An Interview with G-Tune

Dami: What inspired you to start making music?

G-Tune: I saw the video for Eminem’s “My Name Is” back in 2016 when I was 10 and my cousin showed me. From then on, I got into hip-hop (full album listens), and that led to me writing myself. Wrote my first song in like February 2018.

Dami: How much would you say you’ve grown as an artist since then?

G-Tune: Was definitely still finding my footing then. I was 12 and still couldn’t find much to rap about that wasn’t caked in the sound of my influences. I put out my first project at 14 in July of 2020, and since then it’s been all gas and no brakes. I am currently 19 years old and with 6 projects under my belt since then, I feel as if I’m definitely at the point of having my own sound and I have for a few years at this point. I’m definitely able to turn my own music on at this stage of my life and enjoy it without being embarrassed. I spent the last 7 years dedicated to my craft and I feel it definitely shows. I finally got my collective (BrainDead) to become what I wanted it to when I first envisioned it back in 2017 when I first drew the logo. In 2023, we put out the caution tape and I feel that is the perfect introduction to the sound me and alot of people I made music with are currently representing: just very free spirited and no limits hip-hop. “Fuck how your mix sounds, I like this” type of music. BrainDead means we aren’t using our mind and we are just creating using our heart and soul. It keeps the art pure and causes us to improvise and make something more honest with every release. Improvisation is the BrainDead mission statement - G-Tune HIEROGLYPHICS 2023

Dami: Speaking of sounds, how would you describe your sound?

G-Tune: A lot of people highlight the cockiness in my verses or my tone of voice, whether it be monotone for a song or very energetic. For me though, my sound is seeped in whatever I’m going through at the current moment. For my last album, THANK GOD FOR THE DRUGS AND DRUMS, I say it sounds like I recorded it comfortably and the mixes vary from song to song because different songs required different things. Whatever cloud rap is, then that’s what songs like FIND TUNE and Reroute are scratching. We got more traditional hip-hop with Sketchy and 10toes and I got to do my weird experimental and or abstract bs with Aerial Shot, Crash and Apollo G. Every single song on that album was made under heavy substance abuse so I wanted to portray the feeling of being on a lot while kinda feeling the same throughout. The album is caked in a psychadelic haze because I was on acid and shrooms heavy during the writing of it. Next album gonna sound like Marlboro greens if my theory is correct.

Dami: Who are some of your biggest musical influences?

G-Tune: Earl Sweatshirt is my favorite rapper ever and has been since I was 12 so he is definitely up there. Every project of his means the fucking world to me and taught me how to approach this shit different. Mac Miller’s “Faces” inspired THANK GOD and that album wouldn’t sound the same without it. Mac was one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to, and it’s a shame I found him after his passing. Lupe Fiasco is a wordsmith in a genre of punchline rappers (I like both) so I really followed his words and blueprint on a few projects (The Cool, Drill Music in Zion and F&L). He also has mean ass freestyle game. Steve Jobs 3.5 is my favorite diss track ever and that nigga did it all off the dome in an artistic ass way, that man is a monster and definitely an influence. Jay-Z and DOOM both offer influence in the way they handle their discographies and made sure it was laced with different sounds. Jay was ever-changing and still has this air about him when you listen to those projects that I think no rapper has ever touched, and DOOM paved the way for me and so many of my peers completely with his frequent drops and aliases. The Black Album and The Mouse and The Mask are my favorites from both of those 50 year old men. JPEGMAFIA, Niontay, Veeze, and MIKE been on heavy rotation for a while and are the people I think are changing the game this decade. LP! (OFFLINE) is one of my favorite albums ever and I thank JPEG for a lot of me being as fearless as I was in THANK GOD to have the mixes be a certain way. Flying Lotus was the soundtrack to my 2023 and it just kinda never ended so he’s on the list too. Marcine too that’s the homie but genuinely everytime I hear new shit from them it inspires me to write better and just make better music. That’s all of BrainDead in general so let’s throw them niggas up there as well. I also gotta add Chance the Rapper.

Dami: What is your creative process like?

G-Tune: I think about this shit every day man. The question kinda makes it seem like I sit down and decide a song will get made for every single one. A lot of the time, I am working, shitting, smoking, just walking around in my room or anywhere and a line comes to me. Another line follows and I end up looking weird as shit if I’m in public because I am now glued to my phone. Beats are definitely the backbone of actual ideas forming for the most part. There are times where I come up with the concept long before I even hear a beat (Sketchy,STRANDZ,Nerves) but for the most part I need to hear how the beat sounds like to be able to get a feel for what I should do on a song. I’ve learned that anything could be anything but not everything can be done right. Meaning that creatively, I can make anything with the tools given but with all of that freedom it means you gotta land it right with the further left field. It’s easy to make something you’ve made 100 times (maybe it is for me rn and that shit gets hard) but in moments of experimentation, it can be harder to get it exactly right. I’ve gotten into the habit of adding to my pile. Whether it’s good or bad (mostly good since I’m the greatest rapper alive right now). Everyday, I make it a priority to create something because if you don’t then something doesn’t get made that day. It’s also important to not force it but I feel as if adding to your pile is a net positive and it gives you more to sift through when it comes time to work on a project (which are like my favorite things ever, I’m an album guy completely).

Dami: When you make music, where do you grab inspiration from?

G-Tune: My main goal is to make people who don’t typically feel heard, feel heard so ima say just living life and having conversation. I’m an extrovert and one of my favorite things in the world is conversation. I truly think it’s the most beautiful thing we as humans can offer each other. I spill my guts to anyone I notice and consider myself an open book so I treat the music the same way and bleed as much as possible while making it. If yall don’t get the full feeling in its entirety (good or bad), then what was the point. I might as well just not have made the song if I’m going to fake feelings. I smoke and fall into a state of almost unconsciousness on a daily basis. I made THANK GOD for the youths out there who are/were doing the same. I was 17 when I wrote most of those songs so my age spilled out into the songs for sure. Braindead is youthful so we are all inspired by a lack of experience and I think that’s sick as hell. It’s all of our first tries rn and we are making art off of it.

Dami: You just dropped a project titled “Thank God For the Drugs and Drums”, can you tell us more about it? What does it mean to you?

G-Tune: That album is still so fucking special to me, definitely my best work as of rn and I urge all of yall to listen to it. I wanted to make an album for people who felt like me. People who were addicted to substances and are navigating high school and this rap shit at the same time. I named the album after an EL-P lyric from one of my favorite songs ever (with my favorite video ever). The name applied to how I was currently feeling. I was surrounding myself with sound and substances when it felt like nobody really believed in my music getting me somewhere. I was going through my first relationship/break up, issues with my mother and father, my group of friends treating me like a junkie and the only people in my life being dope to me being enablers and my musician friends. After a really bad shroom trip in March of 2024, my faith in God got stronger so that added an extra element and caused me to value my life way more which breathed new life into the album. It was initially 12 or so songs long but I hit a stride creatively during the summer of 2024. The album came to life after I got dumped on 4th of July in 2023 and I wrote my verse to Walkin El and the entirety of Apollo G the next day.  The project before THANK GOD was called Cigs and was a collab between me and a BrainDead member (Jayytrip). It was primarily a boom bap album and I had created damn near all of it in 2021/2022. By 2023, my sound was definitely changing and the beats on THANK GOD were the perfect canvas to experiment on. I no longer felt like I had to prove something to an audience and was fully making music for myself and what I deemed tight. I burned a lot of incense, burnt sage to cover up the weed smell so my mom wouldn’t trip and I spent a lot of time outside with substances for the albums creative process in late 2022-2024. I wanted to call myself Sage at the time but I decided to just make an EP called Sage, put out Cigs (it was finished for around a year at that point) and put out THANK GOD all in the span of a year. It was a cool period in my life, definitely an era. The Sage trilogy of projects is like my first forte into making what I really want to make.

Dami: When you look back on Triple Vision now, how do you feel about it compared to when it first dropped?

G-Tune: My newest project Triple Vision was made in celebration of THANK GOD FOR THE DRUGS AND DRUMS which was released on my mother’s birthday. Releasing both on that day is my “subtle” way of being honest with my mother about my current lifestyle since both projects encapsulate how my life was the year they came out. As for my current feelings on the album, I’m definitely really glad that I put pretty much all of why I was going through on it. It makes listening to it now very immersive and I’m grateful that I’m not in that place anymore. I love all of those songs still (Russian Cream, Reroute, Sketchy, and Dummy! are my favorites). I’m definitely on the next step though. Triple Vision is kinda representative of that but it has remnants of that THANK GOD energy so I think it fits as the transition between what I got going on now and my previous feelings. I recorded Trippin in February. It was initially called Theworstone Pt 2 but Omari Taylor(indirectly) told me to not go for that. I’m currently making my best music so going back to THANK GOD is a trip whenever I do. When I first made it, I was just relieved to get my true self out there because I felt as if cigs was just giving people what they wanted.

Dami: How did your mum react when she heard it?

G-Tune: She heard plenty of songs during the 2-year long recording process so she was already familiar with most of it but she is also one of the people who enjoy cigs more. She was appreciative of the weird birthday gift(gifted my mom my fuckass debut album and like 150 dollars) and was there first hand to see the work put into it (she speaks on Dummy!). As a single mother with a drug addicted son, she is definitely not fond of the subject matter. I made it for me and it was therapeutic because of that, for her and others. It was too seeped in themes of drug use and vulgarity to be listened to all the time. Idk, niggas ain’t on nothing but drugs.

Dami: How much have you grown in between projects?

G-Tune: Learning how to let go of my pride in 2025 (still learning) definitely made me feel different coming into Triple Vision for sure. I think I’m getting better at making the shit I like more palatable for people. A song like Tidal would not have been on THANK GOD, and I would make a song like Aerial Shot have more too it if it was on Triple Vision (Aerial Shot didn’t start with a t so it wouldn’t even have been considered). I’ve gotten better at arrangement and my mixing has definitely improved. My current relationship encourages growth more then anything so it’s all I could do this year if I wanted to earn my partners trust.

Dami: What was the creative direction for Triple Vision? How would you describe it to first time listeners?

G-Tune: Funnily enough, it was all very sporadic in how it happened and not planned like at all. I record in a garage as of right now, and that is what Triple Vision studios is. I recently started working with DMV artists and inviting them over to record with me. That’s how Trustfall came about and that got me thinking. Triple Vision was something I’ve been saying since 2023 (on the end of HIEROGLYPHICS for example and on Russian Cream) and it was just a cool way of saying third eye. After I released the sageisgone pack earlier this year. I wanted to drop Trippin just as a single on THANK GODs anniversary but I had a cooler idea after finishing Trustfall; “what if I made an EP with 3 songs starting with a T and I recorded them all here?”. I already had the first two songs done so I went to search for beats and I stumbled upon this beat I was saving that drowning made. I remember him saying that he wanted me to work with Zandoe again so I hit him up after I finished the open. The whole EP is really just me perfecting what I was making on TG, that session for Trustfall was one of the sickest sessions I’ve ever had the pleasure of being a part of. This whole year since the GREEN video has been fucking amazing and I can’t even really describe how different life has felt. I was being genuine on Tidal. For first time listeners, it’s very Mac miller inspired (Tidal and Trustfall) and is an easy listen.

Dami: What was the hardest part of bringing the album together sonically?

G-Tune: Honestly for a 3 song EP, it was surprisingly hard getting the order of the tracklist right, as dumb as that sounds. On a related note, all of those songs are different and I love that, I think this EP is my best release as of rn and it really shows what I’m capable of better than any of my other releases. Was stoked to work with 5kjordn1 for Trippin (I first heard his production on unotheactivist’s Man of the Year back in January and that put me on to both people). Trustfall meant a lot to me because I was going through turbulence in my relationship, and it was nice to use my music to reassure others and partly myself. I have a bar on there “I walked backwards with you, fall back”. We and my partner were walking back home and the wind got crazy so we walked backwards back to my house for a bit, the beat was sent to me the day it was made, I never worked with DERAILED before this so it was really fun hearing the other beats sent and fucking with ideas with EWillC the day of the session. After EWillC was harmonizing and fucking with hook ideas, I thought of calling the song Trustfall and that exact moment. If they would’ve tripped during that walk back home, I would have caught them completely. Essentially, the song was meant to put faith in people who don’t have it in me. Tidal was made very quickly and I wouldn’t have it any other way, genuinely not much to this one, it’s like it just kinda happened and I didn’t do anything, felt effortless. Zandoes verse was amazing (as always) and I’m still in love with the hook. I feel as if this project is me putting my best foot forward, atleast for now.

Dami: What do you hope listeners take away from this album?

G-Tune: I hope people are just more motivated to trust their ideas. I made the entire EP off of split decisions and it turned out dope as fuck. Do the same, don’t let your ideas hurt you because of how you feel you or others might react to it. After years of making music that is my best advice.

Dami: Should we expect any visuals soon?

G-Tune: This year was my first real leap into putting out visuals for my work and it’s been great reception so ima say yea. I’ve always wanted to make videos but I’m really particular with editing. Just know whatever is next will look better than what came before. Working with Kolo has been really dope and I’m blessed to even be in a position to where I’m thinking of visuals for these songs. The GREEN video started in November of 2024 when I got the camera and it dropped on the 5 year anniversary of my first project on SoundCloud. Trippin//Tidal was about a month of filming and I dropped it within a week of THANK GOD’s anniversary. All I’m saying is I gotta plan a lot in order for me to even want to put out a visual. I’m hoping to get a little less particular in the future but for now I consider it a strength. I just got filmed on a canon for the first time for the Trippin video. I’m still so fucking new to this and I don’t wanna fuck up early. Shoutout Ellis Hicks for making that filming process super professional. That nigga is dope as fuck. He has this short film called “Sit Still” that I highly recommend yall check out.

Dami: Any dream collabs?

G-Tune: Earl, Madlib, Lupe, Lucki and JPEG. ALSO TELL NICHOLAS CRAVEN TO DM ME. Would also love to work with Silas short,MARCO PLUS, Lexa Gates and Fakemink.

Dami: How do you handle creative blocks or lack of inspiration?

G-Tune: I gotta be honest and say I don’t really have much of an issue with lack of inspiration and it’s been this way just about the entire time I’ve been releasing music. Me making everything in such a improvisational way I think is the root of that. Creative blocks are few and far between as well, but it’s a bit more frequent and I have a recent reference point so ima just speak on that. January of this year was a very tough time for me; I had just been dumped, was unemployed for a bit due to my job being closed for the month, was attempting to quit weed cold turkey and had a lot of personal issues I was working on. I was not creating at my usual pace which was practically daily, I spent a lot of time drinking chai lattes and meditating, spent time with friends and just did a lot of living but it brought me no real sense of wanting to create. By the end of the month, I had written a few 8 bars that went nowhere and made a bunch of false promises to myself. All I could really do was step away from music and take some time to really prepare. I think feeling ready is the most important thing you can do for yourself. Just letting the time go by and healing also works in some cases but for me, genuine preparation is how I handle creative blocks. I really gotta step back and map out how I want things to sound instead of attempting to do it in my normal way of just conscious streaming shit out. I devised what my favorite types of sounds were, what I liked about songs I’ve previously done, things I have never done but have always wanted to, how I want to come across and most importantly what I am the most excited to even speak on in my life. I spent little to no time writing while I was preparing myself but it definitely did bring me back to that space I was comfortable in. Life is always happening and there is always shit to rap about (shoutout 3000) but for me I agree with Andre a bit, I’m at a point where just spilling my guts and putting my life in the music doesn’t move me. All about the way you put it out.

Dami: With the year coming to an end, what should we expect from you come 2026?

G-Tune: Way more music. I came into this year thinking I wouldn’t drop and would just work. I ended up being wrong and this ended up being my favorite year of my life so far. I am excited for yall to hear what I’ve been working on all year. I’m saying goodbye to all the sage stuff and that lil 3 pack I dropped early this year was the send off. Since triple vision, I’ve been in album mode. I’ve been taking a lot of risks, traveling a lot and rolling the dice musically in 2025. I plan on showing yall the product of that in 2026.

Dami: How do you balance music with your personal life?

G-Tune: Being someone who is this engrossed in my music and loves to romanticize my life surrounding music, my personal life has definitely been fighting for priority considering the fact I’m in a relationship and also employed. My current relationship and the love I’ve been shown in it are actually the leading cause of THANK GOD FOR THE DRUGS AND DRUMS new direction in 2024. I fully was destroying myself mentally and physically while making that project (my goal in 2023 was to make every song on as many substances as I had access to). Being with someone who cares about you definitely does make you consider your own health more so that definitely helped. The album has two covers and the main one with me holding the incense with the bracelets (which my partner gifted me) is representative of 2024 and the love and peace I found during it and the second one is 2023 and representative of my addiction and fear of death (hand reaching for the light), I didn’t know how to balance my life with the music and I was literally surrounding myself with a wall of sound and substances to drown everything out back then. At 17-18, I really would not have had an answer for you. I’m 19 as of right now and balance is all I’m finding

Check out Triple Vision here