Q&A: ssjishmael gaining industry attention quickly, has big plans for future
via @ssjishmael on Instagram
ssjishmael, an Ohio-based artist at the forefront of the recently declared “aesthetic rap” subgenre, is rising quickly in the music industry as a whole, but he still sticks to the same creative process he started with: creating tracks from his bedroom.
ssjishmael has been in the industry for just a few years, but with his flow that is practically ASMR to the ears of music listeners, he already has several tracks with millions of listens on Spotify. He recently released the track “CITGO” with a feature from West Coast rising star $atori Zoom. Vituhmins writer Hannah Burkhart sat down and talked with ssjishmael about his career thus far, his recent release and his future plans.
Vituhmins: How long have you been making music, and what inspired you to start making music?
ssjishmael: With the ssj thing, I've been doing that for about two to three years, so I've been doing it for a little while, and what really inspired me to make music and shit is just listening to acts and seeing the organic view of music. Just seeing people, with basically no equipment for it, make music into a full blown career. I was just really fond of just seeing people make shit from hand and just make things from what they have. That's what inspired me to make music. I make music in my bedroom still to this day. It just inspired me a lot that you could do that and become that big.
Vituhmins: Where are you based? Do you think the area you live in has an impact on your defining sound?
ssjishmael: Currently I'm in Ohio, Middletown to be exact, so my style really doesn't reflect anything around me. Mostly, I hear a lot of Detroit-sounding things because Michigan is not too far from here. A lot of people see those types of artists and try to do that, but I kind of strayed away from doing the norm of what my city does and I’m in my own type of lane, and it worked out. It's been working out for me very well.
Vituhmins: You just dropped "CITGO" with $atori Zoom, which although has a heavy bass, the highlight of it is your flow. What was the creative process like with $atori? Do you think you two work well together?
ssjishmael: We have a lot of mutual friends. He hangs out with XANAKIN [SKYWOK], which is somebody I usually talk to on a weekly, daily basis. The thing with “CITGO” is that I was just trying to make a song for $atori. I was just like, “what's the song I could get $atori on that he’d fuck with or just be cool to hop on?”
Vituhmins: You mention XANAKIN SKYWOK, and I know you collaborated with him on “Bravo!” Between SKYWOK’S screaming flow and your voice, the track received quite a bit of deserved love. What inspired you two to hop on this track together? How was the creative process with him?
ssjishmael: Before “Bravo!” we both made a song on the same beat by Mathias [Tyner] Everybody made a song on that one beat. “Macho!” for XANAKIN, then “Velvet!” for EGOVERT, and then “Kujo Freestyle” for Sinoda. So like, we talk to each other about it and we're like, “we both blew up on this beat, blah, blah, blah, let’s make a track.” We both already dropped a part two to that—mine is “Adolf,” his is “Honcho.” So we're like, “what would be the trilogy to this?” It'd be Bravo! So we hopped on another one of those type beats and just did that, so I just kind of copy and pasted the energy I brought to “FREAK B!TCH,” which was just something that I made in my living room.
Vituhmins: I know you have a lot of hip hop influences, but I also notice that you have your own sound, and I feel like at this point in time, music as a whole goes beyond the bounds of a single genre. If you had to label your music, what genres would you put yourself into?
ssjishmael: I really don't know. They [fans] say it's aesthetic rap right now. That's what it's called or I've heard. I guess it's the new thing. I guess $NOT created a whole genre now. He was really one of the godfathers of the technique he uses with his voice in songs, so now a lot of people kind of do that.
Vituhmins: Are you working on new music? If so, what can we expect from you in the future?
ssjishmael: I'm always working on new stuff. I got solo songs. I'm at a point where everybody's hitting me up for features, so I'm constantly working on features.
Listen to “CITGO”: