Photography: Dan Temesgen
“I’ve got 3 new albums for 2024,” reads a tweet on Smino’s Twitter.
“Is that true?” I ask.
Smino, who minutes ago had been posing in front of Collingwood’s Keith Haring Mural – entourage and security guards in toe – now sits on the sinking couches of the ACCLAIM office. He wears a blue beanie that mimics dreads atop his head and has a laid-back demeanour that stretches across his body and through his voice.
“For sure,” he says, before being momentarily distracted by a James Brown portrait on the opposite side of the room. “I mean, I’m independent. I can move differently with the way I release music. So one of them will be a deluxe version of my last album, which is a whole ‘nother album.”
It’s good news for fans who have been waiting patiently since his 2022 album, Luv 4 Rent, but as all who have followed Smino from the beginning know, the issue here is deadlines. Look to Reddit or Twitter, and Smino-stans – without a modicum of patience – will throw their album-prediction hats in the ring. “Can we believe it?” asks one user of his recent tweet, “Better not be lying to us now,” says another. Yet when those releases are pushed into the ether those same fans merit them as “the best albums seen in a decade”. Being independent means no deadlines, and no deadlines –for Smino – means better music
“The thing is, what are deadlines?” Smino says matter-of-factly, “I don’t like nothing dead in my life.”
Of course, he’s right. If he’s gotten this far tending his own garden the way he’s done, his best fruit is yet to prosper and on this Thursday afternoon, as the St. Louis born artist poses for photos, one thing is for certain: his self-assuredness and independence has cultivated a thriving oasis. Throughout his career, he’s had no problem keeping a sense of individuality throughout his sonically diverse releases – starting with his critically acclaimed 2017 debut album blkswn to his latest 2022 Luv 4 Rent.
At one point, he says, “Everyone wants to be themselves; that’s why everyone wants to be me.”
Growing up in midwest Missouri in the US, Smino landed on the scene in an era before the “tiktokification of music” (a term he himself uses in the interview). Music was deeply embedded in his familial stream, with his grandfather, the drummer for Muddy Waters, and gospel sitting at the roots of his musical entry. According to sources, at a young age, artists like Busta Rhymes, Aliyaah and Stevie Wonders diversified his palette.
In the mid-2010s, his confessional lyricism – not necessarily diaristic but patchworks of thoughts and memories – was flipped into tongue-in-cheek scripts that spoke of love, Blackness and self-confidence. His voice lightly echoed artists like Andre 3000 and Chance the Rapper. It’s what solidified him under the limelight.
Now, he’s in Australia – his third time – touring for Souled Out and headlining sideshows. Last time he was here he had an unfortunate incident with a lady recording them outside of a nightclub, yet this time things seem to be running more smoothly. Last night, he says, he made a “fire song” off of a mic that he keeps in his hotel room. And what’s been the inspiration?
“Girls,” he says.
“The girls?” I ask, “Australian girls are pretty hot.”
“Fire,” he says, “I’ve been on tour with Souled Out, and there’ve been a bunch of girls at the shows, and I’m like, “I want to make some shit for the girls. That’s about to happen.”
Whether Smino wants to move into the hot girl pop arena that’s currently dominating the music industry with Charlie XCX-esque songs for the girls is yet to be seen but his latest offering – perhaps a lead up to his three album drop – comes just as welcomed. Titled ‘mister misfit but ain’t missed a fit in months’, he says it’s about, “feeling myself and never missing and being committed”.
Released on Zero Fatigue Records – a musical collective and now record label dreamed up by Smino in 2014 – he spits lyrics like “I’m the one that turned the arch to gold like Micky D”, and (the more comedic), “Girl, that pussy cold, make it popsicle/ Outshine all these hoes, no obstacle.” Over cuts of “Girl, I love you” that are akin to record-skipping samples popularized in the 90’s, you’d be forgiven if you’d mistake these lyrics for speaking about ‘love’ or that Smino has a predilection to it throughout his discography overall.
“I’m a Libra,” he says in explanation when I ask if his music is about love.
“I was raised with a lot of love. I think I also love music a lot, too. I really am a musician. So it’s natural that that’s the thing that comes to mind when I make music but a lot of times when I’m not talking about love, people still think I’m talking about love. Because that’s how powerful it is.”
What really seems to be on his mind as of late is navigating the industry. That idea comes through on an unreleased track with Ghetto Sage – of which Smino is one-third, along with Noname and Saba. A few months ago Noname had taken to NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert and announced an unreleased song – Saba and Smino then made a surprise cameo near the performance’s end with ‘Kush and Love Songs’.
“When I made the song, the lyrics are literally like ‘Somebody done stole your heart, Turn a brick, turn into loved walls, They’ll say it’s an inside job, Could it be? And that’s really me being in the studio and sometimes getting to the point where I don’t know if I still love this shit the way I used to,” he says, “and then in my verse I talked about the labels and how the motherfucking industry works when you’re an artist.”
It makes sense that Smino would be someone who steers down the independent path. His introduction and come-up into the musical arena revolved around the city of Chicago. It’s in those smoky-depths that he met artists like Noname, Saba and his longtime collaborator and producer, Monte Booker. Community and art always outshone the ego-driven need for fame.
“Yeah, that’s definitely one of the things that made me fall in love with Chicago – the community aspect of it. A lot of people really cared about people. They care about preserving great art and uplifting the right type of attention,” he says, “There’s a lot of real, real rich, beautiful shit going on.”
That natural rollover of music-making and collaboration climaxes in his partnership with Saba and Noname in Ghetto Sage, “We just have a real nice conversation and end up making a song,” he says, “We actually realized we’re homies. We ain’t about that rap shit. I know these people, they’re cool.” They made ‘Kush and Love Songs’ at Saba’s house, where Saba played a “tiny little drum set”, and they talked about how they felt about the state of music now.
They asked themselves, “Is this still hitting the same? I don’t know if this is still hitting the same,” he says.
“Why wouldn’t you think it’s still hitting?” I ask.
“The tiktokification of music,” he says decidedly.
Indeed, it’s a less-than-sweet topic on musicians’ lips right now. Some artists prosper, others don’t. While many get discovered through the app, there are sacrifices that many feel like they have to make.
“Because what you end up getting,” he says, “is a lot of people who feel like they have to be a way to get on. But it’s always been like that. Even with the radio, even with beauty standards, even anything, but now there’s so much of it that you can’t escape it.”
According to Smino, artists like himself—who came to fame in the mid-2010s and established fanbases before the fracturing of the internet through social media—are anomalies. They knew the world before the internet, he says, but were also aware of its power.
“It’s like, we’re the only people that’s ever gonna be these people, right?” he says, “I just can see what shit is and not get stuck in it, but you know, in that era of shit, I wasn’t getting as much money as I’m getting now, you feel me?”
While Smino’s profile has risen since his ascent into the limelight, the fame aspect of his current life doesn’t seem to sway him. His latest track was produced by Bink! – an American hip-hop producer known for his work with Roc-A-Fella artists and the person behind Kanye’s ‘Devil in a new Dress’ and Jay-Z’s album The Blueprint. Despite being surrounded by people at the top of their industry, it’s all innately natural for him.
“I live in this world, you know?,” he says, “But I never gave a fuck who nobody was. I’ve always had respect for who people are but I never turned up because somebody was famous. I like niggas that’s just talented. I will just be impressed.”
While it’s hard to say whether ‘mister misfit’ is a taste of an upcoming album and whether a Ghetto Sage album is one of those three (“Fingers crossed,” he says when I ask.) one can tentatively assume, that in Smino’s current headspace, the industry will be a point of lyrics and contention. According to him, it’ll also be the best music he’s ever made.
“I’m really on a whole new wave. We’re going to make music that you’ve never heard before,” he says, “I’m not gonna say what it is, but it’ll be very different for me.”
