The adage âyou must love yourself before you can love othersâ can be interpreted in any number of ways, and for Chicago rapper Matt Muse, exploring love in all its forms has been a strong source of inspiration for his two most recent projects.
Last year, Muse released âNappy Talkâ, a project he describes as being all about self-love. Muse builds himself up in layers of bravado on tracks like âDonât Tweakâ, letting off steam in the form of masterful flows over keys that seem to announce the arrival of an impending threat. But unlike some wordsmiths in his arena, Museâs boasts come with substance, rooted in pride that goes deeper than just plain vanity. On âLove & Nappynessâ, the follow-up to âNappy Talkâ, Muse lets listeners know just where that sense of pride stems from. He opens up about the role God, family, and his upbringing have all played in forming his self-perception and ultimately his voice as an artist. While coming across as softer than his previous releases, Muse proves that heâs just as, if not more, powerful with a pen when heâs at his most vulnerable.
Read my latest conversation with Matt Muse to learn more about the making of âLove & Nappynessâ, his hip-hop influences, and his role as a mentor for organizations like Young Chicago Authors:
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MM: Early on, music was just a thing that was always present. My parents love music. Thereâs never been a time when I was in the car with my mom or in the house kickinâ it with my father and there wasnât music playing. It didnât become something I thought of making a career out of until I started making beats in high school and I was like âI wanna be Kanyeâ.
When I was about to start college, I realized âdamn, college is this thing Iâm supposed to go to and figure out my career and I donât wanna do none of the s**t thatâs there.â I wrote a mixtape that summer and realized I could actually rap and that this could maybe be a career.
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MM: My father makes house music. House music is his thing. I mention it on one of my songs, but my dad actually wrote one of the songs that Kanye sampled on âFadeâ. On the credits, youâll see my dadâs name, Harold Matthews. And my mom sang gospel in the choirâshe does opera and has been in choir her whole life.
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MM: *laughs* The first album I ever bought, when I was like 7, was âSurvivorâ by Destinyâs Child. So I had a range of musical interests. And also itâs these three badass women on the cover so I was like âhell yeah. Black women. Turn up.â âŠÂ When I was younger too, my pops put us on to Busta Rhymes, Red Man, Method Man, Lauryn Hill, and then hella gospel music.Â
The first hip-hop album I ever bought was âBeâ by Common in 2005. Common was the first rapper I was super into. Like you couldnât tell me shit about Common. Common, Kanye, Lil Wayne, Jay Zâright around my freshman year of high school was right around when those guys became my foundation.
The raps I was writing felt like an infusion of all four of those people. Even if it was conscious like Common, there would still be punchlines like Wayne, shit-talking like Kanye, and double entendres like Jay Z.
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MM: I was raised Christian, and religion was a part of my DNA. It was a part of me, and I didnât have a problem with it and I still donât. I wasnât raised by like crazy bible beating Christians, it was just life. Like we go to church every weekend, and we believe in positivity and caring about people. Commonâs music was of Chicago, but it also had the infusion of that positivity and love that I was raised on. Whereas a lot of the other rap at the time was about things that I enjoyed, but it didnât match me. With Common, I found a rapper who was from where I was from, who was able to be mainstream but still had similar ideals to what I was raised on.
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MM: My favorite of all time is âLate Registrationâ by Kanye West. âgood kid, m.A.A.d cityâ. Honestly, Iâd put âThe Watersâ [by Mick Jenkins] on there too. A Jay Z album for sure. Thereâs so many out there; âThe Blueprintâ was a big one for me, and everybody hates on âKingdom Comeâ but in the terms of my hip-hop foundation, itâs a great album. Iâm also gonna say âWatch The Throneâ, and the last one would either be âBeâ or âSection 80â.
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MM: My first job out of college was at the Chicago Park District, and I would go to two parks a day teaching kids how to write raps and make beats on iPads. Then Young Chicago Authors put out a call that they were hiring and I got the job.Â
Also at that time, Dondaâs House did these open auditions at the time to get people to perform at AAHH! Fest. There was like 100-something people that auditioned and I won. We performed at AAHH! Fest, and it was huge. Actually, if you look on my banner on Twitter, Cole Bennett took that picture during that performance. It was crazy because J. Cole performed there, The Roots performed there, and I was just meeting all these people. It was a big deal, and the first big thing I did once I finished college.Â
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MM: âCause we need each other. Thatâs just the reality. Chicagoâs a unique market âcause thereâs no labels here. Naturally, when youâre grinding and trying to move up, we just gotta try and throw each other alley-oops. Thatâs how it works.
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MM: The words are Greek words for love, and it is inspired by this thing we had in church called the Agape festival. It was this huge feast in the basement where we could commune under Godâs love because thatâs what Agape isâGodâs unconditional love.
I always planned for this project to be a super vulnerable version of me, whereas âNappy Talkâ was just me rapping and making harder songs. I thought this would be a cool way to show off that vulnerability. Instead of just making songs about bad relationships, how can I make songs that talk about all the ways I experience love? âNappy Talkâ is about self-love and talking my shit, and âLove & Nappynessâ is about all the other ways I experience love.
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MM: I didnât have a lot of friends outside of family growing up, and my friends were the people I met at church. So itâs like I have my family who is always around, and my bigger family is my church family. Itâs just naturally what I know. I know my mom, my dad, my sisters and my brothers really well.
My grandmother who was the matriarch of our family died in 2007. The song âFamily, Stillâ is an update to her about how the family has been since she passed. Itâs also me addressing this oddness thatâs fallen over my family since my parentsâ separation a few years ago and addressing the beauty in our family even though weâve been a little rocky.Â
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MM: No, Iâm a very open person. If someone close to me asks me anything, Iâll tell them because I donât have a lot to hide. The difficult part for me was making sure that I wasnât trying to be a rapper on this project and that I was just being myself. When Iâm trying to rap, the braggadocio and the flexing gets in the way of vulnerability. On this project, I stopped worrying about lines and metaphors, and just wrote what I felt hoping that some bars would come out of that.Â
One of my favorite bars on the album is on âFamily, Stillâ where I do a punchline about my little brotherâs name. Those lines are few and far between, but theyâre still there âcause I just let it happen instead of forcing it.
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MM: The features were intentionally limited because itâs about me. I wrote all the words MonâAerie sings, but I had her on there because I love her singing. With Joe, initially I didnât have him in it but then I thought itâd be cool if he was on the song. Joe is a representation of self-love to me. Listening to his music is what gave me the comfort to be a little more vulnerable. Heâs someone who could make a verse thatâs funny as f**k, match the vibe of the song, and still show self-love. I love his verse.Â
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MM: I was trying to say âLove & Nappynessâ through visuals, and itâs one of my favorite songs on the whole project. The cover art for âAinât Noâ was my braids, and people loved it, so I knew I had to put my hairstylist in the video âcause sheâs phenomenal. So I was like letâs just have a party where weâre communing together and also doing hair.
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MM: So I had the idea for the album since November, and the first song I started was âLove Wrongâ. All I had was a single melody and a few words, but I couldnât come up with s**t for about three months. Internally, I was pressed. I hit up Ace Da Vinci who promised me beats for years, so he sends me a pack of five beats and I didnât like any of them. So he sends me this second pack with two beats in it, and âAinât Noâ was the first one. As soon as I heard it, words just started coming to me.
Before that, and this might sound dramatic, I worried I was never gonna rap again. I was trying to make something that had a different vibe but was still lyrical, and literally, that beat made it happen. Getting that song out led me to write every other song on the project. I joke with Ace like âbro you saved my rap career.â
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Listen to Matt Museâs âLove & Nappynessâ and more of his music via Soundcloud.