A lot of pressure comes with being signed to one of rap’s most storied and successful labels, Top Dawg Entertainment. Along with the expectations of fans who’ve become spoiled by a legacy of groundbreaking success comes the constraints of working within a proven formula to achieve the same heights as your iconic rostermates — which means a lot of waiting around for lightning to strike twice.
But Del Amo rapper Reason never had those expectations for himself. He’s a rapper’s rapper, but unlike some, he never dreamed of worldwide stadium tours, platinum plaques, and Grammy Awards. He’s a working-class artist from a working-class town (Del Amo is an unincorporated neighborhood just south of Compton and lying between Los Angeles’ logistics hubs of Carson and Torrance, meaning a lot of warehouses and container trucks on its main street). Reason just wanted to make a living doing what he loved.
His prolific, workmanlike approach — which has been employed to great success by indie darlings like LaRussell and the Griselda crew — clashed with TDE’s slow-cooked process, which had previously produced the unparalleled triumphs of Kendrick Lamar, SZA, and just last year, Doechii. Reason just wanted to drop music; Top wanted that music to win awards, sell millions of copies, and reformat the landscape of pop culture. Things came to a head last year over the course of a messy public falling out resulting in Reason being released from the label.
This week, Reason returns with his first independent project, titled I Love You Again. As you might guess from the title, a running theme of the project is Reason rediscovering his passion for producing introspective, wordplay-riddled rhymes after admitting that any other outcome would have led to him quitting music.
“I was so serious about it where I was like, ‘I just won’t make music anymore,'” he tells Uproxx via Zoom. “That’s how certain I was, that I just wasn’t doing it that way anymore.”
However, that doesn’t mean there’s any animosity between Reason and his former label (the fans are another story). But with a new lease on his career, Reason is hitting the ground running; I Love You Again is just the first of three releases he plans to put out this year. The list includes a proper album bearing all the hallmarks of his past output: layered storytelling, moody instrumentation, and appearances from his partner-in-rhyme, Dreamville rapper Cozz. For now, though, he’s basking in his newfound freedom, which has delivered a return to form that should keep fans satisfied until that album materializes.
You’re getting ready to release your new… what are we calling this? A mixtape, an album?
It’s a mixtape or a project. I know it’s funny because we’re in a day and age now where I know a lot of artists say that, and I don’t usually play that game, but it’s genuinely, when you hear it, you’ll be able to tell, “Okay, this is just something that he wanted to get off for his fans.” It is not really conceptual in that way, but the records are really good, and it’s a collection of songs that I’ve loved for a long time, and then newer songs in the space of where I’m at now.
Let’s call it an appetizer.
Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s call it an appetizer. It’s a warm-up.
Maybe this is just my position as having been an artist, having been around artists, being a writer, and being around the business for so long, but I thought people made too big of a deal out of what happened with you and TDE; Everything ain’t for everybody. So if you could just address and give a response that lets people know why there’s still love, but there’s also like, “This is why this works for me and that didn’t work for me.”
I think you hit the nail on the head: everything ain’t for everybody. And it is funny because that’s actually what the single, “Not What You Think,” is about. It’s from the outside looking in, you see this world where you think that, “Oh, this is what it is.” And especially with the TDE aura, you feel like everybody is on board and living this way, and it’s like, “Nah. Every artist is not on board with that.”
That’s not to say it’s any ill will. It was just one of those things where it was just like, “Yo, this is the way that y’all do things and it’s worked for some of y’all artists, and less for other artists. And I don’t want to be one of those artists that it’s worked less for that just sits here and is okay with it working less for them.” That was what I was trying to communicate through that whole process: it doesn’t work for me. It’s crazy because with the TDE fan base, you got to cope, and I love it and I hate it because that fan base is aggressive.
All the fans now have changed the way we deal with music. It’s like rooting for sports teams, but if every fan base was the Lakers’.
It’s nasty right now, bro. It’s tough because that level of commitment and fandom is also why I have the core, loyal fan base that I have now. So it’s a double-edged sword. I’ve had a bunch of fans hitting me, especially with the takeoff of Doechii, they’re like, “Oh, do you regret leaving?” And I’m like, “No, bro.” Just because that’s happening for Doechii doesn’t mean it would’ve happened…
From the day I met Doechii, I literally remember going to Moosa, and I was like, “Bro, she’s out of here.” I mean, the day I met her in the studio, when she was still just driving around a little bucket and stuff, just moved out to LA, and we chopped it up, and she played me some music. I went to Moosa, and I was like, “Bro, she’s gone. She’s one of those.” It don’t matter where she signed to, it don’t matter what her situation is, she’s that talented. So you couple that with a brand like TDE, you couple that with the backing of a major, it all makes sense, but that works for Doechii because that is who she is. She’s an icon. I never got into this thinking I wanted to be an icon. It was more like I looked up to Jadakiss and Fab and n****s like… I’m just like, “N****, I just want to rap.”
Let’s talk about just the process of putting together this… I want to say it’s nine songs, 10 tracks. What made it important to put these out? There are some more vibey records on here; I know you stepped away a little bit from the storytelling stuff.
It’s funny that you noticed that, because I was just talking to my guy that’s helping me distribute all this, and on the vinyls, they put a sticker that said “Reason’s first independent album.” And I was like, “Change it from ‘album.’ It’s not an album.” Because I know how serious my fans are about that. “I want “Colored Dreams” and I need a n**** to die in this.”
So for me, I’m like, “Okay, let me prep my n****s.” Because I know how my n****s are. Let me prep my n****s on the front end and let them know this is a project, and also you don’t have to wait for a long time because I’m spinning the block right away. The first thing I did was go to the hard drive and said, “Okay, what records do I absolutely love and what records do I feel like I’ve outgrown?” That took about three weeks to go through that.
When we were supposed to do the deluxe for There You Have It, “My Own” was on it. So what I did was I took the first verse and then I wrote a new second verse, because the second verse just sounded way too outdated. Then I just started recording. So I did “Stuck On Moments,” which I loved. Then I had two verses, I took one off, I gave it to Kota, and Kota delivered a really, really dope verse. “Not What You Think” was probably the last joint that we did. So I went back into all of the records that I love that were supposed to make projects before, and we did a combination of all of those.
Yes, you don’t have the super, super deep introspective storytelling, but we’re going to spin the block, and that’s definitely coming on the album. On the album, I’ll address everything with the label, ego stuff that I had to… because I went through a lot of growth in that time, but I didn’t want to rush that process without including who I am now with the independence. So when I was about to turn in the album, I’m like, “Damn, this whole album is sounding bitter.” Like I didn’t learn nothing, I didn’t enjoy it.
So I was like, “Let me do some other sh*t, and then I’ll spin the block on the album and get it to a fair perspective.”
Tell the people what it means for LA that LA had the run we had last year, to cap it all off with Kendrick Lamar, somebody that you know, somebody who advocated for you, because you’re closer to him than a lot of people are.
It reminds me of when G-Unit was the biggest thing in the world, and then they signed [The Game] and it was like, “Yo, Game is over there.” And then he started coming out with all these smashes. The thing that’s so impressive about the Dot sh*t is that it’s easy to captivate people when you’re a new artist because people are excited. It’s hard to have the biggest energy ever in your career when you’re not a new artist anymore. The bar is set so high that it starts to become a thing where if you just even can get close to the bar that people have set for you, that’s a win. For him to just f*cking blow by the bar and to the moon when he was already on the moon, so whatever’s past the moon… he’s just out of this galaxy, it’s crazy.
I think it’s important for us because now as West Coast everything — and I mean media, fashion, music, everything — it’s almost like we’re finally allowed to pop our sh*t. We’ve never been allowed to pop our sh*t because the industry has just ignored us. Y’all come out with these rapper lists and y’all don’t put n****s on and y’all talk about the fashion. You n****s dog us. And now you see every single media, Joe and them talk about it, Ebro was talking about, B.Dot finally got five n****s from the coast on his rapper list. We’ve been wanting that for so long and we going to keep it as not even me being biased: we deserve it, bro.
Because we have to talk about the same questions a lot, I always end my interviews with this: What are the questions that they would love to be asked, the things they want to talk about, that if they had the choice to write the questions and figure out what they want to ask.
I like that. I think what I would want to talk about is… it’s so tough because this is the world that they tell you as an artist to never touch on, but I just want to talk about other artists and music, but from a fan perspective. From a space where people aren’t going to take what I say and read into it too deep. It’s like, “Bro, I’m just chopping it with you. I’m just chopping it with you the same way that I would chop it with the homie about music or an album or anything.” And it sucks that we, as artists, don’t get to express… we still love music. We don’t get to express how we really feel about projects anymore or about music anymore.
I Love You Again is out 2/14 via Do More Records/195 Oak Inc. Find more information here.
