Over a decade ago, a South-Central LA native in his late teens, known as Blxst, made his first foray into a musical world he could never leave behind. Armed with an insatiable curiosity, a demo version of Fruity Loops, and nascent yet promising vocals that would later be featured on one of his own idol’s albums, he embarked on a journey that would define his future.

In his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell introduced the concept of ‘a hero’s journey,’ a pattern of storytelling he identified in myths across cultures. One particularly famous excerpt from the book reads as follows: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

I was flicking through pages online, researching this concept as I’m listening to Blxst’s latest project and debut album, I’ll Always Come Find You. When I happened upon this particular quote from Campbell, I’m reminded of a reference Blxst made during our interview the evening before. “Approaching my debut album, I wanted to have a theme. My A&R and I looked up different themes of movies and storylines, and we ran into this concept called ‘A Hero’s Journey’.” Essentially, this is the kind of story where a character embarks on an adventure, faces challenge after challenge, and returns home not only victorious, but transformed.

The album in question is an expansive four-part disc, recorded from corners of London to LA, that has Blxst projecting himself lovingly––as I’ll come to learn when we speak—into different versions of himself in the past, present and future. “I picked up on this common thread of what my music is about. I always speak about personal growth, relationships, and the position I play as a father, and a businessman… Those are the three topics I wanted to give light to in the form of a story. And to do it in such a way that other people can relate without having to inject my own personal reality”.

Accompanied by a short film, the album digs deep into the trenches of his imagination, bringing forth the freedom only found through the lens of one’s inner child. Dusting off unused parts of his brain to harness the expansive creativity of the artists he grew up on. The narrative elements bring the story to life, with LaRoyce Hawkins of Chicago P.D. voicing Birdie’s father, Big E, and rap pioneer E-40 playing the 95.5 40-Hour Radio host. Fatman Scoop lends his iconic voice to ‘Too Many Friday Nights,’ while Snoop Dogg introduces ‘dedication hour’ on ‘To The Moon.’ This attention to detail immerses the listener in Birdie’s world. Lyrically, the content is conscious as always, but Blxst’s perspective has only gotten richer and ripened with age – handing us game without judgement. His fraught conversational flow is as fatal as ever, but Blxst’s words are now fused with a sense of humility and gratitude, with that hard-fought confidence perfectly complimenting Sounwave’s Grammy-winning production.

Despite being 5,000-odd miles apart and chatting over Zoom, his innate storytelling ability rang true across our digital screens. Blxst writes from the collective consciousness, where the most endearing characters in his music embody the vast array of human experiences, reflecting every one of us as a hero in our own story. He captures the unpredictable mess of loving deeply and makes it look beautiful through his imagined alternative-worlds.

Blxst launched his career in the LA rap scene in the mid-2010s with the collective known as TIU Muzic. In 2017 he produced Kalan.Frfr’s breakout hit ‘Right Wit It,’ and in 2019 his own star rose when he released ‘Hurt,’ foreshadowing the vulnerability he’d soon pour into his future releases. But Blxst’s true identity as an artist came into focus in 2020 with No Love Lost, he tells me, developing a sound that truly reflects where he’s from, “it’s like a perfect blend of what my father and mother used to always play – when you put two superheroes into one – that’s what it felt like creating No Love Lost.”

By 2021, audiences outside of LA confines had taken notice, and he appeared on songs with the likes of Rick Ross, Nas and even a feature with the late (and great) Drakeo The Ruler on ‘Don’t Forget’. Blxst’s sound further expanded with his EP “Before You Go”, where he relished his newfound success while toying with bigger sounds and grandiose instrumentation. Another turning point in Blxst’s trajectory came soon after when he appeared on the fourth song of Kendrick’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

In the interview, he describes his journey as a constant race with himself: not having any connections in the world of music, falling in love with learning and wanting to become the best version of himself. Blxst has achieved all this while pushing Evgle, the company he owns alongside Victor Burnett and Karl Fowlkes––housing a record label, a clothing brand, and an investment arm—a testament to Blxst’s legacy-driven mindset.

Pausing to reflect on his journey for a moment, Blxst feels things have come full circle. While his initial success in the industry left him feeling somewhat burdened by the business side, he now sees interviews, making merch, and being on the ground as exciting opportunities rather than obligations. “It’s not that I have to, it’s that I get to… I get to make music. I get to tell a story. I get to create whatever I want to. And that brings me back to my inner child.”

Blxst reminisces about those early inspirations that once captured his imagination, momentarily turning the conversation inward: “To think – what’s the kind of album you wanted to make back then? Where you place all the inspirations that made you fall in love with music in the first place…” Blxst is eager to start work on his next album, feeling that he’s unlocked a new level of creative freedom that allows him to fully embrace his artistic vision. He concludes, “And it’s mine. Whether you like it or loathe it, you’re going to respect it because it’s coming from an authentic place.”

How are you doing today?
Doing all right. There’s a lot going on, but I’m excited. My debut album is finally here. I’ve been anxious leading up to this point. And now that it’s finally out, I think I’m looking forward to the tour and just putting out the short film, along with more activations, the meet and greets, all that comes with it.

As you mentioned, you’ve got a short film coming out, the tour in October, your debut album came out two weeks ago. A lot of balls to juggle. What does this period of ‘lot’s going on’ look like for you? What’s the main theme in your world right now?
Just making sure everything is cohesive. I really want to make sure the fans get their money’s worth. So I’m paying attention to every detail within the show, working on rehearsals, working with a vocal coach, all the above. In the short film, I worked with an acting coach. So just stepping it up on all levels, and with everything that we’ve been producing.

That’s so interesting. Especially this willingness to level up in all that you do. Something that I noticed looking back at the trajectory of your career is you’ve always kept that self-competing energy for it. Have you always had this tendency to look at how you can improve? Does that come from a specific area in your life?
Hmm. I think when I first got into music, I didn’t really have anybody in the world of music. No family members, or friends, or connections. So that kind of developed a natural hunger and my learning how to do everything out of necessity. I think I fell in love with the process of learning and wanting to become the best version of myself. Like that’s a high for me, you know? That continuously expands and heightens the more I accomplish things naturally. For example, when I put out an album, it’s like, okay, how can I make this next album better? Or when I do a tour, how can I make this 10 times better? Just trying to beat myself at everything that I’ve already done.

Absolutely. I think for a lot of people, egos sort of get in the way of being willing to be new at something. Graze our knees a few times before we learn how to walk. And it’s a really beautiful thing to say that you fall in love with the process of learning each time.
Definitely. I like that.

For your recent debut album, did you have something in mind when you sat down or when you started ideating the project itself? Or was it something that snowballed into a theme eventually?
It definitely snowballed into a theme. The process started with just me recording music in my natural form. Just moving around different cities and different scenes… While I was recording, I was pulling different inspirations and working with different artists and producers, different genres, different cultures as a whole, and this process kind of led me to a point where it was like, okay, me approaching my debut album, I wanted to have a theme, naturally. So with that, my A&R and I looked up different themes of movies and storylines, and we ran into this concept called ‘A Hero’s Journey’, which is heavily used in Disney movies and things like that. So that gave me the idea in my head to create a Disney soundtrack, which we would have a short film attached to it. And then you could see the characters come to life to where it was bigger than just the music. I wanted to even have a play on stage where the characters are having monologues and things like that, all the way down to the merch; anything you see in a short film, for example, you’ll be able to buy.

So, it became this grand idea before the storyline of Birdie and Big E was even a concept. I picked up on this common thread of what my music is about – which is to say that, I always speak about love and relationships. I always speak about personal growth, and just the position I play as a father, and a businessman, and any relationship and role within my life really. Those are the three topics I wanted to give light to in the form of a story, with a narrative. And to do it in such a way that other people can relate without having to inject my own personal reality, because I still like my privacy. So that was the initial challenge, just making an alternate universe of Blxst, which was fun; especially the process of creating a character named Birdie, his personality, the story he’d been through, and then the relationship with his father. Ultimately, each character in this film or soundtrack is a reflection of myself, just different versions that I might embody throughout life. From his father being a wiser version of myself, and Birdie being my inner child. And me just becoming a hero throughout the journey of becoming my father in a sense.

Oh wow. There’s so many points to return to there. Firstly, this idea of fatherhood and almost projecting your characters as versions of yourself in the past, present and future. I know you’ve been a father for a little while now, and I wanted to ask, how has your creativity potentially shifted since having children? Has anything influenced you from fatherhood?
Definitely. Having kids – naturally, you find yourself being a child again – just because you have to do certain things. It brings out my inner child more, but I wouldn’t lean it on my creativity necessarily. I think for me, it makes my morals stand out more, just respecting my legacy and respecting myself so my kids can see that I’m not just out here doing it for no reason. I want my music to be intentional to where my kids can listen to a song and potentially apply it to their life. So I think it helped me be more intentional with my messaging in my music, more so than the creativity that goes around it.

Is that sort of where the idea of Birdie inheriting his father’s business stemmed from––this concept of legacy and passing down a legacy in and of itself?
That’s definitely part of it, because even in Blxst’s world, I have my label Eagle, and that’s a piece of it that I want to give to my son as well. So just creating those different channels of generational wealth and making that stem from creativity, as well as my real life.

How would you define legacy for yourself? I’m sure every artist has a different answer for this, and it can be quite a broad question, but what’s something that defines a legacy for you?
Legacy for me is impact and scaling wide and up. I think about how many lives that I affect in a positive way, how many lives that I change, or even my family around me, but even beyond that, my business relationships. I think the new currency is relationships and just making sure that it’s fruitful. Any room you step in, it’s like you’re adding value. So I want to do that on the greatest scale possible with my community, things like charities and givebacks. All of it falls under the word legacy for me.

Making merch and being so involved with your fans has a lasting impact. Is that something that you always knew you needed to incorporate into your artistry or is this something you’re learning as you grow as an artist?
Something I’m learning, for sure. When I first started doing music, it was all about the hype and the fast life and just being an artist, you dreamt of it on a level of… well, I dreamt of it on a similar level when I was a kid, seeing different artists that I was a fan of and how they lived. Even Lil Bow Wow for example, how he was in movies and all the girls chasing him, all the cool stuff that a kid could imagine. But as you grow older, your values start to change. You start to appreciate family, you go through losses, family members pass away, friends, you fall out with friends.. and it’s just certain things that mean more than what’s on the surface. It reaches a point to where it becomes a deeper connection. This fulfils me in a different light than the money and the fame – coming home to my family – you can’t buy that. It’s just a certain warmth that you get, nothing like a temporary feeling from buying a pair of shoes or whatever. So for me, I think as I grow as a person, it naturally spills into my music and it makes me appreciate the ones that surround me more than anything.

Again, referring back to this idea of relationships as a big theme in your life as well. That’s incredibly heartwarming. Looking back at those earlier releases, we’re talking MySpace days. Do you ever listen back?
[laughs] Not often, but you know, they’re still there in my email. In the same account somewhere. I wish it never existed! But no, I’m kidding really, I appreciate it. Those songs got me to where I am now. You see clearly – where you’ve come from and where you got to. That’s the beauty of it.

If you ever do listen back, what thoughts cross your mind?
I kind of look at it like, wow, I was ahead of my time. I just needed to go through some actual life experiences to be relatable to other people. Sonically, it was horrible, but I always like what I say and the potential. That’s one thing. I always have potential and I felt that was all I needed to become better – as long as I knew I could become better, then it was achievable in my eyes.

That’s really beautiful. It’s having that unknowing faith in yourself as well, which is a rare thing, I think a lot of us look for it in the external. We don’t have enough of it internally. You talked about your inner child in a previous answer. Do you still feel like you still have access to the sort of risk taking mentality, the youthful arrogance that you once had kind of stepping into a career?
Definitely. I think it came full circle. When I first caught wind in my sails within the industry, I kind of tensed up a little bit. And in a sense, I was still making successful music, but it’s a business at the end of the day. And that started to get on top of me, thinking ‘okay, let me treat it as if it’s a business’. And at times that overshadowed the creativity. Sometimes you get demotivated doing certain things that come with the music, like interviews used to be more of a challenge to me. It’s never been the most fun part of it. I don’t really like explaining art. It kind of takes away from the creative art, you know. I just never looked at Picasso sitting in a thousand interviews talking about why he painted a picture.

That makes sense, I hear that.
But now, coming full circle, I think it’s all a mental game. It’s just how you look at it. And for me, it makes me appreciate interviews now because it’s not that I have to, it’s that I get to. And now that bleeds into my music. I get to make music. I get to tell a story. I get to create whatever I want to. And that brings me back to my inner child. To think – what’s the kind of album you wanted to make back then? Where you place all the inspirations that made you fall in love with music in the first place. And that’s where I am now. Even though I’m not supposed to say this, I’m more excited about my next album than this one, because it’s like I unlocked a certain… I don’t know… I unlocked something in myself to where I don’t give a fuck anymore. And I could just do whatever I want. And it’s mine. Whether you like it or love it, you’re going to respect it because it’s coming from an authentic place. So it came full circle for me.

And it’s something you mentioned as well, this ability to create a story, to create a beginning, middle and end, and almost a narrative arc. With this album, at what point in the creative process did you start to have a theme or shape things into a narrative?
For me, it developed over time. And then it became concrete once we had a script. Because I looked at the music, I realised I wanted everything to be able to live alone. From the songs, you can listen to one song and still appreciate it for what it is. When you listen to a concept album, you have to listen from top to bottom to understand it truly. But within that, I also wanted everything to be able to stand alone. You can listen from top to bottom and understand, you can listen to a song and understand that piece within a skit, or you can see the short film and attach everything. I feel like the short film really is the meat and potatoes of the album. The album is the soundtrack to everything that’s going on in the world of Birdie.

I understand that you’ve got your own experience in picking up a camera and making visuals right back to those sort of early days with your first collective that you were a part of. I know you mentioned this idea of Disney and building a soundtrack. And if I’m correct as well, you also worked on the soundtrack for Scooby-Doo way back? Did that plant the seeds in your brain to do this one day again? What was the incentive behind putting a short film together for this?
Not the Scooby-Doo [laughs]… I would say, it’s to do with when I first fell in love with music. Seeing things like how Get Rich or Die Tryin where 50 Cent had a movie attached to it, or like Eminem and 8 Mile. It just made the music much bigger than what you heard on its own. That’s how I wanted to come into the game, never being one-dimensional. Even with my being a producer, songwriter or engineer, I’ve always wanted to be a creator, in the grand scheme of things. So to have a short film, it’s something that I’ve been building towards and already have played around with, even with No Love Lost and Before You Go. It’s a four part series. But for this one, I wanted more dialogue and an actual script, to work with an acting coach, and really respect the craft of what it takes to make a film. There’s so many layers that I wanted to have as a legacy artist. I want the fans to pick up on that and understand the entire story… There’s so many layers.. It’s like my brain goes everywhere when you ask questions like that.

I love that though, that’s creativity in real time there. When I’m watching stuff that you’ve made, or listening to a project, that’s what I love to discover, the patterns and rhythms, and piecing them together.
Exactly. Some things I’d like to leave for the fans to do on their own, because it’s like a huge puzzle piece. And the super fans are gonna get it.

Listening to this project, anyone could relate to those songs. The character’s themselves could speak to anyone’s experience.
For sure. That’s why I didn’t want to personalise and just tell my story. My goal is to always be relatable on the biggest scale possible. I want people to know that they’re not alone whatever they’re going through. Even though I’m an artist, I still go through regular stuff too. I still go through love and relationships. And I go through real issues with my family and friends, just like the everyday person. So that was the whole message behind Birdie and him having the job that he has, you know, him being a driver, being connected to people. Him being a chauffeur driver, you never know how long people are going to be on a ride with him. You never know the route you may take to get to the destination you’re going.

Going back to the alternate universe you’ve crafted with this project. I wanted to ask if this came from a specific part of your life. For me, I learned a lot from the stories mymum used to make up to send me to sleep in the car home. I wondered if there were aspects of your life that have made you attentive to world-building within your creativity?
What I get from a lot of people is that my music is conversational – as though I’m having a conversation – and I think that comes from me being a listener and an observer. Even growing up, I didn’t talk a lot. So I think that gives me a gift to actually regurgitate information and be able to put it into music, whether it’s my story or a friend’s story or a family story. It just gives me that extra leverage to be able to communicate that because I pay attention and I actually care what they’re saying. And then also, within my personal story, certain incidents that I’ve gone through have become vivid memories, so I know how to speak about this confidently because I’ve truly been through it.

You said you were quiet as a kid. This makes me think about some of the stuff I read about your childhood. I understand your uncle used to be an MC, your sister, part of a collective as well. Were you growing up in musical spaces yourself as a kid?
That was as musical as it got, just my uncle and my sister. But my family are huge fans of music. Even my other sister, she used to write down lyrics just to remember a song, so that was my upbringing, learning how to recite a song and remix it. We used to add our own words. So naturally, I picked up on songwriting without even knowing. That’s why it became so natural when I came of age. And of course, as we’ve both said here, it’s like it’s a constant joy of life to be learning new things and adapting ourselves to those new experiences as well, adapting how we learn things.

The way you can switch up your cadences is what got me hooked initially. From those early days of songwriting, learning production, and figuring out your own flow and vocal ability… When did you land on something that felt unique to you?
Oh, I like that. Unique to me. I think over time, part of it was my voice, even things like puberty, adapting to my voice changing and getting over certain things like that. I was insecure about my singing voice. But I always loved singing. I loved singing when I was a kid, but I just knew I wasn’t the best singer. So coming in, actually having a voice to develop and then see fans appreciate it just made me end up appreciating it even more. The process of going through ups and downs, which I feel like I’m going through again. I still feel like my voice changes even at this age. But I would say No Love Lost is when I felt like, okay, I developed a sound that specifically comes from where I’m from, something that represents me and my roots. And, it’s like a perfect blend of what my father and mother used to always play – when you put two superheroes into one – that’s what it felt like creating No Love Lost.

I love that you call them both superheroes as well. And returning to that theme of heroes in your life, it’s beautiful how you’re reflecting on your own journey into family life as well.