BLK ODYSSY ON HIS LATEST ALBUM DIAMONDS AND FREAKS [@BLKODYSSSY]

Austin native, BLK ODYSSY’s take on R&B incorporates funk, Neo-soul, and hip hop and so much more. Having sat with his latest album, DIAMONDS AND FREAKS for a good chunk of the summer, it’s definitely his best work to date and a phenomenal contender for album of the year. Wanting to peer more into the mind of the genius that is BLK ODYSSY, GUAP catches up with him.

Kat: Where does the name BLK ODYSSY come from?

BLK ODYSSY: I wish there was like a super detailed answer, but realistically, we were in a circle throwing around a bunch of names. In the beginning stages we would play shows on the weekends in Austin, Texas. Before one show, we wanted to spice things up to try to get more people to come out so we thought to put a different name behind what we were going by. It was random, but we came up with BLK ODYSSY. It came into its own meaning, but it really just started out as a random band name generator kind of thing. 

Kat: Who and what influences your music and how? What aspects of artists or genres impact your sound?

BLK ODYSSY: The influences range from so many things. At its core, there are a lot of influences from the Soulquarians era – D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Bilal, The Roots, Questlove – but it pulls from so many other things at the same time. There’s this element of psychedelia in our music that people can pick up on and I think we can credit that to Parliament-Funkadelic, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and the time of music in the early seventies where rock and roll and funk began to merge. We always paid attention to that era of music and pulled from it. Then you have the Hip-Hop side of things which is very influenced by West Coast Hip Hop, with early influences Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and music of that era. More recently, I think one of my personal favourite artists that inspired me to start creating music was Kendrick Lamar. When I heard his stuff in 2015, I was a senior in high school and I remember hearing To Pimp A Butterfly and wanting to create something that could make other people feel that way too.

Kat: How do you feel you’ve grown creatively between BLK VINTAGE and DIAMONDS AND FREAKS?

BLK ODYSSY: For me personally, the growth has been tremendous. I can’t really speak on how the fans consume it and where they think the growth is, but for me I feel like I personally grew in the record. Sonically I was very nervous between the two records because I wanted to create something that was still deep, but maybe something that was able to be digested a bit easier and on a more broad spectrum. We tried our hand at things that felt more pop leaning. Topic wise, I wanted to find something that felt more universal and that felt like something that we all struggle with, not just people in the black community, because I feel like BLK ODYSSY is such a broad world project and that’s how we want it to be. In that sense, the growth was tremendous for us. 

Kat: What was something you learnt making your first album that you made sure to implement on your second album?

BLK ODYSSY: The first record – it was in the middle of the pandemic. BLK ODYSSY started out as a rock band, so we were on a different wave. I was honestly just for the first time, doing music in my own space and throwing together digital production. I didn’t really make much of it to be honest. I didn’t think that it was gonna ever come out – I was just throwing stuff together cause I was bored. With that said, I don’t think that the continuity of the record was nearly as intentional on BLK VINTAGE. Because of where I was mentally it was all one continual thought, but I don’t think that I had paid attention to continuity and how the record flowed as much on that. That was the biggest takeaway from BLK VINTAGE vs Diamonds and Freaks. This one, I intentionally went in and wanted to create a story from start to finish.

Kat: Talk us through the chapters of DIAMONDS and FREAKS.

BLK ODYSSY: To give you an overview of what the record is about – it’s a moment of truth to self. When you’re confessing or facing that you have an issue, there’s different phases of that. There’s the phase where you tell yourself, “I have an issue.”, then you try to give yourself excuses for that issue, then you have phases where you’re like, “Nah, no, this is an issue. I have to deal with it,” and you start to mentally put those things together to deal with your issues. Then you have the reflection phase of life where you can look back and say, “Had I not dealt with this maybe I didn’t have to deal with that,”. Honestly, that’s what this record is about.

Dopamine and Hennessy is the first chapter. My goal on Dopamine and Hennessy was to really set the stage and let the listener know “Okay, he’s obviously talking about lusting, he’s obviously talking about being submersed in that issue,”- I’m explaining to you guys what a vice of mine is. I loved the first two chapter names because we have such a strong female presence on this record – especially in KIRBY and Rhapsody. Working with them and listening to them write, I would just take lines from their parts of the songs and name the chapters that – Dopamine and Hennessy was a line on ‘You Gotta Man’ from Kirby. She took the assignment so well, she did so wonderful on the verse that I said, “Wow, that’s the first chapter that personifies what I’m trying to talk about in those two words,” she came up with the name for the first chapter and I fell in line with it afterwards and finished the first chapter after she did her verse. 

Chapter two, which on Twitter was what people were laughing about, is called ‘Coochie and Big Booty’ which was actually a line from one of Rapsody’s verses on the album. I thought it was very fitting because this chapter in the record is where I’m enabling myself. I’m telling myself, “Man, this is my life. This is what I do. I’m making music now. I have fans all over the world. I’m starting to make some money. Why can’t I embrace this, this lifestyle that I’m living?”. ‘Coochie and Big Booty’ is about the enabling cycle of this process. The songs in it are almost ironic because you have tracks like ‘ODEE’, which seems to be completely contrasting to the concept of the record and what the record means, but I wanted the people to understand this is a process we’re going through together. It’s literally chapter one, you’re there with me, chapter two, you’re there with me and so on.

Then you have ‘The Divine Stank’, which is definitely an ode to Parliament-Funkadelic and the seventies era. I look at things like movies, so that chapter was the climax of the situation. It would definitely be a horror, because it’s like when you’re realising the fear of self and it’s giving you a very clear perspective of who you’re becoming. We were very intentional about this part of the record being very psychedelic and you have the Alchemist track where Keisha Plum from Griselda [is] speaking over this very ominous and tension full beat. 

Lastly, you have the title chapter ‘Diamonds and Freaks’, which is really where the self-reflection begins and starts to understand all of the differences between love and lust. I think that it’s personified pretty heavily in that chapter because it’s very different from the rest of them. 

Kat: There’s so many other great collaborations on this album, what was it like to work with each artist and producer on the record?

BLK ODYSSY: It was incredible. The Alchemist had always been on our bucket list since we started the BLK ODYSSY project – we were very excited to work with him. Rapsody was actually something that was very surprising to come – it came in the most random way. I had been a huge fan of ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ and she was the only hip-hop feature on that album, so obviously for me, I was always a huge fan. I was listening to her track [on Kendrick’s album] ‘Complexion’ in high school when I got kicked out of class. I told her that when she randomly DM’d me like, “Yo, BLK VINTAGE was an amazing project,” and that relationship blossomed – we’re super close now. KIRBY as well, she’s an impeccable writer, artist and singer, and to be able to share the space with her and watch her work was absolutely ridiculous. Obviously, Bootsy and Keisha [Plum] – what a ridiculous way to narrate this record! It was such a juxtaposition between the two. You have this female poet from Griselda who has such a sweet voice, but she’s often delivering such pungent, matter of fact, just crazy lyrics. To have her be the character that she represents in the album – she’s called the Holy Mother Stank – which is also the character that’s on the front of the album – she’s the character that’s literally watching you the whole time on this album. Then you have Bootsy Collins who represents that devil on your right shoulder kind of person. I personally love him so much and thought he was such a fitting character because often throughout the record he’s egging you on and using these really psychedelic phrases. The collaborations were insane. There was so many more, one of my favourite producers, Tedd Boyd is on this, some of my homies back home. It was incredible. 

Kat: I’m a sucker for narration from Bootsy Collins – he’s done ‘After The Storm’, worked with Silk Sonic – I feel like he really brings funk-laced tracks together. It was a perfect match on this record. What was the highlight of making this album and the biggest challenge?

BLK ODYSSY: Honestly it was probably getting through to Bootsy. Like you said, he had just came off the Silk Sonic stuff and [he] was definitely high in demand. With us being new artists I thought it was such a blessing that he actually came through and did it. There was a connection there through George Clinton that I think helped out – I would’ve loved to have George Clinton do it too. It would’ve been amazing, but I just thought that Bootsy Collins was the one. It was definitely challenging and discouraging at times because we would lose contact for like four or five months at a time and not be able to get in touch, but just at the right moment when we were getting ready to pivot and figure something else out, they literally reached out outta nowhere and we were able to make it happen. That was definitely the most rewarding thing and it was definitely a perfect example of [staying] persistent on things, [staying] resilient and keep your head up and whatever you need, it’s when it comes to you. 

Kat: I feel like that’s a perfect tie in of both highlights and most challenging. I saw you announced the Diamonds & Freaks tour recently – how do you plan to translate the record on stage?

BLK ODYSSY: Me and Alejandro, we started the band together. Our whole thing in the beginning early on was “How do we translate the excitement from the live show?”. We started out as a rock band and we cut our teeth in Austin which is kind of deemed a live music capital of the United States. As a live band, if you didn’t play good live s**t, then you had no chance of surviving or coming up in the scene. We fell on our face a bunch of times early on, but by the time 2019 hit, we were already selling out shows in Austin just off of our like live performance, so that’s one of the easier things for us, honestly. We very much thrive in that space, so I guess the challenge on this is figuring out how to personify that story in an hour and tie in BLK VINTAGE as well – but we feel good about it. We’ve already started testing it out in different places and seeing what people react to the most. We’re excited to be out in the UK for the first time too. 

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