The Playground Meets: Hollywood YSA
Written by: Laroche “Cin” Cineus
We’ve heard the saying that timing is everything, but what happens when timing meets preparation and development? Hollywood YSA, much like a blacksmith forging a suit of armor, has been refining his craft over the years. While we’ve become quickly accustomed to the New York drill sound, the Brooklyn native sticks true to his roots in the ever evolving landscape. Blossoming onto the scene at the height of the blog era, Hollywood YSA released two mixtapes Hustle Thru Depression and 9th Dilla Effects, before releasing The Doom Tape EP.
In early 2014, after joining the independent label Lotta Money House ENT, LLC, Hollywood YSA released his official debut album Real Recognize Real exclusively produced by Official Stichel. Collaborating with Leon Marin on the album’s single “Get to Know Me”, Hollywood YSA ensured his release wouldn’t fall on deaf ears. With an entrancing and cinematic sound, both emcees painted an increasingly vivid story, where the only release was found in listening to the project in its entirety. Well received, Hollywood YSA’s debut, an All Star Music Award winning LP, made it clear that 2014 was his official arrival on the scene.
After a brief hiatus, the fans reconnect with Hollywood YSA in 2019 on his self-released sophomore album The Dime Series. Featuring frequent collaborator Naj Is Dope on the standout “On Me” where we’re given an explanation for Hollywood YSA’s momentary departure from the scene. Recognizing that his success is solely dependent on his resolve, Hollywood YSA commits to trusting his own creative direction.
With no intention on halting his progress, Hollywood YSA finished out 2020 with his third studio album PointGod: The Fusion Tape, a collaborative project with Chicago producer GodFinaz.
Check out more from our conversation below:
Q&A
CIN: Before being able to meet you in the present, I feel it’s necessary to trace the interesting journey you’ve had and fill in some of the gaps. I know as a new artist there’s always a trial you have to go through before being able to come into your own, but can you tell me a little bit more about the CottonClubKidz and how those early days led you towards a more independent route?
YSA: These were my boys. The CottonClubKidz were like a crew, they treated it as a label until it went viral, and changed the name to “A Lost People.” So, the CottonClubKidz was an intro to learning how to put together my music, how to put together my tools, you know. I learned a lot with that group of guys. And yeah, that was the beginning.
And to give you an overview of Real Recognize Real, it was my very first album out the gate. It sounds a little young, and when you listen to The Dime Series, you're like “Oh aight, he polished up a lot.” But the local favorite from Real Recognize Real, is “Pinnacle & O.J.”
CIN: Definitely one of the favorites off that project. On The Dime Series, “Eyez Klosed” is definitely a standout, along with “On Me” featuring Naj Is Dope. I noticed that you keep the number of features involved on your projects to a minimum - is there a reason for that?
YSA: All my features are organic. If I didn’t kick it with you, if I didn’t smoke with you, or if we didn’t spend any time together or have anything in common it’s kinda really hard for me to connect with other artists. I’ve tried to collaborate without that and most of the time they just went to shit. Naj Is Dope is on all my projects because that's my guy. If you take a listen to his music, he’s more---It’s hard to explain man. I think the verses he gives on my songs are just like 10% of what he really does. I lowkey think he be taking it easy on me [Laughing] but he’s fucking amazing. Him and Cash Sinatra, who’s on “Kakarot Song” off of PointGod, who’s also an amazing artist from Queens. All of the features I have, they're all organic man, I know these people.
CIN: Those key factors really are necessary, and something that we’ve nearly lost over time, the idea of artist development. From a fan’s standpoint, we love being able to go back to and track where an artist started. We’re always going to try to make that connection, not only between the artist's journey, but in relation to ours as well. And if they’re there for your growth as an artist they should be there for the entirety of it, and champion you for the heights you’ve reached because they wanted you to be successful in the end, did they not? Or was it mostly on some hipster shit, where they wanted to claim to have known you before you were major.
YSA: [Laughing] We hear a lot of those stories. Yeah, the journey is very important--quick little story. I saw an interview with J.Cole and I think Lil Pump, where Lil Pump mentioned having put out a song and it just went. J.Cole was looking at him like, “Yo you mean that’s it? That’s all that you had to do”. Even I was amazed, only if you knew the work niggas put in. Then J.Cole shared his story and there were a lot of paths he had to go through before he got to Roc Nation. And I appreciated his story more than the Lil Pumps because you skipped every step and didn’t build the knowledge of how this thing works and how it could work for you.
And yeah we want to be inspired, because, if they’re able to do that while coming from a certain place, and i’m coming from that same place, just like him, then I can do it too. So, definitely the journey is important.
CIN: It’s all a testament to the work that you’ve put in, which leads right into my question.
So, with groups like Griselda and artists like Fredie Gibbs, Ransom, and Roc Marciano reminding us that true hip hop is still very much alive - not only in the work they’ve done to reach a larger audience - but in their focus on penmanship. I noticed throughout our catalogue you have not compromised your sound in favor of what’s trending to appeal to a mainstream market. Did you already see the cyclical nature to music? Did that make it easier to stand firm in your artistry, knowing that your time was going to come?
YSA: Well, honestly I can’t rap and not be myself. I just can’t do that. I would feel like I'm lying to my audience, portraying a life that I'm not living and then have to wear that everyday. I can only speak about my experiences and what I've gone through. But as far as being able to stand firm on my music, I make it fun, you know what I’m saying? I feel like I don’t have to do these other things because I make it fun for me to create. Because there’s so many things that we could rap about, and so many things that we can speak on, there’s an avenue for everything. I don’t have to rap about being on the stove cooking coke everyday, we have guys like Benny The Butcher, Stove God Cooks, and Pusha T for that. I don’t want to be a mockery of what these guys are really doing, who are passionate and really serious about it. And those types of people can tell who's fake. But with my music, you could tell “Oh nah, I believe him with this, and I feel him on this.”
CIN: I like that you mentioned how the artists that are being authentic can spot those who aren’t being honest and simply using these masks as a vehicle to garnish fans or bolster their own perception. And there’s always the conversation about whether or not we truly believe that Rick Ross is who -
YSA: [Laughing] I had a feeling that you were going to go there!
CIN: We’re not trying to discredit Rick Ross and his penmanship in any way. But we have to open the discussion and be willing to view it like kayfabe. Which essentially is what wrestling is, and when I was younger I believed that the WWE was real. But finding out that it’s scripted blew my mind, but I still support it because it’s the way that authenticity is perceived.
YSA: Well, I feel like you can tell who’s not really about it, you know what i'm saying? You can tell based on how they speak about it. It’s like “Hmm, man you ain’t really - you can tell.”
CIN: You’re right, there still is that separation between those who simply see this as a performance and have crafted it well enough to blur those lines of perception and authenticity. Which leads me to your EP Point God: The Fusion Tape specifically the end of ‘Black Super Saiyan” where Hookz Murdock ask “When are these niggas gonna grow up and get into anime, talking about or something, “man that’s for kids”. Nigga where’s your imagination?” I appreciated the fact that you included the Dragonball Z references throughout the EP. Not only does it connect with myself, but everyone else who has also been following DBZ as well, showing this different side to your music.
YSA: I actually used those samples, notable on ‘Kakarot Song’, to convey a message about being black. I think black people are what the saiyans are throughout the dragonball series. We’re just like that, and while i might not know who Goku is, I feel like there is a powerful black being who plays the same role that he would play. He’s so passionate about what he does, and keeping his people safe and is really all about love. But there is also somebody that wants to eliminate him and annihilate his people, and for what? But that’s the message that I wanted to put out there.
CIN: You’re already beating me to the punch and answering what I might want to know more about, but going back to that the ending audio clip of ‘Black Super Saiyan’, which leads right into ‘Quarantine’. Now, with the disconnect that from one another and the world, especially in the HipHop space where its rooted in being “outside” as a verifier of authenticity within the music, how important have you found it to consume difference forms of media to find inspiration or see parallels between them and your own world to be translated back into the music?
YSA: I went through the whole Dragonball Super series, and just sat down and was like “let's get to it.” When I was finished, that [Point God] was the concept that I came up with. Some people might’ve missed it, but that’s okay. As long as when you hear the music you can see yourself within every track or within a couple songs. I feel like, if you do that, you get it halfway.
YSA: And GodFingaz really did his thing with that man. He sent me an impressive pack of beats, and I've been following him for a long time and told him we're going to do something. And I saw what wave he was on and gave him the concept and he was like “Man hear these and hit me when you come back with something.”
CIN: That’s real, especially when you can’t fully be there to connect with the people that you're working with, it forces you to find these different avenues to then bridge that distance and still collaborate with producers and artists from different states.
YSA: Yeah, I never actually met him face to face. So we just connected through the internet. Not even a facetime! [Laughs] I spoke to him on the phone many times, and it just came about. He trusted me with the creative work and when it came back he was just like “Man this is crazy!” It kind of reminds me of The Foreign Exchange, which is a Phonte and this producer, Nicolay, from the Netherlands. Now, they never met each other until they took the music on tour, which i though was fucking crazy. And that’s kinda like how it was built, we never met each other and i don’t think we’ll meet each other face to face until we take this music on tour. He’s a DJ himself from Chicago, so all it takes is to set up something and we’re gonna meet each other, the proper way, on tour.
CIN: We’re already seeing the rise of that interconnectedness between creatives across platforms, but with certain services like Discord and Clubhouse where it continues lessening the distance between each other making it that much easier to collaborate with anyone and get something going or providing in the moment feedback. And in an era where visibility is one of the most important defining factors in someone's success.
YSA: Yeah, Always having to be in front of the camera, doing challenges. I had to come to grips with that, and having to be seen more. This is why Spillit has me all over the place when it comes to interviews. Visibility is very important and i'm coming to grips with that, and if i want to make this work, I have to be visible. It’s good that I'm going against the grain by not doing what everybody else does, but I dont think it's going to roll until you get in people's line of sight.
CIN: It’s not only on distribution platforms, but across all social media platforms as well, and as i was looking through, I noticed you had a Myspace up still, which instantly took me back. [Laughing]
YSA: [Laughing] Yo, where did you find that…. Cause I kind of want to get rid of that. But my thing was you’d want to have your music everywhere, so nobody has an excuse like “I didn’t hear it.” [Laughing]
CIN: You’re not wrong in maintaining that profile, since it managed to take me back and think about how we perceive time and the different eras. And next thing you know, I'm thinking about the idea of longevity and how we progress throughout time. But as for yourself, what does longevity mean to you and your artistry and how you'd want to look back and see that represented?
YSA: For one, I just want to say this, we all gotta be a step ahead. We gotta do a lot of research, a lot of research that we don’t want to do. A lot of artists just want to create, but we all gotta be a step ahead. Secondly, I plan on building my discography of music that felt good to me, and I feel like there’s a market for everybody, so the important thing for me is just keeping the integrity of my music. Not just becoming what everybody else is doing.
YSA: But in terms of looking forward, as far as work. Im working on my next project, right now. I just can’t see myself sitting around. This is me building my discography for the future. Hopefully the people--Hopefully i'm one of those artists two years from now where people can be like “Man, I want to listen to this guy, whatever this is”... In 2023 “whatever this is, is dope, and he seems like he has a style that everybody has been missing.” Then everybody goes back and does their research about me and see what they’ve been missing and really give me a chance, like “alright, he's cool, he smokes weed, he’s a nerd, he plays ball, he seems like he’s up my alley...why not?” You know what i'm saying? That’s what I see in the future as far as people gravitating towards me. But my future plans, right now, I’m just working on another project, which will be my story into rap, and why I started.
CIN: As a sort of prelude to your journey.
YSA: Yeah, I feel like i should have been put this out, or at least should have already had this done, but the timing had to make sense. I don’t think i was prepared to talk about what i'm talking about now on this next project. But right now, ‘The PointGod’ is out, and hopefully people enjoy that.
CIN: Timing truly is everything. And thank you for making the time to talk to us today.
YSA: Of course man, I like what you guys do with presenting the artist to watch, and highlighting new styles. I see that you’ve got Jaysh and B Morgan, who I follow and are impressed by. With Jaysh being a wonderful lyricst and B Morgan who I've been wanting to work with since 2014, we’re going to get it done, but this is cool and I like to see this. It shows that you really care about the people on the come up and want to give them a lane so they can shine.
CIN: In terms of a few last words that you might say to an up and coming artist on their journey given what you’ve learned along your journey, what are some pieces of advice that you'd want to impart?
YSA: Keep consistent and through your consistency, make sure you're sharpening your steel. Because gradually it’s going to pay off. For me Curren$y is my favorite artist, and we all know how many tapes he’s gone ahead and put out, its fucking ridiculous. And I'm liking these other two artists, Tha God Fahim and Mach-Hommy, and I've been listening to them for a bit and they’ve got like a billion tapes. But that’s to say it’s going to happen. So to the other artists, stay consistent and keep sharpening your steel.
Be sure to check out Hollywood YSA’s latest release PointGod:The Fusion Tape and follow @HollywoodYSA for more.