Commas is Ready to Take Over the World

Nashville, Tennessee based Commas is an artist on the rise, and this year he showed no sign of slowing down. A 90s baby raised in the south, he had long developed a penchant for consuming the imagery around him and his fellow peers, and been able to spit this back out on a canvas that is intriguing and melodic--his melodies stick out amongst the music. Jumping into the scene with BZRK in 2016, he honed his skills while collaborating with this collective. With his new music in tow this year, most notably with his new video "MMM" and the still riding the wave of his buzzworthy EP "thx bby." We had the honor to chat with Commas on his work past, present and what the future will hold.

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With your new single and recent EP in tow, when writing new tracks overall, what is your inspiration behind them? What drives you musically?

Honestly the fun of it is what inspires me most. I try not to take the creative process too seriously and just let it happen so really all it takes is the right environment and maybe a Yerba Mate for me to take off.

When creating and penning your latest songs, what artists or influences did you channel?

I don’t think I intentionally channeled any particular artists when writing thx bby… But I will say I was listening to a lot of Hoodrich Pablo Juan and PARTYNEXTDOOR and smoking a lot of cigarettes at the time.

You seem to be very hands on in the process of your music and songwriting which is GREAT! Can you walk us through the process for the latest record?

Well yeah, that was my goal for this project more than anything. I wanted to be more hands-on with this EP than I was with my last one. I loved working with Lambo on JK-47, but for thx bby, I made every beat myself with some co-production on two of the tracks. So thx bby started there, with me just finessing Logic on my own and I would just write lone verses at random for weeks until certain verses felt like they fit with certain beats after fleshing them out. Then I got in the studio with Garrett aka Karmaclip who helped me fine tune the production and it was like butter after that.

When you have a concept for a song, how do you execute it? What comes first?

A lot of my songs come from random lines I think of while going about my day. Or I might hear a couple lines in someone else’s song and I think about what I would’ve rhymed instead if I were to jump into the verse right after them. From there, I just expand my verse into its own full piece and then I find or make a beat for it later.

With the new music in tow, how does the songs differ from your prior work? Or does it feed into a new realm for you as an artist?

Ahhh I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily different; I don’t think any of music has ever just been DIFFERENT from my prior work. I’d say I’ve just been growing more into how I’ve always been and my sound has become more defined with each release. If anything, the difference is how honest I’m becoming in my work.

As 2022 is now on the horizon, what surprises do you have up your sleeve in terms of music, videos, and additional releases; especially still in the current realm of things?

Nothing too big that I wanna talk about at the moment, but there are definitely some loosies on the way. Call em’ holiday gifts if you want.