Rapper T$AN’s music will be a great addition to the 2022 hip-hop capsule. The instrumentals he raps over are hard-hitting, the flows are unique and the melodies are occupied by autotune with music videos of him either by himself or in the throes of a party.
He recently spoke with rolling out about the subject matter of his music and some of the origins of his career.
When did you start making music?
I started making music the summer before my senior year of high school in 2018. I went to one of my friend’s houses where he had a studio and recorded just for fun, but that’s when I fell in love with it.
Who are some of your influences?
Michael Jackson, Lil Wayne, Eminem, Kanye West, Drake, Future, Young Thug, Travis Scott, Lil Uzi Vert and Playboi Carti are the first ones that come to mind. I’m inspired by any good music, though, it doesn’t matter who it is, I’m always a student of the game.
What do you plan to bring to the music industry?
I feel like, right now at least for the younger generation of rappers, the bar is pretty low and I want to raise it. I feel like people have kind of stopped caring about the craft; it’s kind of something people just do for fun nowadays and hope to get lucky with. I want to make being great the goal again. I want to push things forward and take my generation to higher heights.
A couple of your songs bring up drug use, which has been a discussion in hip-hop that Russ escalated a couple of years ago. How do you view making music about drug use?
I have a neutral stance on drugs in music. I understand drugs aren’t something to be glorified and I can understand why a lot of people hate how popular it’s become in music because drugs are a real problem that ruins a lot of people’s lives. However, music is also self-expression, especially hip-hop, and most of the time we’re just talking about what’s going on around us and in our environments, so you can’t really knock it if that’s what’s going on.
Drugs, just like everything else, are typically only bad when used excessively, so it’s kind of just something you hope people don’t take to the extreme, which at that point isn’t in an artists’ control. I could tell people not to do it and they’ll do it, you know? It’s really just up to the person.
What are three tips you have for aspiring artists?
Perfect your craft. Put in the hours it takes to master being an artist and take time to figure out what type of artist you want to be.
Make the right connections. Connections are everything [that gets] you into rooms you wouldn’t have gotten into and they bring opportunities you may not have even thought about.
Music isn’t about music, it’s about marketing. The song being good is just the cherry on top.
