“Yo, yo, yo. I made this album for all the motherfuckin’ haters out there, who just keep hating, and talking, and being stupid man, you know…man just enjoy the fuckin’ album.” A dejected Horus Ra Mindset stammers on the intro track, Food For Thought of his latest album, Keeping Me Clouded. This is the second album of the year released from the Atlanta artist, arriving five months after his vivacious and jazz ladled album Don’t Lose Your Cool. The two albums capture the dichotomy between the sanguine zeitgeist of early March and the despondence felt since through summer’s end.
In over a year’s time Horus Ra has delivered his stream of conscious flow across four projects, on his own production, and on that of friends. Horus Ra Mindset, real name Jordan Hayes, adapted his moniker from Alabama jazz composer Sun Ra. Horus can usually be found somewhere around Georgia listening to jazz, ‘Horus Ra head noddin’ to sounds of his own creation off his SP, or jamming to flips made on Koala. He’s an old soul, often spinning vinyl from the likes of Quasimoto, Dilla, Wu-Tang and Slum Village. At only 19 years of age Horus Ra has still taken the time to carefully refine his craft, with his wisdom shining through in his diction. He’s been creating music since dropping out of high school to become a rapper at 15. These years of work spent ingesting and creating music are self-evident in his comfortability on the mic and his soul smothered beat packs. It’s what places him in the same peer group as his influences, whose love for music often also encapsulated them at an early age.
Keeping Me Clouded takes a step forward from all of Horus’ recent releases, showcasing Ra’s wide range in production. The album incorporates his signature jazz elements while adding in interludes that weave between the tracks, giving each song multiple layers of depth. It is the first album entirely produced by Ra, and it builds upon the structure created in Don’t Lose Your Cool while recapturing the raw emotion tackled in his 2019 album Live in my Youth. He is building his own self contained universe, as he sprinkles samples, beats, and snippets from past projects into the new material, making every track on ‘Clouded’ feel like a piece of Horus himself. He has the help of friends like aasir, Pro Zay, Qire Snow, Sidewalk Kal, BigDaddyCh0p and Johnny VuDoe whose features and interludes help populate Horus’ budding universe. The album builds on each of his recent projects without sounding like any of them, all while feeling like the truest expression of the young artist’s vision to date.
In 2012, I read an article titled, “Damian Lillard Has Unlimited Potential”. At the time I wondered what “unlimited” potential meant. After seeing his career play out and most recently his performance in the NBA bubble this season, I fully understand what it means, and I see it in this young man from Georgia. Below is my phone interview with Horus Ra which was edited lightly for clarity:
HORUS RA: Sorry for the delay. This dude wanted to buy an EP of beats, so I was like, “Yeah bro, just give me like $180 so I can buy this camera.” But yeah bro what’s up man?
GSC: That’s perfect. What is the camera for?
HORUS RA: When it comes to music man, it’s never 100 percent about the sounds, it’s about the promotion too or what you’re putting around it. Cause music goes with the whole aesthetic. Like, you can have a dope song but the song sounds better if it’s the greatest aesthetic ever. “Stone Cold Move” is a great song, if you listen to Live in My Youth from top to bottom “Stone Cold Move” sticks out because that was just a beat that I got really lucky on. But it didn’t go to that next level until the music video came out, so now with my aesthetic around the song now it’s like, yo they love it.
GSC: So are you trying to make more videos with the camera?
HORUS RA: Yeah like with me sitting in my room working on beats, because if I’m going to do that I don’t want to just do it off my cell phone I want to do it real nice like, I can get it edited so it looks dope as fuck. Leem Lizzy for example is a dope producer. I met him in person a couple of times, I’ve freestyled with him. That dude is sick, but if you go on his instagram page and you look at how he premieres his beats he always has a fire ass video of him and a music video shaded in the corner, like there’s a green screen behind him. The way his videos are edited, it makes the whole beat sound ten times harder because the whole aesthetic eats.
GSC: Oh okay. I see what you mean, this is fire.
HORUS RA: But it’s not just for those purposes I want to start making more like vlogs of me just living. Because having so many people who are supporters of my music, that’s people who want to get to know me. I ain’t gonna make no YouTube channel or nothing like that but, I might just be a random day I’m outside in the leaves with this fire ass camera.
GSC: I agree, that’s something that made me want to start doing interviews. When you released Don’t Lose Your Cool I listened to it everyday. But aside from tweets, I’m always interested in what the day to day is like to come up with some of the things you say and create on your SP.
HORUS RA: Man that’s just hard work. It’s not like everyday I’m making the hardest shit possible. It’s a process. Make some shit, you’re not happy with what you make so you keep going. It gets to the point where you have so many beats, you just have so much to choose from. It’s just patience, a lot of patience.
GSC: Do you get inspiration from being outside? That’s something Benji said in his interview.
HORUS RA: I’m not an extrovert type of person. I’m an introvert. I’m not someone who leaves the house really often. And I also don’t leave the house a lot because bro, I’m tall. I’m dark skin. And I’ve faced prejudice before just from how I look. I don’t have to be doing anything wrong, to be looking like I’m doing something wrong. I do love going outside. When me and Promise link up, and go into the city that shit’s fun.
GSC: Can you talk about Promise and the “Stone Cold Move” video?
HORUS RA: Promise had posted on Twitter that he was doing videos for $50. And when we first started becoming friends it was complicated because we had a lot of personal shit going on. So we couldn’t really kick it like that. But some time passed and reached out, and told me what he was going through, and I was going through the same shit. He told me he was doing videos for $50, and I’m like that’s nothing. That music video was so cool, you know how you gotta pay for parking in the city? The parking attendant dude was a beatmaker and he saw the SP and was like, “Nah, I’m not gonna charge y’all.”
GSC: So did he just pick you up and go to that location or was there a plan for the video beforehand?
HORUS RA: Promise is really good at coming up with ideas. I’m an artist but I’m so music focused, I’m not really the best at promoting myself or figuring out how to create steam around me. Without Promise I wouldn’t have had a music video out. Before Promise even picked me up he knew what he wanted to do: the location, the car, the SP, everything was already there ready.
GSC: I know one of the next videos is for “Cold Eyes”. And that’s going to be another Free Lunch Program collaboration. Is Promise directing that as well or are you cheffing that up together?
HORUS RA: We’ve already recorded the majority of the video. We just recorded all around my backyard, with me walking around my house. We’re going to do another video recording in the city so it alternates between me at my house and me in the city in stores buying stuff, close ups, and cold edits. Promise is really good at that. It’s different from ‘Stone’, that was such a vintage video we didn’t get multiple areas we were just in the city recording.
GSC: I wanted to ask about “Cold Eyes”. That song is so heavy as an opener following “Dominatrix Under the 45th Power”. How did you choose that as the first song for Don’t Lose Your Cool and the song for the next video?
HORUS RA: To answer your second question first, when I was making ‘Cool’ I pretty much put everything into “Cold Eyes”anyways. I was like, “What is the number one song on this album that even someone who doesn’t fuck with you can fuck with?”. When I was making ‘Cool’ I made “Cold Eyes” very early. It was one of the first beats along with “Simple Faces”. And the first question about the intro, that was something I picked up while making the album. You’ll be creating songs but then you’re looking for themes. And when I was looking for the intro it fit perfect with what I was trying to do. Plus the intro correlates to the outro. The outro to ‘Cool’ sounds similar to the intro and same on ‘Clouded’.
GSC: How does the concept for creating the album come?
HORUS RA: I’m not really a concept type of artist, once you put a mental barrier in your brain about what you can and can’t create it slows you down completely. I’ll say, I don’t make the albums I let the albums make me. I wasn’t sure if “Cold Eyes”was going to be the single, I just made “Cold Eyes”one day and I was like, ‘Oh shit this is definitely going to be the single.’ So it’s not necessarily me trying to build a theme on the album, it’s me having songs that are already built and me finding interludes to correlate and create a theme. Because the songs are going to stand on their own, you just need to find stuff to make the album correlate with the songs. Anything, interludes, sounds, just anything to keep the listener interested when the song goes off. Just paying a lot of attention to detail.
GSC: When I first heard your music it was Remedies for Healing, and as time has gone on the biggest growth I’ve noticed when playing Keeping Me Clouded is your attention to detail from the lyrics, to the production and the interludes. How did you develop that level of attention to detail in your music?
HORUS RA: Every album I’ve gotten better. I didn’t pay as much attention to detail on ‘Remedies’ as I did on ‘Clouded’ but the development came so rapidly. If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve put a lot more into‘Live in My Youth’, but I was so focused on “Stone Cold Move”being it.
GSC: You tweeted that. You said all you wanted to accomplish in life was releasing Live in My Youth.
HORUS RA: I was just in that zone, I wasn’t trying to sit around and focus on interludes all day. I was just going to drop my album and if you fuck with it, you fuck with it. Over time I got better with that. By the time Don’t Lose Your Cool came around I paid a bunch of attention to detail. It has a ton of interludes on it. And ‘Clouded’ I paid the most attention to detail, because I already knew what I could do. I wanted to make sure that I put everything together for ‘Clouded’, that’s my hard work right there. Mad focus. That’s what I always pride myself on.
GSC: That’s clear. On “Stone Cold Move”you say, “Every day I drop some harder shit, the intensity never turns down,” and everytime you put something out you can see how much better you’ve gotten.
HORUS RA: Bro that’s exactly how I feel. ‘Remedies’ is an album with the tracklist of an EP. 7 songs is a lot of songs but it’s not an album. That was why I made sure ‘Youth’ had 17 songs, DLYC had 25 songs, ‘Clouded’ had 20 songs. I wanted to make sure that every album was better than the last album.
GSC: There’s a lot of things you do stylistically most people aren’t doing, but the interludes you have in your albums set you apart because of that added dimension of giving your audience more of yourself in the music. Can you speak to developing that extra layer?
HORUS RA: I have great friends bro. People who have been on my album who are willing to do interludes. Like for the interlude for “I See Your Face Before Me”[on ‘Cool’]that’s [Lil Bow Pete]. I asked him to help me with an interlude for this jazz song and Pete was like I got you. There were some that didn’t make it on the album that pissed me off, because I’m a perfectionist in my music. But the interviews that did get on helped it flow so perfectly. Johnny VuDoe helped, JillB helped. I have great friends.
GSC: Can you speak to your process behind your album ‘Don’t Lose Your Cool’?
HORUS RA: With ‘Cool’ it was just a time period. It was just a period where I was just going in every single day. Now I’m a lot more laid back with my beats like, I let the beats come to me. I’m not just digging every day like I was on my second and third album. Like, “Fuck everything else. I don’t care what’s going on in life. I’m not leaving my room. I’m making a beat every day whether it’s trash or good.” But that was the great thing about the album though. There are songs like No Mystery that sound like interludes, but the reason the album sounds so diverse is because I had a group of genres within it. Even though ‘Cool’ is a hip hop album there’s a bunch of beats on the album that aren’t hip hop beats. The diversity of genres on the album which is why I love it.
GSC: You have a devoted relationship to your SP. And you mention working and digging everyday to create ‘Cool’. And I’ve seen you mention how boring or repetitive it can be at times, but can you speak to the inspiration to create through it?
HORUS RA: It’s crazy because I’m genuinely just not in that headspace anymore. Like me now, isn’t ‘Cool’ me. When I was making ‘Cool’ I was a completely different person. I would dig every day, non stop, and I would be getting headaches. I would have a headache knowing I don’t need to listen to music anymore, and I would dig through it. The inspiration comes from being doubted. Before I made ‘Remedies’ I was going to be in a group with another person, he was going to produce all my beats because he saw me as a fire rapper. As we drifted, I’m making my own beats and I’m getting better everyday taking steps to progression. The dedication started from being doubted. But once I got involved in it I fell in love with the process and it became about love. For ‘Remedies’ I made beats to prove I could drop an album. When ‘Youth’ came out that was me making beats because I love to make beats. That’s why every album has so many songs. I don’t put so many songs on purpose. I’m not forcing the work, the work just shows for itself. Because if I make a beat a day for three months, I have so many choices to pick so the albums just end up being long?
GSC: Do you write to your beats or do you piece together bars you have?
HORUS RA: I used to write 100 percent of the time. A lot of stuff on ‘Clouded’ is freestyled. “Strong Arming” is freestyled. “Sweeping It Under the Rug” is freestyled. “Harsh Moves” is freestyled. A few songs on ‘Cool’ are freestyled. I wrote everything on ‘Youth’ and ‘Remedies’ but once ‘Cool’ and ‘Clouded’ came I was just like I’mma freestyle because I can rap.
GSC: Is there any reason?
HORUS RA: Because it takes nothing to express how you feel. That’s all you’re doing when you’re rapping, you’re rhyming but the object is just expressing how you feel. I’ve just mastered my way of expressing how I feel. When I rap y’all will just understand this is just me expressing how I feel, rather than is he being lyrical enough or is he being this or that enough.
GSC: It always sounds like you’re freestyling the way words are put together, even when you go back to ‘Youth’ and ‘Remedies’.
HORUS RA: I love writing. It gives you a chance to write down multi-syllable schemes and stuff. It gives you a chance to be way more diverse in your writing if you want to be like that. But that wasn’t my purpose in starting to rap. I’m just rapping to express myself over this beat, that’s all I want to do. Express myself and hope y’all feel me.
GSC: I was wondering how you feel in regards to recognition because you’ve mentioned searching for more recognition but I think you also understand your trajectory.
HORUS RA: Recognition, I used to care about it. But me and Promise have had a lot of conversations about it. And he’s really made sure that I know that recognition only matters as much as you let it matter to you. At the end of the day people are going to know who you are. They are going to know how great you are as an artist. And they might not accept how great you are, but you can’t let that bring you down. Because I felt like when ‘Youth’ dropped I should be the most famous rapper in the world. But it doesn’t happen that way, you have to build your fan base. I didn’t know how to do that, I just knew how to drop great music. As long as I have my core fan base, recognition doesn’t matter.
GSC: I always looked at it the same way. As long as people care about what you’re saying, no matter how many people care it’s worth saying. And the way you express yourself is so different. I wanted to know about your influences between beat making, hip-hop, and jazz.
HORUS RA: I was a Madlib dude growing up, that’s why I collect Quas vinyls. I was really big on RZA when I was younger. Even now, RZA is my number one influence when it comes to making beats, that’s a style I want to emulate. I want to emulate Madlib, Dilla, Q-Tip but RZA was who I would drive to as a kid. I’m a Wu-Tang nigga. But as far as producers, anybody I could get my ears on. DJ Premier, DJ Shay who recently just passed away. I’m not influenced by one person. I’m constantly influenced by music everyday. My jazz influences, Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Dizzy Gillespie. Sun Ra let me definitely not forget Sun Ra. Like he deadass inspired my whole name. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Weather Report, I’m so in tune with that. I love how jazz sounds, it’s such a mature genre.
GSC: I asked because you’re so young, a lot of the jazz and hip hop artists you mentioned were making music several decades ago although some are still active. How did you get influenced by the older style of hip hop and older genre of jazz?
HORUS RA: I blame that on Georgia. Just being from the south, it’s the home of Trap music, OutKast. Lil Baby, Gunna. Being in the south all I hear everyday is Trap. I love trap but it’s not my favorite genre of hip hop. I have four brothers and one sister. They love Trap. I wasn’t that type of kid.
GSC: Are you the youngest?
HORUS RA: Yeah. I was born in 2000. I was the kid that wanted to play Naruto. I wanted to watch the WWE and listen to boom bap hip hop and jazz. I was the different kid, that’s how my parents saw me.
GSC: You dropped out of school in the 9th grade, and from there you started focusing on music. At that age you were able to learn about yourself as an artist, while other people are still in school. And you speak about that?
HORUS RA: I can remember that so vividly. I got kicked out of high school for fighting on the bus. And I had to go to alternative school. I went to the alternative school for one semester and kept getting suspended for no reason. And me and my mom were driving home. I said to my mom, “I’m dropping out of school to be a rapper” and she looked at me like, “What? Why would you do that?” We got into an argument but that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a rapper. So we had made an agreement that if I drop out I have to get my GED. So I got my GED when I was 16. I was15 stuck in the house all day, I was bored. I just decided to put everything into the mission I got. I can say I dropped out and got better at what I wanted to do.
GSC: It’s crazy to me at 15, you knew what you wanted to try to do, and put enough dedication everyday into figuring it out. Was that just a feeling for you or some form of divine intervention?
HORUS RA: My dropping out of school circumstances, all of my brothers dropped out of school, except for one. My sister dropped out of school. When it was time for me I was just like, “I don’t want to be here no more”. So I left. But that was the day when I started focusing. That was when I downloaded Bandlab on my phone.
GSC: I wanted to ask about Iceberg Theory on “Good Comings” because I got stuck on that song on my first playthrough. I had to run that back a few times before I could go to the next song.
HORUS RA: BRO. My uncle literally called me and told me that same thing a week ago. I’ve always been cautious about getting features to artists on tracks they sound good on. And I made that beat on the SP, because that sample was so sick. And then I had tweeted, “I need a feature if anybody wants to be on ‘Clouded’?” And Iceberg was the first person to DM me. So I’m like okay bet, and I send the beat. When he sends it back I’m like, “YOO!” He was the perfect fit for that album.
GSC: In a similar sense on Keeping Me Clouded the feature with aasir has that same effect on “Bar of Life.”
HORUS RA: “Bomb like the perfume of doom, smoking blunts by self filling room, enter gloom. Write myself up out the mood the second Horus/Azzy tune, Yes 2!” What’s so crazy is aasir helped me a lot with ‘Clouded’. He was lowkey like my co-producer. He didn’t make any beats for the album, I produced everything for the album but as far as the second person I was showing things to it was aasir. Because we were going to feature on something before “Bar of Life” called “See I’m Glad You Called” and aasir was snapping on that too. But I made “Bar of Life” and sent it to aasir first, he was like, “I gotta write to this. I gotta be on this.” I was like, “Shit go ahead bro”. He had a lot of involvement. “Front Of Ya Eye” has aasir scratches. He did beautiful in scratching the fuck out of that. There’s another song in the vault because aasir was supposed to be featured twice on the album. I’ve been thinking to myself these last couple weeks should I just make an album with aasir?
GSC: I learned about aasir from my conversation with Benji but when I heard him on your album it was one of those collaborations I didn’t know I needed.
HORUS RA: Once I made that loop it took aasir no time to hit me back and be like, “I need to be on this beat”. And I was like it’s nothing as close as we are you can just hop on it. He’s a renaissance dude. Just as much as he’s talented as a rapper he’s talented as a producer, he’s real skilled. But it’s the final result that was so crazy. The only feature I’m putting with that feature is the Sidewalk Kal. When I made that beat I sent that beat to Sidewalk because Promise has been trying to get us connected for a while. Promise is real cool with Kal, and we followed each other on Twitter. He was just a cool dude, so I hit him up like I got this album coming in a month. I asked him if he wanted to get on “Witness The Soul” or “Medicated God” and he was like nah I got want to talk on “Witness The Soul”. And I sent him the beat with my verse recorded when I sent it to him. He sent me the song back in three days and he had extended the song because his verse was three minutes. He was talking about his life for real. About his uncle, about his drug addictions, his traumas, he was really saying that over that beat. I’m just happy ‘Clouded’ came together as well as it did.
GSC: Can you speak on your process behind Keeping Me Clouded?
HORUS RA: I didn’t want ‘Clouded’ to sound like ‘Cool’ I wanted it to sound like ‘Youth’. It felt like I was making ‘Youth’ all over again. That’s why I made sure to get Johnny on it, that’s why I made sure to get Chop on it because they were the only features on ‘Youth’. When I was making that album I felt alone, that’s why the lyrics to “Stone Cold Move”are so depressing, I made sure to express how alone I felt on ‘Youth’. On ‘Clouded’ I felt alone again. Sometimes when I play ‘Cool’ it sounds supernatural, anytime I bring up ‘Cool’ I always say it was a different time.
GSC: Qire Snow has my favorite feature on the album with “Pains of Love”, the heaviness of what he says takes me back every time. Big DaddyCh0p goes super crazy. He’s on all the albums, right?
HORUS RA: Woah we just brushed over that. The only album Chop isn’t on is ‘Remedies’. Chop is a beat maker and he’s a rapper. He lives in California. Sick ass rapper, he’s the perfect utility guy he can give you bars, he can give you beats, he can mix. Chop is a special talent. He’s a genuine friend. He hit me up around ‘Youth’ and he told me he fucked with my music. So I sent him a whole bunch of beats that I had for ‘Youth’ and he picked “Wave”. And for ‘Cool’ I wanted a beat from somebody. For this album it was a continuation of the tradition. It was the same way with Johnny [VuDoe]. Even though Johnny isn’t on ‘Cool’ he’s an interlude. He’s been a part of three albums too.
GSC: How would you describe the transition between your albums?
HORUS RA: I made sure to develop each album.‘Clouded’ is an evolution of ‘Cool’.‘Cool’ is the transition because ‘Youth’ and ‘Clouded’ don’t sound similar at all. But ‘Cool’ and ‘Clouded’ do. The only thing about ‘Clouded’ compared to ‘Cool’ and ‘Youth’ is I was still getting lucky bro. Like “Stone Cold Move”, “No Mystery, I See Your Face Before Me”, those are lucky beats. I made those and was like, “How the fuck did I do that?” Cause it’s like I’ll sit and look for weeks for samples and not find shit. So when I say luck, that’s me like defying the odds. Because the odds are you don’t find shit. But when you find a way to defy those odds you’ve created luck for yourself. With ‘Clouded’ it wasn’t me getting lucky as much as it was me being disciplined. “I Said So”is a disciplined beat. “Bar of Life” is some luck though. I found that sample and said ‘Thank God’. “Strong Arming” is luck. It’s hard work though. It’s half luck and half hard work, but you gotta meet luck half way.
GSC: Does that speak to the cover for Keeping Me Clouded?
HORUS RA: Yeah. Definitely. The imagery of each album tells the story before you even listen. When you look at the cover for ‘Cool’ you already know it’s going to be something bright and vivacious. You can get that from the cover, but when you look at ‘Clouded’ you see a dark vibe, it’s black and white. And with ‘Youth’ it’s the same thing there’s dark colors on the cover.
GSC: How were your beat battles against JHershey and Benji Socrates? Music battles are popular this year inspired by Verzuz.
HORUS RA: I didn’t do it for competition purposes. Benji is a good friend of mine. He’s on ‘Youth’, the only reason he isn’t on ‘Clouded’ is because I wanted to prove to myself that I can produce all the beats on my own album. ‘Clouded’ was the first album where I did everything myself. And I can be proud of it. But when it comes to battles I got an advantage because I’m a rapper. So if I play my beat I can play my verse too. When I was battling Benji I didn’t play any songs from my albums. I just played jazz beats I made on Koala. I played a majority of the stuff from my Troupe Gang Vol. 1 beat tape. The Hersh battle was crazy. The vibe was through the roof. Hersh was having fun, he didn’t want me to go easy at all. So I made sure to play nothing but the number ones. We battled 3 hours straight. We went at least 20 rounds. Hersh is a great friend in life, he’s like another aasir in my life.
GSC: I wanted to ask about Free Lunch Program (FLP).
HORUS RA: That started shortly after me and Promise did the music video for “Stone”. Promise hit me up, saying he wanted to produce an album for me like a week after ‘Cool’ dropped. Promise picked me up, and we made that EP in one day and one night in like 6 hours. We just sat in the chamber and he just made beats all day in front of me. Promise has become an influence for me. He’s become a brother to me, we do shows together. We have a great relationship so it didn’t take nothing to make that first album. We’re very good at different things. Promise is very good at orchestration. He doesn’t need a sample to build a song. Meanwhile I’m very good at structuring beats around samples because that’s how I learned. Promise learned from acoustics and his own stuff, like a tambourine that he has. He can make a jazz tune without any jazz samples, with his instruments and his friends. It’s two separate styles but we’re good at learning from each other. That’s what you need when you’re a producer. A teammate that can inspire you to keep creating. And we have another project coming, we start recording tomorrow.
GSC: In hip hop, it’s popular to want to create music that’s timeless but less popular to want to be someone who creates music into your 40s or 50s, although the artists we have that age are still really good if not better. Is there an end goal for this, if that’s something you think about?
HORUS RA: The first time I even thought about the end goal was last week when ‘Clouded’ dropped. ‘Clouded’ was a lot of material I had in the vault. So when I dropped it I started reflecting. Like, ‘You got four albums out and niggas still don’t like you? You must suck.’ But it’s a lot of material, it’s great music. I don’t see myself stopping especially from writing because I write anyway. I love to write. Even if I’m not writing raps. I have always been someone who wrote poetry. I can’t see myself not rapping, I can’t see myself not producing beats either. That’s why I always have to block out the other side. The talent that I have bro that doesn’t come everyday. Being able to make beats and rap at the same time it’s not normal. I can’t listen to what anybody says I just got to stay on my shit.
GSC: Do you still feel doubted?
HORUS RA: I’m going to always feel doubted. Even if I have a hundred million listeners, the one person to go in my replies and tell me I suck is going to make me think for three days. Promise tells me this every time we talk, “Stop caring what other people think. Your supporters know your album is a classic album, so you can’t focus on one dude who doesn’t fuck with you.” But I’ve always been that type of person. The littlest thing can discombobulate me completely. At the end of the day I know I’m great. It’s just hard to believe it when you have people who try to bring you down. But you gotta think for yourself.
GSC: Is there anyone you’re looking forward to working with?
HORUS RA: Man I want to work with so many artists, I want to work with Jah-Monte bro. I’ve seen him live bro. His shit live is so crazy, he’s a talent. I’ve been trying to get DFNS on the last two albums. My top five are going to be Jah-Monte, DFNS, BA PACE, Jay NiCE, Stack Skrilla that would be beautiful.
GSC: Are there a lot of shows and venues in Georgia for the kind of music that you make?
HORUS RA: Not really, but there’s a scene though. Because there’s people who enjoy it. We won’t necessarily book some super fly venue but it’ll just be some house party type shit. Because that archive video was did at Allan’s crib which is Promise’s homie in his backyard. Jah-Monte is the main event, Allan’s girl is serving the hot dogs and fries. That was the first show, then we did another show at For Keep’s Book Store in Atlanta. I’m doing Stone in the middle of the city in a bookstore of all places. Every single event Promise makes it an initiative for me to smoke like 20 blunts before the set. And I gotta do it right. Like how am I going to do it right, bro?
GSC: Any last words?
HORUS RA: Shout out ATLPromise, aasir, Sekwence, everybody at Soulless Records, Apollo’s Heart Records. Ulises Valadez Contreras, he made the cover for ‘Clouded’.
I almost forgot I bought forty cassettes the other day. And within the next month there’s going to be cassettes with the instrumentals on the B side so you’re not going to be forced to just listen to me. We’re going to do 15 for ‘Cool’, 15 for ‘Clouded’ and 10 for the new Free Lunch Program album. The new Free Lunch Program album we’re only releasing on physical, not on SoundCloud not nowhere. Cassettes are going to be available on bandcamp.
Physicals coming! New Free Lunch Program album coming. There’s a new Lil Bow Pete collab album coming too. As far as new Horus Ra beats…nah y’all gone have to wait. Horus Ra is tried.
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