Spoke From My Skull

Spears’ in-your-face (literally), ruthlessly provocative mystique has grown to be such an integral part of his aesthetic makeup, that by the time you make it to the door (if you manage to get that far), the already-potent I-don’t-know-what-I’m-in-for anxiety has hardened into something molten, and it’s bound to begin to show. It’s exactly this that Kendre Swinton, Spears’ longtime friend-slash-manager, must be picking up on, when — standing across from me in the foyer with a mischievous grin — he asks me to make my best guess as to what Spears is like in person.

Necklace R13, bracelets MARTINE ALI and BERNARD JAMES

Spears’ music, a primary focus of his over the past few months, is cut from a similar cloth to his unforgiving aesthetic. In the two singles he’s released in tandem with Shayne Oliver’s Anonymous Club, his voice rattles into a growl, yelling itself hoarse through half-threatening, half-obscure mantras like “hold my motherfucking cock,” on Hollywood Meltdown, or “all these n***as are bleeding out,” on Bleedinout. He performs on stage with the same high-energy, punk-informed hardcore penchant that defines his public-facing persona — whether donning a mohawk and a leather jacket, or spaghetti straps and a skirt, everything comes out of him in grand, roaring fashion, leaving only the question I’m sweating in this Brooklyn high-rise to hopefully find an answer to: what is “everything”? With my only hints being his obscurely glorious, carnal creative footprint, I have just as many leads now as when I didn’t know who Izzy Spears even was.

Moments after Swinton gets the question off, a teasing whistle comes from the top of a winding staircase, and it looks like it’s time for answers. Today, Spears is fresh off of an international tour with Yves Tumor, a frequent collaborator now helping him to piece together his upcoming debut musical project. For all it seems, the non-stop work isn’t near finished. When Swinton and I are led to an expansive, sunlit suite, we’re greeted by a pair of studio headphones sprawled out on a cowskin rug, a switched-off TV, and Spears’ spiked leather boots, which lay glamorous claim to the sense that, although the tour is over, the show must go on. Even the pets are busy — for most of our interview, a rugged black cat is intently swiping away at doomed houseflies on a window.

For a proven multi-hyphenate like Spears, being a busybody is somewhat on-brand. At 24, he’s been handpicked by Shayne Oliver to take part in the aforementioned creative powerhouse Anonymous Club, and mastered a raucous stage presence as unnerving as it is enticing. These days, he’s on to the next challenge — his first ever sonic release — and although he throws me a simple “no,” when I ask him if he’s scared of anything, it isn’t as though the road ahead is a certain one. On a humid Friday morning in June, Spears opens up about people’s opinions of him (spoiler alert: he doesn’t care), motivation, and the art of just doing it.

Jacket and Pants Y/PROJECTS, Shoes BOBBY DAY NYC, Headpiece and Mask STYLIST’S OWN

Samuel Hyland – Post-tour, can we do an existential check-in? Where is Izzy at in life right now?

Izzy Spears – Resting, but also, the work hasn’t stopped. I’m doing Boiler Room, I’m doing this [interview], I have a studio session, [and] right when we leave, I have to go around the corner to work on my set… so, yeah. I’m just more ready than ever to put my project out. We’ve been working on shit for months. I’ve been working on this EP since November. Been working on videos, working on a bunch of shit. So I’m just ready to put it out and go to the next step, which is touring some more. I’m super tired, but I feel like I haven’t earned a full vacation yet.

“Earned”… that’s interesting. What do you feel like you have to do to “earn” a full vacation?

Reach my goals. I skipped a couple levels. My EP’s not out, I haven’t been on a [headline] tour — those are all goals. But I think the main goal is just feeling the accomplished feeling of putting out my first project, and living my project. That’s, like, the main goal. And even after it comes out, I feel like more goals will open up. So I’m not really planning, or seeing, a vacation moment in my future anytime soon. Not next year.

Necklace R13, bracelets HANREJ and MARTINE ALI

You have a lot of avenues that you release creativity in. Did they all kind of come around the same time, or did they each grow as you came into your own as a creative? 

IS – My brother had a rap group when I was a kid, and I was always writing raps to try and get him to let me in the group. He never did. But I started making music in high school with a couple of friends. As I got older, I started throwing parties called the ‘House of Lotus’ in Atlanta. Once I started curating those parties, people started asking me to help with casting. [From] that, production opportunities came up, and I started working on sets. As I got more experienced, I took a break from music and started working on production, and managing someone else, and then casting. And then last year, or the year before that, I just completely stopped casting to work on music. For the first year, it was just trying to figure out who would take me seriously enough. And then Anonymous Club came through, and we worked on a couple singles. But Anonymous Club was working on multiple projects with multiple artists, and there wasn’t enough focus on me specifically. So I took it upon myself to leave and go to LA, and just get away from everything I was doing. As soon as I got there, I started hanging out with Yves [Tumor] a lot more, and he put me in the face of all my producers now, and everyone who’s helping me. Things started happening as I got older, but since I was younger, I knew. I dropped out in the tenth grade. I checked out in the seventh grade. Not that I knew it was gonna happen, but I knew that this was the direction I was going in. I got face tattoos as insurance. Like, I’m not ever gonna be no cashier, or at a desk, or some shit like that. So it’s like I have to… not like I have to, but just ensuring that I’m going to follow this route. Kind of like forcing myself to achieve what I want.

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You mentioned feeling like you weren’t being taken seriously, and I wonder if that’s still true to an extent?

Yes and no. I mean, I’m doing it. I’m doing everything I set my mind to. Whether I’m being taken seriously or not, I’m gonna do it still. For now, if you aren’t gonna take me seriously, I’m just gonna go somewhere else and find the people that believe in it for real.

Is it your goal at any level to be taken seriously?

I don’t give a shit if you take me seriously. It’s not really a goal. I feel like wanting people to take you seriously – and for that to be a goal – defeats the purpose of doing it for yourself. You can miss the train, but we goin’.

In that case, how much would you say your music is for you, and how much would you say it’s for your consumers?

Well, this EP specifically is very cryptic and very personal. It’s all for me. I love all the songs. They’re not Anonymous Club songs, so maybe they’re not what people are fully expecting. But it is fully, fully personal. Personal, but designed for consumers.

If you could choose between hating the record and having it sell, or loving the record and having it flop…

[Laughs] The charts. Money. I could keep making shit for me all the time. But I want to make hits. I want to be a pop star. A lot of people want to be cool, and they want to make cool music that their friends would love — and that’s cool, I want to make music that my friends would love — but there’s a goal to be successful. And you can define success in different ways, but my version of success is charts… endorsements… money.

At least you admit it.

I’m not ashamed of it. I come from dirt poor. Mom got eight kids. All of us in the same house, by ourselves. I want to get her out. It could be for fun and all that stuff, but I’m a grown-ass man. I gotta eat.

You’re two different people, on-stage versus IRL. How does that interplay work? IS – Before I get on stage, I get nervous, so literally right before, I’m just like “Oh, you have to go out there.” You go out there, what are you gonna do, choke on stage? Be like, “Oh my God,” and run off? You have to just do this shit. You have to do it, and you have to do it to your fullest capacity. Once I get on, I kind of just let go. Whatever People are gonna love it, people are gonna hate it that got me going crazy, I kind of just let go of it all, because I have to do this right now. Everything just comes out in whatever way. It comes out in that moment because the adrenaline kicks in, and I’m taken by the adrenaline.

What is the “everything” that comes out?

All the energy. And just being a performer. Even though I may dress a certain way, it’s a fucking show. You can be the outfit. You can embody the thing. You can’t just go on stage in a fucking skirt and a mohawk and be like, “Um… this next one is called…” Nah. It all comes out.

Jacket, Shirt and Tie BURBERRY

How much is the outfit an extension of you, and how much is it a “Jekyll and Hyde” situation? Like another brain that’s working against the version of you that wants to blend in?

My look is a really big part of me. That’s why no matter where I go, people are always saying something to me. That’s why when I miss, I’m like, “Oh, I need to change,” or, “I need to go,” because I don’t feel represented. It is a really big extension, the outfit. I mean, I could still give the show naked. A lot of my look, Izzy Spears, is naked anyway. It’s not like a must, but it is an important part of my look to have the accessory, or the little peek-a-boo piece, the little take-off reveal, you know what I’m saying? It’s all part of it. I like to show layers of myself. Sometimes I’d go out in a full trade fit, big baggy, and other times I’m going to wear a skirt and a little fucking spaghetti-strap tank top. It’s all the same message in the music regardless — it’s masculine, it’s feminine, it’s whatever.

That version [of me] is always present in my head, but I never show it. There was an interview where Rihanna was asked, “What do you do if you’re just not feeling it?” And she was like, “Fake it, bitch. Act like you’re feeling it, the fuck?” That’s pretty much the concept there. I won’t always feel like, “Yah-yah, but I look like it.” It’s not something super intentional every day, because it’s just me, the way I dress, whatever the fuck comes out. It’s just who I am. I’m always going to look the way I look. Unless I burn my whole wardrobe and start over.

Something you mentioned earlier was about having checked out of school in seventh grade, and actually having left in the tenth grade. What was that time between seventh and tenth like? What led up to you–

[Laughs] Weed. And just being a fucking hooligan. Skipping school, selling weed, doing bad stuff, not being gay. Not like, being straight, but just pretending that I wasn’t gay. Doing every retarded thing I could think of that would draw the attention away from me being gay. I was really figuring out that I was gay, but trying to fight against it in every way possible. Selling drugs… hitting licks… partying every day… doing a bunch of drugs.

When did you stop trying to fight being gay? 

Seventeen. I was high on Xanax. Me and my friends, six boys, six girls, we were all at the house just talking. And they were like, “Oh, she likes you, you aren’t fucking with her? On Xanax, you just don’t give a fuck about anything. So I just said it: “I’m not fucking her, I’m gay!” And then I got too excited, and I got on Facebook, I wrote a long-ass paragraph, I sent it to my sisters, and then the next morning I woke up, not remembering anything, got on Facebook, had thirteen messages. I was like, “What the fuck?” My whole family was going crazy. So I didn’t really consciously choose. It was fully a surprise.

KENDRE SWINTON – [Laughs] Going crazy. What does that mean?

They were just tripping. They were like, “Oh, I can’t believe this.” Now, everybody’s super happy for me. But yeah, like seventeen. I could have been like, “Oh no, my friends did that, they’re assholes,” but I was just like, “Shit, it’s literally now or never. You’re gay. Get over it.” It was just too much drama going on. Too many rumors. I was like, I haven’t been [in the house] for three years, I don’t have to be here, so I’m not going to be here.

Necklaces HANREJ and MARTINE ALI, bracelets MARTINE ALI

And you never went back?

Nope.

Have there been any challenges in recording the new EP?

Just being patient. I didn’t want to put the EP out just to drop it on SoundCloud, or put it through DistroKid, or something like that. What I wanted was a very cohesive, very industry-proper way of doing things. Then I guess another challenge was just… I do think about putting myself out there, and how it’s going to be received. Just being real on the track, and not taking anything out, or being worried about being too vulnerable, or saying too much, or people being able to piece what I’m saying into moments in my life. It was a challenge to just let that shit go. Put it out. Write it. Most of the hardship comes from breaking mental barriers.

How do you normally address challenges?

Just doing it. I could sit there and dwell on it. But if I am dwelling on it, I’m thinking of a solution, and most of the time, the solution is just doing it.

You’ve done a lot of work the past few months. Touring, then jumping straight into finishing your EP. Does it feel any different when the work is for you, and not for someone else?

I’ve done a lot of work for other people. This is my first music project. As soon as you finish a job for someone else and it’s done, it’s like, What’s the next job? Working for myself doesn’t end. As soon as the EP’s done, there’s more to do. I think that’s the biggest difference. I don’t see an ending. There’s not an ending point, or a final payout, or next thing.

Creativity is something you never really retire from. With a lot of artists, you can never buy it when they say they’ve retired from music. Is it like that for you? Full-time all the time?

Yeah. Even if I stopped doing music for a little bit, it would be something else for sure. I mean now that I’m doing music, I feel like it will be able to open up different opportunities and avenues for different work. It’s not going to stop anytime soon. Even if I take a break or something, it would be another project happening.

Do you want there to be an ending?

Not yet. I mean, obviously eventually. But no. Not really. I could perform for a long time. I’ve got a lot more of that left in me. I don’t see an ending anytime soon.

Necklaces HANREJ and MARTINE ALI, Bracelets MARTINE ALI, Cuffs R13, Underwear CALVIN KLEIN

They did everything to make a n***a turn from god not knowing every n***a is a god. Perception? We never see ourselves until we’re left staring naked in the mirror; dick limp. It wasn’t the alcohol but it wasn't him either.. Often am I perceived as “aloof” by the men I don’t want in my life or have ditch ed. I am the opposite of whatever a steady fuck is, they assume. What I conceal from you enables my evolution. First n***a through the door always got a key, but I left it open and I want to be touched.

I regret everything I left in the closet. I gained myself respect after I tossed everyone else’s morals on self-esteem and now everyone’s so proud of Izzy. Now everybody want a piece of Izzy. But I'm not for those looking for a thin slice.

Sacrificing religion to get to the finish line, my Mohel knew I was destined for greatness. Raw is law. Too many half asses out here and i aint one unless im over the kitchen sink. To be understood, is never to be expected. My duality of man; my masculine, my feminine. We have both and I use my chromosomes. To my dear ones, I’m known as Isaac. Benyamin is my family name, it’s better than a Welsh last name. My last name might suggest I’m not one of Europe’s black possessions, but, heard by the wrong Ashkenazi and he’ll be quick to remind me I'm no African prince, either. The key to a tale is to be found in who tells it. Still n***a.

IZZY wears Shirt TELFAR, Jeans WILLY CHAVARRIA, Shoes BOBBY DAY NYC, Necklaces HANREJ and MARTINE ALI, Bracelets MARTINE ALI, glasses FLATLIST; LEFT wears Shorts BRYAN JIMENEZ; MIDDLE wears Shorts WILLY CHAVARRIA