An Interview with Departure

Dami: What inspired you to start making music?

Departure: My family first started buying me piano keyboards around the time I was 4 or 5 and I learned to play songs I heard from the radio or whatever by myself by ear, albeit not very well. I grew up listening to jazz standards on my grandmother's CD player around that age too. I think that helped me be able to enjoy music beyond a basic chord structure. I remember hearing about mashups for the first time as well when I was 6 or so, and it kind of unlocked something that made me want to be able to do that later when I knew how. I ended up starting out trying to do mashups when I was 10, but they weren't very good. From that point, it just developed into my own understanding of digital music production and brought myself to where I am right now.

Dami: How much would you say you’ve grown artistically since then?

Departure: Hundreds of times over. A part of it is being able to, when you're young at least, be able to find those influences and niches that you're looking for because you have so much free time. So, you get to be able to do deep dives, full album listens, usually multiple per day for me at least, and still have some leftover time to do whatever you want to do because of the time you've got. So, I'm very fortunate at a young age to have the amount of skill I do because of the amount of music I was put onto and I put myself onto through that free time

Dami: Who are your biggest inspirations?

Departure: When it comes to rappers; Milo aka rap Ferreira, Doseone and Billy Woods for being some of the first "abstract" rappers I ever heard. They all really helped my frontal lobe grow and are some of my favorite rappers of all time. When it comes to producers/musicians, Miles Davis, Material Girl, J Dilla, Igorrr and DJ Shadow. All are really different in their own ways but in some way or form, they've shaped my techniques and how I produce right now.

Dami: When making music, where do you grab inspiration from?

Departure: I think right now as far as what I’m working on, a gather a large portion of my inspirations from the Anticon movement and their individual members' ability to be really insanely artistic but still within the confines of hip hop. Edan, DJ Shadow, and MC Paul Barman are also some artists that I’m looking towards for inspiration on this project I have in progress.

Dami: What’s the Anticon movement?

Departure: They were an independent abstract hip hop collective out of Oakland, CA that formed in the late 90s. Alongside that, they formed a label but it dissolved in 2018. I consider them some of the most forward-thinking people in indie rap at least from the 2000s. Doseone is a member of that collective too. They're all really fantastic to me and I’ve had a good time doing my own deep dive into their history, reading articles, going into discographies and whatnot. If I had to consider myself a student of anything, it'd be the Anticon school of thought.

Dami: You just dropped a new single, can you tell us more about it?

Departure: Yeah, so the single I just dropped is actually a disstrack towards another rapper in the underground. It's still as far as production goes in the same lane I’m doing right now for the project I’m working on and I plan to include it on the album, but it goes through a bunch of references to other rapper's songs, disstracks and such, and I just call him out for a bunch of shit he was doing that I didn't like. Pretty much sums it up. I produced & mixed it all as well.

Dami: What led to the diss track?

Departure: Well, I’m friends with this other guy named Andrew Kelly. Me and a lot of people consider him a really great rapper, he's got a lot of push behind him and he's one of the best right now. A while back, he was doing some friendly competition stuff on the timeline, saying he would do disstracks on people who made disstracks on him, but it was nothing serious for real. This guy I made this diss about comes on the timeline and says, and both him and Andrew are white, he says that Andrew doing that is the "whitest shit ever", and he said in the same tweet he could "really make a rapper switch genres though". So, I went ahead and tested the truth to those words, because I’ve experimented with different genres in the past. My last album's not even a rap album, and I’m a jack of all trades so why not take a crack at it. Already had my own grievances with the guy too.

Dami: So the diss track is for fun basically?

Departure: Yeah, me and Andrew are pretty chill. I’ve got to talk with him before and he's a pretty good guy. I’ve never really had any problems with him. I wouldn't say that the diss track is for fun though, because I really went after his character and the amount of fake shit I’ve seen him do. I even went as far as to flip other samples for the chorus on my song to mock the hook of his own, and just go to show the unoriginality of his writing. I already didn't like the dude, and after I heard that he spoke on Andrew's wife and kids, that tipped the line for me.

Dami: Will there be more diss tracks in the nearest future?

Departure: As long as nobody got problems and don't try to start shit, nah. I just had to take a break from my scheduled programming and show people what happens when you speak out of line. I’m focusing on the music now though for real.

Dami: What’s next after this diss though? We expecting regular music from you soon?

Departure: For sure. I’m gonna keep working on this project, probably drop another single or two, plus I’m in talks to do some other stuff with some artists close to me. I hope to have this project dropped by the end of the year, maybe even Q1 2025. But for anyone who needs more, I’ve got a bunch of other albums out. I dropped a remix EP in April of some songs off of my latest album I dropped in January.

Dami: What’s your creative process like regularly?

Departure: Usually, it ebbs and flows. It tends to be right after an album drops but I go through what I call a "consumption phase" where everything I listen to as far as music that I’m looking for becomes an inspiration for me, and I’ll try to recreate that style or whatever it is I was listening to in my own form for my music. In the "production phase" where I’m actually working on music, when it comes to doing a track, my music is all based on sampling. That's a core principle of hip hop and I stand by it very much. So I’ll go on this website called Samplette that has a huge database of hundreds of thousands of songs, all different kinds of genres and it takes all the songs from YouTube. It'll start you off with one in one genre and you go to click the "shuffle" button and it's another song in a completely different genre, and you can make filters to get a specific sound that you're looking for in a sample. But usually, I’ll shuffle about a hundred or so times, mass grab the samples that I think are interesting and try to use them in the track however I can, and I’ve made some pretty unique sounds that way.

Dami: How would you describe your sound?

Departure: That's really hard to pin down since I’ve always brought a different sound to each full length project I’ve put out but I’ve always been consistent in my sound being based on samples. And there's this technique called "plunderphonics" that basically means every element in a song is based on a preexisting recording or sample of some sort. Kind of like a mashup but it’s always a technique I’ve stood by so I would have to say my sound is a mix of plunderphonics, with, at least for right now, the stylings of 2000s underground/indie rap.

Dami: What do you have planned for this year?

Departure: Besides the project, to be honest, nothing really. If someone hits me up for something, maybe something new will happen but I’m open right now.

Dami: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Departure: Shit I honestly don't really know. I do have plans to go to college, and I’m in junior year of high school right now, so I guess I’d be in senior year of college by then. I could probably realistically see myself doing shows wherever I’m at. Once I’m up and out of my own, and I know with that financial freedom, I’ll be able to get more connections and solidify myself as a young underground rapper. So, I’m very excited for those next 5 years.

Check out his latest single here