DOMO GENESIS @ CAMP FLOG GNAW ON BEING AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE LINEUP AND WORKING WITH GRAYMATTER ON HIS LATEST ALBUM ‘WHAT YOU DON’T GET?’

The duality of Inglewood’s Domo Genesis comes as no surprise, carving out his own lane that’s equal parts introspective and comedic with a dose of immaculate beat selection. Beginning his journey in prolific rap collective Odd Future back in 2009, his growth as an artist has been glorious to witness. We caught up with Domo Genesis after his set at Camp Flog Gnaw to chat about his growth and more.

Kat: You’re a seasoned vet when it comes to performing at Camp Flog Gnaw, what’s it like being an integral part of the lineup and how has it grown over the years?

Domo Genesis:  Being a piece of it every year, you get to find a way to do new things, figure out new sets and maneuver it differently because you’re getting seen more often than the rest of everybody else, but the continuity and knowing that over the years you can see with different artists that perform here and how big they are and how mainstream things can be or how things can be celebrated in another light, but here they really are curated to a certain ear, so you’ll see that they’ll go a little crazier for things that means something to their heart or mean a little bit more than just a name here and a lot of people found out the hard way, but that’s a good thing about having that here. 

Kat: Was there anyone you were excited to see this year at Camp Flog Gnaw?

Domo Genesis: Yeah, we’re going to go see Earl right now, and then yesterday I was happy to see Clipse with the downed plane with the coke bricks, that was pretty cool. I’m like, “Okay, y’all got set design,” they threw bricks in the crowd. 

Kat: Recently Odd Future had a reunion, when you first joined Odd Future, did you ever expect the levels of success you’ve all achieved? Did you have a gut feeling when you started working with them?

Domo Genesis: I did know it was something that could work, I didn’t know to what degree, but it does seem really crazy from how far it went. We were just kids that was going to somebody’s makeshift recording studio in an attic and just having fun. We maybe thought it could work locally but not to the degree that it went. I think it blows all of our minds to see how many years passed by and where this thing went.

Kat: Congratulations on the release of ‘What You Don’t Get?!’, what was it like to work with Graymatter on that project? (*Graymatter was actually at Camp Flog Gnaw with Domo Genesis so we asked him what it was like to work together aswell)

Domo Genesis: It’s funny because I feel like I’ve been knowin’ Gray for a long ass time now. I don’t know why it feels that way, but I really haven’t known him that long, it just kinda gelled. 

Graymatter: It’s been, what, almost a year? 

Domo Genesis: Yeah, we just clicked. A lot of s**t that when you make music that people don’t see – you hear a lot of collaborations, you hear a lot of things when people [work] together butI think when you are cool people and friends and share some similar faces, it goes smoother from there. I just feel like I’ve been knowing bro for a long time – kindred spirits.

Graymatter: Yeah I mean, we had made a couple tracks before we actually got in the studio together and everything was sounding cool and he found out I lived in LA – I just moved out here from Virginia a couple years ago – and he found out I was out here. We started just pulling up the studio, feels like almost every day, started just knocking stuff out and it just came out like magic. It was like clockwork. 

Kat: How does it feel to finally have released Red Corolla and No Idols to streaming platforms? Do you have any reflections on the projects five and ten years later?

Domo Genesis: It’s funny, I used to be like, “Those projects are never going to be celebrated the way they’re supposed to be because they’re not on streaming,” I used to always think that I gotta get those things out or they’re not going to be celebrated correctly. I think this year for me has been really big in the sense [that] I’ve been telling myself it’s a renaissance and I’m just buying into what I think, I don’t doubt what my mind tells me naturally. Those projects when they came out – I won’t say they were received badly, but it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be at the time, but time is the funny thing about it because rereleasing those and seeing the people take to them allowed me to tell myself “You were always right, you were just too far ahead of the time,” it gave me the confirmation. Don’t doubt yourself, you might just be a little bit early for what you’re here for.

How do you feel you’ve grown as an artist since your debut album Genesis?

Domo Genesis: Marketable growth, I guess. I always treat my projects as like time capsules so I love who I am in the time that I’m doing it, but when I listen to it, and I listen to where I am now, I think the mental clarity, the ability to grow away from things and to see things for what they are and not be so wide and glossy-eyed about where things are going – I think when you’re younger, you just have this thing, it’ like “It’s gonna be as big as possible,” and then you strip all that away to get back to who you really wanted to be when you set out to be it, and I think that’s a part of this whole thing that we do – getting back to what we really did it for. I think that’s where the growth was for me. Moving backwards to go forward is where it is and how it grew.

Just to briefly touch on your 2022 record, ‘Intros, Outros and Interludes’ – what are your favourite intros, outros and interludes?

Domo Genesis: This is up there because I just listened to it yesterday on the way to the carnival [on] day one,  I listened to Gucci Mane – Trap God intro. That intro is hard, it’s not even mixed good, but it’s fire. Ludacris has a good one, Chicken N Beer intro is heat, he smashed that. Dipset has some good intros on their albums. Usher – Confessions got a good intro – Confessions got good intros, outros, and interludes in general, that’s a very different type of album. Lil’ Wayne on Tha Carter II, every little intro, interlude and outro is very fire on that. I don’t want to leave nobody out, Imma just leave it there.