MAN1AC Interview

MAN1AC out of Fairfield, Alabama is an up-and-coming artist who boasts a unique sound and a raw talent for lyricism. Growing up in Fairfield near Birmingham, MAN1AC had to navigate a dangerous and challenging enviroment. Drawing from his hometown experiences MAN1AC on his new album “The New Genesis“, illustrates his life with complex word play. We recently interviewed MAN1AC to better understand what drives him and his music.

 

Who are your major influences?

I have a lot of major influences, but my #1 has to be Travis Scott. The amount of creativity that man possesses is unreal to me. It amazes me how Travis can create very memorable melodies and cadences that can just simply drill into your mind and you won’t be able to forget it. I absolutely love his work. I’ve heard every album, every song, every leak, everything. I just have an addition to his music and I want to be able to make songs with him one day.

 

When did you start making music and what inspired you to make music?

I first started making music in 9th Grade as a freshman in High School. I struck gold when I found out about this app named Bandlab. It is so useful and gives us starting artists lead way for music creation. I still use this app to this day, and post my music on there. There are MANY good artists on that app that haven’t been discovered. Admitting for people just starting and in lack of proper equipment, some are low quality, but the ideas and words and melodies some possess are honestly better than you would think. But anyways, I was inspired from just listening to all music around me. Like I mentioned earlier, I listened to Travis Scott a lot. Listening to his music made me love music in general so much, I wanted to try it. At first, I thought I was no where near good enough, but I recited a written verse to one of my friends because at the time, we were talking about music. I thought it was mediocre and kinda amateurish, but they liked it a lot. And since then, I’ve been on just an onslaught of just creating music.

 

Where did you grow up?

I was born in Birmingham, Alabama. My family and I, from the last thing I can remember, we stayed on the West side of town near Arkadelphia, but we moved to the East side to Center Point. Stayed there for about 7 or 8 years. Most of my childhood memories come from that place. But midway through my Freshman year, we moved back to the West but in the heart of Fairfield.

 

My music often talks about my hometown. It’s where the darkness in my music come from. In Fairfield, you have a 9.9/10 chance of hearing gun shots or seeing some dead on the news everyday. Everybody knows that the West side of Birmingham is worse than the East. We have a Mall over here that have polices arriving there bout every 10 minutes lol.

Fairfield, Alabama Mall

Neighbors partying and drinking daily and just a lot of other things. In case you haven’t picked up, Fairfield is dangerous, but my point is, my music is about getting out of harm’s way. Taking my family out of the hood, and into the urban, high life. My music is crutched on the dangerous city of Fairfield. I don’t participate in any gang violence or criminal activity or any of that. Call me a wuss or whatever, I do not care but thats not me. I don’t do drugs either. I want my future to stay clean and vivid, and with either of those things in my life, it would deteriorate rapidly.

My music has come a drastically long way from when I originally started. As I mentioned previously, I used an app called Bandlab. Glancing back to 2 years ago, that app could not do many of the things it does now. It has autotune, better latency, you can even make beats on it now. I was not privileged with that along with other OG’s on this app. My music was very low quality at the start. Dry, no energy, it sounded as if I was trying to read a Harry Potter book with 1 eye with 3/8 vision. You could hear TV’s on the background and all. I was trying to hide the fact I was rapping when my parents would leave to go somewhere, because I didn’t know how they would take it. Negative energy from them about my music would make me curl up and make me think that this was stupid. But when they found out, they were quite pleased that I was taking my own direction with my life and wanted to pursue music. After I got a little confidence boost with the conformation from my parents, that was my green light to kick into full gear. That next year, in 10th grade we got a computer, microphone and FL Studio to help me with my music. Now mind you beforehand, I had FL Studio Mobile, ad I was making beats with my cellular device and I was pretty darn good at it. The beats I was making on my phone sounded like professionals according to my friends. People could not believe that I was creating masterpieces with my mobile phone. When I got a computer, that was just the beginning of what was coming. I didn’t even want to use autotune at first. If I wanted some harmonizing effect, I’d just contact a singer. But after a while, people were not doing it the way I wanted and therefore took matters into my own hands and used autotune for myself and became the artist I am today.

My process with music creating is simple. I craft a beat first, maybe use a sample or just start from scratch, you never know. Usually, I go for a pretty dark, but psychedelic type mood, but I can do almost any type of feeling or expressiveness with the feel of the music. I take a couple days, or if I’m really feeling the instrumental, it could be a hour then I am ready to record. I open FL Studio and practice the melody and the cadence of the words and what specific parts I want to emphasize on. I record the hook, you’ve always have to have your hook perfect. Because I’ve seen a lot that people don’t listen to whole songs to be honest. So if they only listen to the hook, you have to make it memorable or else its going to get slept on heavily. When I record, I usually break off my verses into 2 separate parts. Then after doing those 2 takes, I go proceed to my ad libs. Now people don’t recognize that ad libs are honestly one of the most important things about a song. They feed off the more present verses and hooks and backs them up, which is why Travis Scott’s songs are so groundbreaking and successful. If you have wack ad libs, you have a wack song. Now you can go without ad libs but your verses and words has to be twice, nearly three times are good as the regular verse would be with the ad libs. But usually, I have my ad libs last then finish with the song.

I just dropped a collaborative EP, with a friend of mine named Kxng Davxd called “THE NEW GENESIS” on Youtube & Bandlab. He is also one of the Bandlab OG’s that has been on that app as long as I have. That guy is really talented. But anyways, the EP is coming to Spotify on February 8th. And I also have a solo project called Dreamland ready to release on February 7th. It features Kxng Davxd and some other talented Bandlab artists that I have come across such as Ayo’Marley, InfiniteRebellion, Rusty Wilkens and many more. It doesn’t stop there as I am working on another tape to come after Dreamland, but it doesn’t have a title yet. So I’m always working . But please go support THE NEW GENESIS, Davxd and I put really hard work into that project.