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00:00Hey, it's Toru Imua, and today I'm at Rolling Stone talking about my new album, Whole Earth.
00:04Whole Earth is my eighth studio record, and for this one I tried to find a sonic palette that's
00:12more in this angsty, almost pop-punk sort of suburban world, mixed with a little bit of
00:22contemporary hip-hop. I think what stayed the same about my process and my records is that
00:28there's an openness to trying to find a new sound. It's a big part of my thesis for Toru,
00:36if I had to pick anything. It's just an exploration of genres, and I think the
00:39things that have changed the most, I would say, throughout the process in all these records,
00:45literally going from a laptop in my bedroom to multiple studios at a time for one record.
00:51Especially for Whole Earth, this is the first time I've actually taken my Pro Tools sessions
00:56from studio to studio, and it was something I wanted to try doing just because being able to
00:59hop around studio to studio actually allows for more collaborations, which is a big part of this
01:05record. It really helped me just separate from the files. That was a big thing, is I'm always behind
01:12the screen. This record, I wasn't as much. I felt like I reached a cap on my capacity
01:19to handle writing lyrics and thinking outside of what I've done and still trying to clean it up.
01:26I just wanted that brain space to be taken care of, or just freed. It was the best move I've ever
01:36made, honestly. I've worked with engineers before, and I've told myself for years,
01:40I should get an engineer, so this is the record I did that. I think it's safe to say that the song
01:46Undercurrents, featuring Don Tolliver and Porches, was probably one of the first tracks I had
01:53that really sparked this darker grunge aspect of the record. I made that song in 2020,
02:01and I was just waiting for the right project, because at the same time, I was working on Mahal,
02:05which is very 70s psych rock, and I knew that I wanted to bring in this 90s angst for a project,
02:11so I just saved it. A lot of the collaborations were relationships that were started years prior
02:16to even working on the record, so I think a big part of that is just learning to put things on
02:22ice and being patient with them and revisiting them when it's actually time to execute. That's
02:27something I did a lot with this record. It's safe to say that 2020 was eye-opening for everyone.
02:32It was actually a moment in time where I could be dark and angsty with intention. Before,
02:39a lot of my moodiness would be kind of introspective and just love-torn, but there's
02:46a collective angst, I think, in the world these days. A lot of the themes might have been triggered
02:52by grieving, honestly. It just feels really good to actually express with a relevant
02:59aspect to it or a purpose to be upset or feeling unsettled. The actual process of making a record
03:08is emotional. It's like you're taking time away from your friends and family to focus on yourself,
03:13and hopefully something great comes out of it. It's this bittersweet thing where embracing the
03:18darkness and the sadness and just sort of turning it into something beautiful. There's this storyline
03:24or this through-line for the record of this character, this person who's seen the world,
03:30seen things, and they're reporting back to you their findings and their experiences. That's
03:36that duality that I wanted to sort of point out. As much as I hold on to this modest self,
03:48I'm experiencing things in my life that are in the
03:55outer space. I'm like, how did this happen? How did I get through this door? I felt like it's
03:59time to just sort of just be myself. I wanted to start the record off as a Tarantino moment,
04:04where it's like we start with the ending, but then immediately we go to the very beginning
04:07of the story. Whole Earth, I really felt like the name is coming from several points. One being
04:18that the sound that I'm sort of trying to tap into or tapping into is kind of an international
04:22sound. To hear hip-hop sort of go where it has all over the world, from Lagos to Paris to
04:31Asia. It's this international sound. I'm from the South. I'm from South Carolina.
04:37I grew up around hip-hop, trap, all that stuff, and I never really made a move on that sound.
04:47To see, again, the whole world sort of embracing this Southern American sound is important to me.
04:54So I felt like it was poignant. Living in NorCal, Northern California, for so long now,
05:0112 years, you start to run across different artifacts from
05:09bohemia and hippie culture from the 60s and 70s. This catalog served as a tool, guidebook,
05:17and you could order things out of this catalog that would sort of help you live this sustainable,
05:21self-sustainable, off-the-grid life. That, as well, plays into the themes of the record.
05:31This is very much about trying to hold onto yourself in these insane times, of course,
05:44but also trying to sort of self-sustain and make the ship float and run correctly and not sink.
05:54The parallels are there. Hip-hop has always been this self-sustainable genre. Whole Earth
06:02catalogs were giving out codes, and that's what hip-hop is. The record cover features
06:08stars swirling. I originally took the stars from the 50 states. To me, it was like a subtle
06:13reference to Americana, to sort of the state of the world. The stars can be seen as a galaxy in
06:19outer space, or it could be seen as going down a drain. Yeah, this double entendre there.
06:24I haven't made my album cover since Boo Boo. I felt like this record, because it was, again,
06:30more hip-hop leaning, I really wanted to just have my fingerprint on the cover.
06:33I'm at a point now where I feel comfortable with my place in the music world and culture,
06:39and I feel like culture itself is in a place where it's open and accepting to different
06:45pockets and niches. It's kind of just like sinking just now for me. I feel like it was
06:51just a natural progression for me to just be low-key and have people be into low-key musicians.
06:58Ironically, yeah, this album did help me with that, but at the same time,
07:03this is probably my most un-chill record. It's like, yeah, talking about bras and
07:11strippers and stuff, and all the things between.