CONNIE Talks Moving to LA, Working With Zelooperz, & More In Exclusive Interview
modrNation: Where are you originally from?
CONNIE: I’m from a town called Rockford, Illinois, like an hour outside of Chicago.
modrNation: Would you go to Chicago a lot growing up?
CONNIE: Yeah here and there, mostly for an event or something like that. As I got older, more like in high school I would go up there a lot to go to parties, smoke weed, stuff like that.
modrNation: Was there any underground scene you were involved with in Frankford?
CONNIE: I started making beats in 2017, and at that time there wasn’t much going on there. At the time me and my homies would throw shows and try to make motion, but for the most part small town n*ggas don’t like to do sh*t at all. In a big city people would be down to go check out an event, but in a small town people just stayed home. Mainly me and my friends would pull up to open mic and spoken word type of events, and I would just be looking for people to get beats to.
modrNation: When did you move to LA?
CONNIE: I moved to LA in 2019, it was really just because I was serious about making music and there weren’t any real opportunities where I was staying at the time. I was online looking at blogs, SoundCloud and all that, and that’s how I met JELEEL! on Instagram in like 2018. We would be on FaceTime all the time on homie sh*t, and one day he was looking for a roommate so I sent in my deposit and pulled up.
modrNation: “DIVE IN” releasing in 2021 was clearly a breakthrough for you with the music, what was happening between your move to LA and that release?
CONNIE: Before that I really was just locked in all day with Jeleel and the other people living at that house at the time. Me and Jeleel have like 300 songs or something that are from that time that we’re sitting on. Yeah nothing too crazy, I really f*ck with a lot of the releases I had with Jeleel before then, we made a song called “Red Light!” that I really f*ck with.
modrNation: What’s the story behind your producer tag?
CONNIE: Before I had a tag I was really just figuring out how I wanted to brand myself, and I was pretty into all the E-boy sh*t. I put on my story telling people to send me producer tags, I got a lot of bad ones, but that one kind of just fell in my lap. I screen recorded the voice memo and it’s been that since then.
modrNation: What got you started in production?
CONNIE: When I got hip to making music, I was watching a lot of the Genius breakdown videos where the producer would break down the beat to some big hits. When you’re watching that and you don’t know how to make beats it seems like magic, and I was really caught off guard to see some n*gga make music off his laptop so I decided to try it.
modrNation: Who are some of your biggest inspirations?
CONNIE: Definitely Timbaland, Pharrell, Daft Punk, all of them are super inspirational to me. SOPHIE too, that’s one of my biggest inspirations.
modrNation: Who are some artists you’d want to collaborate with in the future?
CONNIE: Future would be really fire, Lil Yachty, I want to work with Charle XCX really badly, JPEG MAFIA, there’s a lot of people I want to work with for real.
modrNation: Do you plan to expand your creativity into any other mediums outside of production?
CONNIE: Not music wise, but I’m really interested in fashion and making clothes. When I do end up making merch I want it to be some crazy sh*t that everyone’s trying to get. Also like cinematography and film, movies really inspire me. Whenever I’m having a creative block, a good movie will always pull me back. I also do the cover arts for all my own drops.
modrNation: You just did a collaboration with Zelooperz, how did that come about?
CONNIE: I sent him a couple options of what he wanted to hop on, and when I got it abc it was just a loop, so he was just spazzing on that loop for like three minutes. Then I restructured it, he actually pulled up and we had a session and made some more songs too.
modrNation: You think the two of you will put anything else out in the future?
CONNIE: Yeah definitely, like I said we already got some tracks from that one session. I think he’s going to drop one of the songs we made, I don’t know when but hopefully it comes out because I feel like I bring the best out of people. Every time I work with someone, I hope that song becomes their biggest song.
modrNation: What would you say is the importance of breaking barriers as an artist and experimenting with new sounds?
CONNIE: I feel like it’s so important to have somebody in music at any given time doing that, and I don’t want to say that I feel like music right now is stagnant, but I just feel like sonically it hasn’t been the same for the last couple years compared to what was before. I really just want to play that role in music or art that makes the shift, and hopefully in five to ten years kids can find my art and do their own thing with it. I just love art more than anything, so I feel like it’s important to pay your dues as well as leave something behind.
modrNation: Where do you see yourself five years from now?
CONNIE: Probably rich as f*ck, probably living in a very remote area too. I’ve been wanting to buy land, I just want to live in some super remote, forest-like area. I’ll still be making music for sure, just doing what I’ve been doing on a way larger scale. The only thing separating me from my five year self is just having the infrastructure to pull it off, I want to do a bunch of sh*t and go crazy.