Pitchfork: When I hit you up, Mack, about doing this interview, I brought up how I had been introduced to your music through this tape you did with Metro Zuâs Lofty305 a decade ago. It was such a throwback that it seemed like it blew your mind.
Mack: That killed me. When I put this tape [Oil & Water] on streaming, I didnât even have a Spotify profile yet. So Jadasea went to check if they made a [Spotify] Radio for me, and, when he did, Lofty was in there along with, like, SpaceGhostPurrp, John Glacier, and all the weirdos of the internet. Those are all my people, but I was still like how are they going to do that? Funny, man.
Is it a strange feeling that streaming services use their algorithm to sort you however they feel fit?
Jesse James Solomon: Yeah, because it will go, If you like this, then you like this. And itâs some guy who you think is whack.
Mack: Or some guy who is rinsing your style. How do they even distinguish whatâs good and whatâs not?
Letâs take a step back. What bonded both of you as artists?
Mack: We were friends first, kicking it in studios for a year or two before we ever made âLionel Jesse.â
Solomon: You know when you have a friend group, but within that friend group you have that person that youâre just locked in with? Thatâs me and him. And so we always made music together, but so much of it just sat on folders. We didnât want this one to be like that.
Was it hard not to get trapped by the way the music industry wants you to release music constantly?
Mack: No, I found it easy to not get trapped. I find it easy to disassociate, but the music industry is like an economy that they try to force you to engage with. We have real life stuff going on, like traveling or dealing with health. I donât want to go to Soho and meet with a playlister from Spotify; Iâd rather be chilling in the neighborhood with my people, at the home studios. DIY.
What initially drew me to Sub Luna City is how organic it felt. Did you try to recapture that feeling on this album?
Solomon: Jada was the catalyst for all of this. Over the pandemic, he just started outpacing all of us and it was inspiring to see my brother making beats and how diligent he was about it all. I remember asking him how many songs he put out lately and he was like, âHundreds,â while I probably had, like, 30-something on my entire Spotify page. It rubbed off on me. Now it feels like weâve done a 360, like I have that same feeling making music that I did all those years ago again. Because, for a while through COVID, I didnât see Mack for years. Not until the end of 2022 or 2023 did we link back up.
