Yeah. Exactly. Well, like I tell people all the time - Everyone assumes that all my influences come from hip-hop and even if they don't shine through, as much as I would like them to since everything I do is hip-hop driven. . . Even now, most of my influences come from like the rock side than anything, you know? And even like Lifehouse and Jack Johnson and those guys. I love them, too. So it was really weird (laughs) when I started doing hip-hop because I have all these other influences.
Yeah, I hear you. I listen to hip-hop and jazz and rock and all of that and it surprises a lot of people. Yeah, I think that's so great though, especially when you're making music, you know? You find those little influences leaking in there in areas you wouldn't purposely do. . .
Well, there's something to be learned from the way anyone makes music. There's little nuggets you can take with you. Yeah, exactly. I think it's more fun that way.
Keeps things fresh. For sure.
Alright. The new album is called Masquerade. . . Right.
. . . but I remember that it was going to be called, American Dream. Yes.
I have that original disc and, most of these songs are the same. Did you ever release that album or what happened? Well, the thing that we're really trying to stress right now and for any new artist, there's that long, hard journey to get your breakthrough, you know what I mean? And that's really where we're at. We're in a transition period. American Dream. . . I worked on that for three years trying to get those songs done and when I finally got it done, we signed distribution that kinnd of released it, but ran it into the ground immediately afterwards - the company filed for bankrupcy, took a bunch of money, all this. So, a lot of people came to me and told me to just move on and start my second record. . . move on, you know. It's not the end of the world.
Right. But to me, it was like, those songs that I put on that disc meant something to me. They weren't just music, you know what I mean? I didn't want them to just get lost in the shuffle. So, we signed a new distribution deal and I basically told the new distribution company that I'd like to do an amped up version of American Dream. I'd like to go back, add a few new songs, give it like a facelift and I want the message to be put back out there, because I'm not satisfied moving on to the next record when I don't feel like this message from this album had gotten its proper attention. You know what I mean?
Sure. And so that's really what Masquerade is. It is a re-release of American Dream, but in the big scheme of things, American Dreams was out for a very short period of time, very few people even know about it and it really felt like Masquerade is a more complete version of American Dream anyway. So we're really trying to. . . We want this record to have the breakthrough that we feel it deserves before we move on, because we don't feel like out music is disposable, you know?