LOS on “Got Drunk For The Most High”, Finding Identity, & more

modrNation: Do you go by any other nicknames? 

LOS: No, just LOS. LOS KEMET now I guess. But LOS is fine for sure. 

modrNation: Where did "LOS" come from? 

LOS: Well my pops’ name is Carlos. So, I'm a junior. And I guess people just didn't want to call him Carlos, for whatever reason, so they just started calling him Los. I was Lil Los. 

modrNation: It looks like you lived in quite a few cities. Memphis, Jackson, Chicago. Do you want to go over that timeline? 

LOS: I was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, during summers, and throughout the years. I would visit my pops in Memphis because he moved to Memphis whenever that was, so I was always in Memphis. As I got a little older, I moved to Chicago. And I was there for about five, six years. Through the course of living in Chicago, I had to move to Memphis for a little while. Then, I moved to Atlanta. Then, I moved back to Chicago. And now I'm down here in Austin, Texas. 

modrNation: Okay, so you've been moving a lot.

LOS: I mean, not lately. I've been in Austin for about five years now. But honestly, not gon lie, I was in Mississippi for about 11 years before I moved. So that's home home. But hopefully everybody knows that by now. A lot of people get confused like, "Oh, he's from Memphis. He's from Chicago." They're all like home to me, like one of my homes. But yeah, I moved a lot in my teenage years for sure. 

modrNation: What advice do you have for artists who are struggling to find themselves? 

LOS: My best advice would be to take some time honestly. A big thing with finding yourself, I believe, when you are making music or just as creative in general, is a lot of people have a difficult time in the early stages of finding themselves. Especially when you’re from a place that doesn't really have a scene or a certain rule or blueprint to it. So really overall, what I would say is take some time and study. Study the greats. Study everybody that you love, and that you grew up on, and that you really look up to. If you study those people and you just mesh that all together with everything that you love and besides, you know, how the way you came up, and what you want to make, it'll slowly come together for sure. And that just happened for me last year or the year before. So I'm new at this too. I'm new at this too for sure. 

modrNation: What are ways you return to yourself when you don't feel like your most authentic self? 

LOS: I feel like I've always been my most authentic self. But when it comes to pushing a certain sound, I like being very versatile. So I started out boom bap and Odd Future type beats and stuff like that. It was like I realized I was just young, you feel me? I didn't start making music officially until I was about 19. So that's about four years now. Really, just like I say, I just take my time, I meditate, I pray or something. And I feel rejuvenated, like right after. And I just work, work, work after that. So really, I will just ground myself. 

modrNation: So you mentioned Jackson, Mississippi, as home. Is that the city that's most present in your music? 

LOS: Honestly, Jackson doesn't have a sound. Jackson doesn't really have a scene yet. But what I can say is down the road, in Meridian, you know, Macomb or whatever, where KRIT is from, I wouldn't even say that my sound really is around his sound. And I say this 100% honestly, with this new project, this is gonna be considered a LOW sound. Yeah, that's where we are now. That's where me and my team are. This right here is LOS' sound, so I can't describe it yet. I really can't. We just gotta wait till I drop. 

modrNation: It's necessary to have your own sound. I mean, it's nice to have influences to go back to but when you have your own sound, you don't really have to worry about comparisons, which kinda takes away from you and your sound. 

LOS: I've gotten some that make no sense to me. Honestly. No sense. 

modrNation: What’s the most outrageous comparison that you've heard? 

LOS: Game. I've gotten Game three times. Three times. When I first started, Capital Steez was one, like "You just sound like a southern, ghetto Steez." That made my day though because I love Steez. But that's about it. Not even KRIT or no southern artists at all, which just makes no sense. But it's like, Okay, I'll take it. 

modrNation: So going back to the album, My Love Is Crack. I know one thing that was repeating was your definition of love. For Fornever, your definition of love was "hard drugs, keeping us high, but we never get high on our own supply." And for the very last track More Chaos! your definition changes to "share joy. give joy. share pain. take away pain.” From those two definitions of love, what is your current definition of love? Is it still the same? 

LOS: Yeah, I think that's [More Chaos!] gonna sit with me for the rest of my life. It's so many ways I could define love. But honestly, that right there is the best way I think I will ever define it until, you know, I actually feel it's a shared love. When I get to that point, then I think I will have more to say about it. But I have yet to get to that point. Making that song or making that album or whatever, a lot of that was based off of the past. It was slightly current but a lot of the past. So that's where I'm at with that which I'm thankful for. I could just be like, "I'm not into it. I don't care for it." But that would be lying. I'd be lying big time. 

modrNation: That [More Chaos!] was a good poem. 

LOS: Yeah. I have a big thing with poems. Matter of fact, on Good & Well, which is my favorite song off the album, a friend did that poem in French and I love it so much. She made it sound so much better than me. 

modrNation: Why French? 

LOS: If I'm not mistaken, they say the language of love is French. Right? 

modrNation: Yeah. I don't really hear romance in French. It sounds good tho! 

LOS: You know what? You're right. But I'm just going off the surface definition. If you ask me, I like that real southern [dialect] like what I do. I like that a lot. It’s better than what they were doing in Jason's Lyric, you know? But I just wanted to switch it up a little bit. And even Cara, she did the same poem for the My Love is Crack trailer. But that's why I chose French because it flows really well with the Good & Well instrumental to me. 

modrNation: Well I really love the poem. How long did it take you to write it? Do you remember when you wrote it?

LOS: Probably took me about 20 minutes and I wrote it when I was almost finished with the album. On my collabo album, Red Room, I have a poem or poem/prayer on that project. So it's like I want this to be an ongoing thing for me. I haven't done it with this new project. I wrote them but I'm not the one saying them on this project. 

modrNation: Is there anything else you did differently between the last album and this new album? 

LOS: Everything. For the people who love My Love Is Crack, which I'm so grateful for because I didn't expect the messages and the love I got from people directly, It means so much to me but this is not My Love Is Crack II. It's not that at all. I'm sure people can tell from my single I dropped, Shake Junt. It has some elements of it but overall it's way more southern than My Love Is Crack in my opinion. It's way closer to the roots of the South. With My Love Is Crack, I really just wanted to be the first or the only southern lyricist to make a whole project just on loops. That's really where the idea came from. But Got Drunk For The Most High is like night and day honestly. 

modrNation: Got Drunk For The Most High, Where did that title come from? 

LOS: Oh man, Got Drunk For The Most High. I was studying last summer before My Love Is Crack dropped. I was studying a lot of southern gospel music from the 70s and they were saying some wild things in the music. I don't even have to be a Christian or whatever to know that gospel music is amazing. I love everything about it. Especially in the 70s but they were saying a lot of stuff that made me like "gotdamn. y'all saying this and including God in it and I know y'all don't have any ill meaning with it but y'all really doing this like y'all are seriously doing this" and I felt that in my soul. So I was thinking, a lot of people have vices which could be like "my love is crack." That's not good all the time. And Got Drunk For The Most High, where I'm at with it now because I've been asked this a few times and I damn near have a different answer every time, but just to be extra right now, I'm sorry if I prolong this. When you have a vice, which at a time period of my life my vice was a little bit of liquor, I just felt like “okay you doing this to feel whatever type of way about yourself and whatever situation you may be in,” but it's like, "wouldn't you rather do this for a better purpose?" So, getting drunk for the most high can really mean you're overflowing with grace and joy and love for the Most High due to everything that is done for you. When I say the most high, I put that in the same boat as the universe. And I will just leave it at that right now because, even with the project being done and everything, I still have those same vices or those same callbacks to get drunk for the most part. But I heard a preacher say he was drunk for the Lord. He's like "I'm drunk for God right now." I'm like what? He said, "I remember I got drunk at 14 years old." And I'm like, what does he mean by that? He didn't mean in a literal sense as far as he got drunk. But I feel like when he said that he meant he found his Lord, his Jesus, his God at 14 years old. And he started to radiate that song. And that's really where it came from. I had a lot of different titles in my mind but this is the mindset I want to go for with this, you know, My Love Is Crack is already an insane title, and Got Drunk For The Most High is on the same level with that. This project didn't even have a lot of gospel elements to it but I do speak about that a lot. 

modrNation: So, being fulfilled for something that is greater than you? 

LOS: Yeah. And it could be good. It could be bad. Like why they call it wines and spirits. When you drink, you don't know what's to come of that. You don't know if you'll become a good person, a loving person, a violent person, or an evil person. You don't know what spirit is going to consume you when you take in that bottle or whatever vice you may have. 

modrNation: What would your writing process look like or the studio recording process look like? Do you usually freestyle when you get to the studio? Write a little something then freestyle off of that? 

LOS: Write. Every time. Every time I hear a beat, I'm writing only to that beat. I'm not writing throughout my day. I mean, I have different lines or bars throughout the day that I'll just jot down. But when you send me a beat and of course when I really love a beat, every beat that anybody hears me on, I wrote to that beat. Unless it's a freestyle. 

modrNation: So that's your studio process, writing to a beat that you really like. What was the album process for Got Drunk The Most High? 

LOS: This one was more focused on making songs than raps. And that's where I overthink a lot. Because I didn't have a chorus on any of My Love Is Crack. I just rapped them, honestly, and just added stuff to them. But this process was just me, a new chapter in my life. I wrote it and I recorded demos for every song and I went to New York and recorded all the songs and added some. I wrote two songs there and we recorded it all there in a matter of about four days. That process was amazing, because I've never been in a studio until then. That was my first time ever in a studio in August. So it was new, but I got accustomed to it real fast. As far as content itself goes, I hope it hits home for people. Do I really think so? I don't know but I'm so excited. 

modrNation: Any features? 

LOS: Cara Crosby. She was on We All. Cara is on two tracks. por vida. He's on one. And Caterpillar Jones is on one. 

modrNation: Okay cool. Is there anybody you're looking forward to working with in the future? 

LOS: As far as artists? Cara Crosby. That's it. That's my dog. Any [other] artist? Solange. That's number one. I love Frank as well. I love Tyler as well. I love Mariah Carey as well. Yeah. I'm a Solange fan, if I may say. Solange is everything to me. And I just love everything she has done. So that's really my main one. [She's] probably the primary person that I really want to work with. It will be between her and Tyler for sure. So that's really it. I can't really think of too many people. 

modrNation: Speaking of collaborations, are you backed by a label, a small collective, or are you pretty much a lone wolf when it comes to everything? 

LOS: Yeah. I have three managers. That's really pretty much it as far as a collective. When it comes to music? Nope. One man band. I'm close with a lot of producers though. So that's fine. I'm going to do something in the future. But right now I'm just going to focus on Los Kemet. And that's it.

modrNation: How long were you getting the ball rolling by yourself before you met your team? 

LOS: Almost four years. I mean, this year is my fifth year of doing music, but I met them at the end of 2020. And they started managing me at the end of 2021. So it's still pretty new. There hasn't even been a year yet. So, it is really all new to me. Before I met them, I was just making songs and releasing the ones I like. I had projects recorded from when I was like 18-19. I just didn't want to drop them and I'm not. 

modrNation: So, you have a very small team but not to where you feel alone this time. 

LOS: Yeah, I don't feel alone as far as pushing a product and getting it out there. But when it comes to making music, this is me. 

modrNation: What advice do you have for artists who are pretty much doing everything by themselves producing music, recording music, marketing, booking shows, but actively looking for a support system? 

LOS: Don't look. Don't actively look. No matter how big you are, how small you are, it doesn't matter. This is a dirty game you know. I would just definitely say keep working your ass off. I've been working my ass off for a long time. I'm still working my ass off. The universe is gonna bring someone or a team to you. Just make sure you actually put in your time and your effort and make the music that you want to make. That's number one. Create what you want to hear. Create what you want to make. You don't want to try to sound like "him". It's more people trying to sound like somebody else they're not. Let's be honest. That's just the truth. Speaking of, Baton Rouge. You listen to these niggas like "these niggas from Baton Rouge?" I grew up on Boosie, Webbie, etc. But these niggas is doing something totally different and I love it. I love the upcoming scene in Baton Rouge. Make what the hell you want to make. That's the thing. Don't try to fit in nobody's narrative, nobody's sound and just believe in that shit and put your all into it and everything will come to you. Whatever is meant will come for sure. That's just how I moved as far as that goes and I'm not done. There could be any major changes made at any time when need be.

modrNation: Your favorite songs from My Love Is Crack. I know you said Good & Well. 

LOS: Good & Well, No Scratches, More Chaos! 

modrNation: Does your favorite song change every time you listen to it? 

LOS: Not every time. But I've noticed that Good & Well just made me like "Ah, how did you even rap over this?" And it was hard for me to rap over it honestly. I sent it to Forenzik Styles to try to loop it and fun fact: Good & Well instrumental was not supposed to be that sample. It was supposed to be a Prince sample but we couldn't find it. When I made My Love is Crack, that's when I finally got into Prince. My auntie, TiTi Shana, loves Prince. She goes to wherever he's from in Minnesota for her birthday every other year. I told her "I don't really listen to Prince. So I can't really relate." She went off on me. So, after that, I went to go study with some Prince. And now that I think about it, Prince was a big inspiration for my love songs. And even going forward Prince is gonna be a big inspiration for me. I slept for a long time but thank God that I was able to go back and study with him. 

modrNation: Okay Good & Well still your favorite song from My Love is Crack. What about Got Drunk For The Most High? 

LOS: Well, lately the track I've been listening to a lot is Moonshine. It features Cara Crosby. That's my favorite but my favorites with this project change literally every day. I don't think I'm gonna get tired of it until the project drops. Yeah, right now, Moonshine, Shake Junt, but I love all those songs. Oh my God. I've never been addicted to my own music until this project. So I can't wait for people to hear it. 

modrNation: Now an epilogue is basically a piece of writing at the end of a book to kind of give closure to the entire book. What would you say is the epilogue for My Love is Crack? 

LOS: Honestly, I feel like my poem “More Chaos!” was that, for me.

modrNation: So, stepping away from that album and stepping into the new album, what would be the preface for Got Drunk For The Most High. A preface is written by the author, telling readers how and why the book even exists. 

LOS: My main purpose is, I want people to feel every emotion that they can while listening to my music. As I get older and as I get more knowledgeable of myself and other people that I observe and talk to and live day to day with, with this project, I want to pinpoint more on touching different emotions. Some stuff that can make you move, some stuff that can make you a little bit sad, some stuff that can make you reflect a little bit because I'm doing all these myself and I think the best way to reach people or an audience, just any listener, is making sure that you can have something for everybody in it to where they can actually feel.