Marisa Kalil-Barrino — Tell me where you are right now in life and in your music career.
Robb Banks — I’m happy, you feel me? I feel like I’m happy–I’m trying to just find happiness within myself and within music…well not even within music, moreso happiness just within myself, within life, and my personal life.
MKB — What does that entail?
RB — A number of things, a variety of things…whatever I want to be honest with you. Whatever I wanna do I’ll just do it.
MKB — Tell me about your songwriting process and how you come up with the perfect combination of your lyrics and beats.
RB — It’s real weird to be honest with you. It’s all over the spectrum damn near. It’s crazy–it’s a lot going on. Sometimes I'll just jump in, say the first thing that comes to my head, and just go off that. Sometimes I'll write the whole song, sometimes I'll write the first four bars and then just go off the top of my head for the rest. It just varies on the day, I don’t want to say the beat, it’s not ever really the beat to be real with you. The beat could be fire as hell–the perfect beat for me–and I might not even get to it that day. I might wanna do another one just to warm up. I might just be freestyling all that day or it could be a beat I don’t really find that fire but it’s like, ‘Alright let me just knock it out.’ I’ll write the best song to it. It varies on my mood.
MKB — You’re widely-known for your dirty lyrics (which is one of my favorite things about your music). Does it come from experiences, fantasies, or both?
RB — Both. 100%.
MKB — What are some of your favorite collabs you’ve done and any that you have coming up?
RB — One of my favorite collabs is for sure with Sonny Digital just because I’ve looked up to Sonny music-wise for so long. I grew up hearing his tag on beats for some of my favorite artists and shit like that. Being able to work with him and having a friendship with him now is real cool…I’ve been working with Tony Shhnow–he’s real cool. When we’re in the studio we got good chemistry and that shit hard, like we make some good music. There’s many more people I’ve been working with a lot lately. I don’t wanna unwrap too much right now.”