving to Minneapolis, it made me swallow a lot of pride. Because I called Rhymesayers out, in 2015, about their treatment of me. And a lot of people shunned me after that. A lot of artists didn't want to work with me after that. And I saw a lot of my friends, who I thought were friends, still work with Rhymesayers and it was like incredibly triggering all the time.

And also, it was messed up because I moved to Minneapolis to hide out with a friend. It wasn't like, oh I'm going to where Rhymesayers’ headquarters is. I'm leaving Chicago from a dangerous situation to go hang out with my friend for a while and get right. And then once I started feeling better - once I got sober and once I started really working on myself, I realized how triggering it was to be in Minneapolis, and how triggering it was to see a lot of my friends still come through here and like everyone was selling more tickets than me, everybody was selling more records than me. And as a rapper, it’s really easy to just be competitive. It comes from that.

I come from battle rap where it's just like, I'm the best, I'm the best! But then you see everyone doing much better than you with metrics, you know, they got more streams, they got more fans, they got more followers. And for me, I was becoming bitter about that. And one thing I'd never wanted to be was a bitter old rapper. Bitter rappers are the worst! They hate everything, they don't let anyone enjoy anything and it's just always like grumpy, grumpy, grump, grump! And it's just like, man I don't want to be this old ass grumpy artist who can't recognize the blessings of my own career.

So Anxious, Nervous, and Imperfect was like me one day sitting in my house. And really, the beat, like the music I had for a while, but I knew I wanted the beat when I went to the studio with Afro Keys because we worked together quite a bit and we have other songs. But when he played that beat for me I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do over this, but I want it. It struck me in my heart. And it's just a loop, but it really made me think a lot. Just how the chord progression went, and I was like, this song’s gonna be emo as hell but I don't know what I'm gonna write to it yet. And then one day, I just woke up and I started writing this.

I mean even the first line is wild, you know? I was in a relationship with someone who, still to this day I don't know if she actually had an STI. I don't know if it was true or not. I never realized this until last year that some people use their status as a way to manipulate people. So like, for example, you'll have sex with someone, and then they don't disclose their status, which is already fucked up. But then they tell you later on, that they have something, but then you didn't get it. So if you didn't get it, then it's okay to stay with them. 

So just starting off with that was just like whoa, and I realized that this song was going to be super emotional for me. And not being bitter about my career actually made my career go places that I didn't think I could go. Will I ever be famous? I don't know. The wild part is as soon as I stopped caring, that's when I got a boost, and then people started caring again. It was just like, Oh, now you care now that I don't care?

But I mean I obviously care about my work, and I obviously care about my music, and I care about this community because I think that the community isn't necessarily safe for people who aren't just hell bent on fame. Because when you want to be famous, that's something way different than just wanting to be an artist. You want to be a famous artist, there's a whole different trajectory you need to walk. But if you just want to make music and make yourself happy and make the fans of your art and your supporters happy, then it's a much different thing. So I think Anxious, Nervous and Imperfect is a culmination of me realizing that all that stuff I thought I wanted, I don't. And that's fine. 

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Sam: And I was wondering if you feel comfortable talking about like what you published about Rhymesayers, back in December of last year in the whole Boycott Rhymesayers movement. I feel like there's so much motion behind Boycott Rhymesayers now in a way that there wasn't back in 2015. Do you ever feel, maybe not bitter, but a bit regretful that that same energy wasn't there back then?

Psalm One: I got over it. But it is triggering. sometimes when you think like, “Hey I said this stuff.” Even the people that believe me, believe me in private. And, you know, I've had some some bitterness and like I see some people, like some rappers specifically, they'll like watch my story or they'll send my organization money, or they'll show support now, but then they shunned me. And some of these people even would sneak diss at me.

Especially living in Minneapolis, man, like if you talked shit about Rhymesayers, they're just like, go to hell! They’re ready to really just lynch you, and it's just like, come on, like this is a label! These are human beings, and human beings make mistakes. There are good people and bad people everywhere. I think that because of the climate last year, with the whole George Floyd being murdered, and a lot of rappers were jumping at the chance to like stand up for the communities and stuff. And I think with that, a lot of people that were harmed by a lot of these rappers were like, no, y'all are not gonna take this opportunity to up your own status by being some sort of community leader.

Because a lot of a lot of artists were pivoting to social justice and all that stuff because, again, we're in quarantine! Again, we're in a pandemic! So if your music ain't selling, you get on the front lines, you might get some more notoriety, you might get some more relevancy if you're signing up the community. And I think a lot of people in the twin cities were like, no, we don't want this person speaking for us because this person's been harmful. And I think a lot of women, and men too, but women and gender non-conforming folks were like nah, we're gonna say something.

And what I said in 2015 got folded back into the conversation. And when I realized there were people who not only heard what I said in 2015 but were fed up with the label in 2020, it emboldened me. Because I'm not going to be invited to anything, right? That was the whole point of me saying things in the first place, because they had a huge arena show where they were celebrating everybody who ever did anything with Rhymesayers. And then they omitted me, I was the only artist that was not invited to that show. And it was glaring. And it was wrong. It was deadass wrong. So fastforwarding to 2020, I think people remembered that I had already gone through the fire with them. And now in 2020, I definitely didn't care anymore. I wasn't scared anymore.

You know, I was scared in 2015, and the addiction part of my life really spiraled at that point, because I didn't know what was gonna happen. And I definitely started using more drugs and alcohol or just like on a daily basis just kind of escaping that reality. So getting clean and getting therapy in the interim had a lot to do with me being able to just stand in my truth, as it were, in 2020 and not be afraid of the consequences. Because it's like, what are you going to do, like not put out my next album? What are you going to do, not put me on your festival?

First of all, your festival is not even going on this year because of the pandemic. There's no shows because of the pandemic. There's another thing that you can offer or not offer me. I'm not in this for money. There's not a dollar amount that you can offer me that would be like, “Oh, that's enough for my pain.” So for me it was the time for me to, obviously, stand up.

And then after months of boycotting I realized I was advocating for a lot of women. And then I hadn't told my full story. So that's where the Medium article came into play. But also because when you do survivor work, and you hold space for survivors, it is so triggering. It is so sad. And for me I was becoming angry and bitter again about this, in a way that I hadn't felt in a long time. So there were times where I’d take month long, two month long breaks off the internet, and just kind of understand that a lot of this work is done offline. So, my Medium article was a way for me to pivot to that, while being absolutely transparent about why I went so hard at them. 

Teresa: No definitely, thank you so much for sharing and for always being so transparent with this. But sort of moving forward, I guess, how do you see your style, and music sort of evolving next?

Psalm One: I've been in the game so long, my goals change. Like when I was a shorty, my goal was to just be able to rap on any beat. Rap slow, rap fast, whatever. And then it was make songs that were more exciting or whatever. But now my goal is to just not make the same song twice, make sure that I'm so intentional about my art and my artwork and things like that that it really is a representation of how I'm feeling at the time.

And I make sure that I'm spending my money on things wisely. Because I don't think I'd ever sign to a label again, and what that means is that I'm the budget. So when I spend money on outsourcing things to producers and to strategists and to visual artists, to just make sure that I'm very cognizant of who I'm working with. And the songs I think will continue to go in a personal way but also speaking about what's happening in the world, but also doing it in a way that's thoughtful and not necessarily like corny or anything. 

So I'm keeping the next generation in mind as I'm writing this new stuff. And we're working on Big $ilky Three now, which is like the aftermath. I don't know if you've heard Big $ilky Volume One and Two, but Volume One was really more of a celebration of Henny, who was our bandmate that passed away. And it was really just a project that we knew she would have wanted to rap on. We picked beats that we thought she would like, and would pick melodies and things like that because she used to love to hear Angel sing, so we made sure that it was full of melody and beats that she would rap on, potentially.

Big $ilky Volume Two was just in the midst of the uprisings here in Minneapolis, so it was like, all angry and fuck the police and all that. And I think Volume Three is more about okay, we've gotten through this, and we're waiting on the trial and also we just did this whole boycott. It's really about the aftermath of thinking about, now where are we now?

So, I'm slowly working on the next Psalm One, just Psalm One, full length album. I don't know when that's gonna come out but I'm being very deliberate about my content and how I'm attacking the songs. Because that's a big problem for artists that are really versatile. That can rap on different stuff. Like, you don't ever pick a lane, you're just like, I can rap on anything and then you just do that and it's kind of random. And even if it works, I think I want my stuff to be more cohesive and conceptual, so that's you know that's kind of where I'm at right now.