At the age of 18, Steven Cooper went to church and heard about Jesus and it changed his life. Cooper, who had already begun writing songs, turned his efforts towards spreading the Gospel message with the goal of changing the lives of others. Under the pseudonym of Lyrycyst, Cooper recently released his label debut project, Masquerade, which tackles the false pretenses under which many of us live our lives and go about our business. I talked to Lyrycyst a bit about the album, his past and hope. That conversation follows. brenten gilbert: Alright. We'll try to be pretty quick today, since you're on a vacation of sorts. Steven Cooper (Lyrycyst): Yeah. You're fine. I have a little bit of time.
Good deal. First up, how and when did you get into hip-hop? Okay. Well, I started back in high school. I started when I was 16 years old and basically, like. . . I had a bunch of friends who were into doing music. Really into doing hip-hop. They didn't do it professionally. They just kind of did it as a hobby, but they would never include me in it, because I was the white guy. (laughs)
Yeah. So it was more of a dare that really got me into it, because it was really just to prove to my friends that they were wrong and that I could do what they were doing. So I would lock myself in my room for a little bit, practice, and write songs. I had always been writing songs for about two years before that, but I had just never really written hip-hop. So, when I started, I actually loved it and when I showed my friends they were all, like, impressed and you know. It just kind of escalated from there because I had proven them wrong and now I wanted to prove other people wrong. And I'm still trying to prove people wrong today.
(laughs) Yeah. You'll probably never get over that. Yeah, exactly. It's a never-ending battle. (laughs)
Okay, so which artists did you listen to and look up to back then? Back then it was. . . Actually, my favorite style of music is more rock than hip-hop and rap.
Okay. But back then I was really into, like, Outkast and Tupac and all them guys. And then at the same time, I was really into, like, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and you know (laughs).
Yeah. I had a pretty wide variety of music, like I would listen to anything. Even now one of my main things is that when I went out and started to challenge people to open up their minds and let go of their stereotypes about rap music and listen to more than one genre, I really got convicted myself, because I didn't have a very well-rounded collection of music either. You know what I mean? So that really convicted me, like, I need to have an open mind as well and start listening to a broad spectrum of stuff.
Yeah, I go through phases myself as to what genres I listen to or like most. It kind of depends on my mood, I guess.