Back again with another post, another artist, did a quick shoot with Mugen! The Human. I’ve known Mugen for about 6-7 years now….. Well truthfully, this year I got to know him more personal thanks to mutual occupations. It’s crazy to think you’re apart of the same art group for years with someone and you only know them at a surface level till now. There is more I want to say but I’ll let him do the rest of the taking todays blog was definitely a more in def learning experience.
What’s your name sir?
“I'm Mugen! The Human, aka the Vagabond, aka the Mitchellville villain, aka tall, dark and handsome. Aka Mr. Nike Boy. I'm running out of Aliases.”
Why the name Mugen The Human?
“Watching Samurai Champloo in high school inspired me to start producing music, and New Jabez is very similar to J Dilla, which is like one of the few just hip hop sounds that I grew up on. I think like J Dilla is more than an artist; He's a sound, you know what I'm saying? So like my way to pay homage to my roots and to pay homage to my love, to anime, like I felt the best way was to pick the name Mugen.”
Samurai Champloo, which is a early 2000 anime, Would you say anime has had a huge impact within the hip hop industry?
“Yeah, definitely, we literally had a rapper named Majin Boo for a bit or Kid Boo. No, we had Kid Boo. Then there was another No, there was a dude that looked like Majin Boo. I forgot what his name was, but like, there's a lot of people that take influence from anime like Lil Uzi for the pink tape. I mean, his whole trailer for that album is an anime trailer, so that's just a couple examples of the reach that anime has. And I mean we don't even got to get to talking about like all the lyrical references. I mean, there's millions of them at this point. So yeah, I mean I think it's, I think anime just in general is bigger than ever, but I definitely think hip hop helped bring anime to the forefront of the mainstream in a way that I don't think a lot of people give credit for. I think anime is bigger than it's ever been and it's just going to continue to get bigger.”
You said J Dilla inspired you in your early days to create music. What else within the music industry help you become the artist you are today?
“I think just like the overall like contemporary and I guess what you call like new and popping hip hop artists like I would say over the last ten years or so have definitely inspired me. I'm not one to just listen to one type of music like I love Earl, but I also love Herb, You know what I'm saying? Like Chief Keef is actually a big influence on everything that I do, just in terms of like punch lines. I think like there's very few artists that like are as influential as him that can come up with punch lines the way he does. I think there's niggas right now that are like taking it further, but without Keef a lot of these niggas like wouldn't exist and I'm included with that. So literally it doesn't matter like what the genre is or what the type of hip hop it is. If that shit is like popping right now, like of course I'm going to take inspiration from it and I think every artist should, if that's just popping, is popping for a reason. If it's influential, it’s influential for a reason. So if you're not paying attention to it and if you're not getting inspiration from it, I don't really know what to tell you. So I get my inspiration really from just what I see.”
Describe your music to the listener who may or may not ever have listened to your genre music before?
“It's definitely got like its lo-fi and boom bap roots. Like that's typically always where I gravitate back towards, but I'm kind of all over the place. I do trap. I do rock n roll, I do R&B, I do pop. Like I literally do it all. And you really never know what you can get from me next. So just like I would say, my genre is just like, unexpected. If that's like applicable.”
So from being from Chicago, you would say Chicago artists like Herb and Bibby and Chief Keef are probably the most influential artists from Chicago during your age, or is it Kanye, Common and Lupe Fiasco?
“Well, I'm actually I'm from Maryland. So low key, like from outside. From the outside perspective, it's going to depend. But motherfuckers are either going to like or going to tell you Ye or Keef. It's between those two. If it's not, Ye, niggas going to say Keef? It's not Keef. Niggas going to say Ye. But back when Keef was coming out and Drill was really starting to take form, like the DMV definitely gravitated towards that sound heavily. We definitely embraced it a lot, and I was definitely a shorty during the inception of Drill, So like, I got a lot of love for that, and now I'm moving to Chicago now, and now being a rapper myself, like I said lyrically and just I guess in terms of energy, energy mostly, like that's definitely something that inspires me to this day when I need to, I guess, rap harder, if you will. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's definitely where I take a lot of my inspiration from.”
So why come to Chicago and leave Maryland?
“Initially, it was for school. So I came out here, went to Columbia for a bit, and the summer before I moved out here, that's when I started rapping because niggas wasn't hopping on my beats. So I was like, Fuck it, I'm gonna just see what I can do. And when I would send my tracks to my friends, they didn't say it was complete ass, so I just decided to stick with it and just, you know, fast forward, here we are now, and even though I've dropped out of Columbia now, you know, music is still going well. I'm still progressing at my pace, so I don't really see any need to go back home. And plus Chicago's home. You know what I'm saying? I've been embraced here, I love it here, and I still feel like I can build a foundation here.”
You recently just dropped an EP called For Her Consideration. Can you explain that EP?
“I've been told I don't make enough love songs and sometimes I feel like I'd be too focused on the bars and I don't be having fun. So and specifically, I had a girl tell me I didn't make enough like love songs and fun songs specifically. So that's why I titled it For Her Consideration. And all three songs are songs that you can either dance to or just like kind of cut your brain off and just enjoy, enjoy like the the positive sonic vibe, if you will. So yeah, that was kind of my inspiration behind it. And it also gave me a chance to talk my shit, which I try to always do, but I was really talking my shit on there. So yeah, I was just having fun with it.”
You put a lot of your music on SoundCloud versus other platforms. How has SoundCloud impacted you as a musician, artist and overall person who prefers putting it on more underground a streaming platform versus iTunes, Tidal, Spotify?
“I kind of started putting my stuff on there just to like compete with the landscape because I feel like now if you don't have some of your music on, you know, the distribution platforms, like you really can't compete; And while my numbers have done pretty well on there, my best numbers are on SoundCloud. I think seeing my first consecutive thousand listens and then the thousands turned into ten thousands and the 100 thousands and getting over a million plays on my SoundCloud as a whole. And just by making music off my phone, it just showed me like, okay, like it doesn't matter how you make your shit, it just matters that you make it and you put it out. And that definitely inspired me to just stick with it and never to let go of the underground Spotify and Apple Music, they smooth, but SoundCloud is where it's at.”
You make your own beats on top of rapping over them?
“Yeah, for the most part. Like sometimes I'll buy beats or like my homies will throw me some beats, but for the most part, I do make my own shit.”
How often do you stay in the studio then?
“Most of the time I'd be at home making my own shit because I got my own setup with my phone and shit. So most of the time I'm at the crib. But when I'm locked in, I mean, I can literally be locked in for probably like a full Ten hours. Like sometimes I just won't do anything but make music. But I would say, like, when it comes to the full process of making a song, I do kind of work pretty quick. A beat can take maybe like two hours tops. Writing could take even if it takes a couple of days the full time. Probably take me like two hours, Same thing. But the recording process, I always come back to that. I can record a rough, let it sit for like months and not be like satisfied with the take until like, like I said, those few months are up, which is perfectly fine. I don't believe in rushing anything and working at my crib means I can work at my own pace. But when I'm with the homies or if I'm actually in the studio, I work fast as hell like I can be in and out, you know what I'm saying? I have my first done, first recorded in like an hour and a half. That's when you know you're on the clock. Especially if you pay for studio time. Like, that's really when you kind of got to push yourself, But it's definitely nice to have my own setup because I can, like I said, work at my own pace, which is great.”
We have artists like Steve Lacy, and one of his top singles he had made was made on GarageBand, which is a Apple made platform rather than FL Studio and Pro Tools; would say you prefer that over making it on like computers or going to the studios?
“I think for me personally, like at this point in my career, I'm not just comfortable with the my production method, but I also think it's it's growing. Apple's constantly updating GarageBand and adding new things and shout out to them for doing that because every time I feel like, okay, I've kind of hit a ceiling, they drop a new pack or they drop a new update where you can do a lot more than you thought you could. So it's working for me. Plus, I'm able to like drop samples on there as well. So I'm not just like doing everything from the ground up for every single song. And the fact that I'm able to sample and still record live instruments and make a song from the ground up with Midi instruments, like I'm still able to do a lot of what other producers do on Daws on their computers. So I'm still able to compete. But that's not to say that I don't value motherfuckers that use Daws on their computers. Like I said, if I get beats from a homie or if I buy a beat like nine times out of ten, that shit was made on a computer. And it's made in a way that like I wouldn't be able to do for myself, which I think is also great because there's collaboration there as well. But for me personally at the moment, I'm gonna see how far I can take this phone shit. Every time I think I hit that ceiling, I just learned something new. So yeah, we'll see how it goes.”
Lastly, what is next for you as an artist?
“Well, I'm going to be opening up for Bellis at the Foundation House at the House of Blues on, I believe, July 25th. Don't quote me on that. I've got a lot going on. But follow me at Mugen! The Human on Instagram and Twitter, and I'll keep you up to date on that so you can get tickets and shout out to Bellis for for hitting me up for that, look dope artist I'm excited for that. That's probably like my most exciting thing that I got lined up and I've also never met her in person before, so that's going to be really cool to finally meet her. We've stayed connected through Instagram for a long time, so I'm excited to not only meet her, but to just be on a dope bill in a venue that I haven't performed at before. That's definitely what I'm looking forward to the most, But after dropping my latest single Lake Show and maybe I got a couple more lined up that are kind of fucking crazy and I typically don't really toot my own horn, but I'm not gonna lie. I'm shitting on niggas with these next couple drops. So once I get my timeline lined up like it's it's up for the rest of the summer, so just be on the lookout.”
Thank you for reading about Mugen! you can click the link here to stay up to date with him for any new music or shows he will perform at near you. Heres some additional photos from our shoot at the bottom.