Iann Dior, I’m Gone

Check out the interview and I’m Gone below.

Congratulations on your new EP!

Thank you, I’m super excited for it to come out finally. 

You delayed its release—do you want to speak on this a little bit? 

I felt like it wasn’t the right time to put it out, with what’s going on in the world right now. The world is not how it normally is functioning. I wanted to show support as well, because right now, music is not what’s important. What’s important is making sure that people understand that being Black should not make you less than what you actually are, you know what I’m saying? It’s a very weird situation, and it’s also making me feel weird, you know? I didn’t feel okay with dropping my music while all that stuff is going on. 

How did it feel going from tour to then being in lockdown?

Depressing. I’m not even gonna sugarcoat it… Depressing, because my favorite thing to do is perform, to be with my fans, show them everything that I’ve been working on, because it's not me by myself whenever I drop something, it’s all of my fans. We did this shit together. I look outside, and there’s nothing going on. I’m seeing tanks drive across my house. There are soldiers out there—I’ve never seen anything like it before. 

So you’re from Corpus Christi, Texas. When did you move to L.A.?

I was raised there, but I was actually born in Puerto Rico. I moved to L.A. a little over a year ago with $300 to my name. Spent $200 on a taxi and went to L.A. by myself, ‘cause I didn’t know what an Uber was, and I signed my deal about two weeks after I got there. 

Wow, that’s impressive. Do you like living in LA?

I’m not gonna lie, at first I actually hated it. I didn’t know anybody, and I was still getting used to the whole… I mean L.A. has its own language, so I had to learn that. But now, I love it. Whenever I go back to my hometown, and I land in the airport, the people that work there are freaking out that I just arrived back home. So it’s not the same feeling. 

Who did you grow up listening to?

Growing up, I was listening to a lot of Jay Z’s Blueprint, I was listening to Marc Anthony, the Latin artist. I was pretty much just listening to what my parents were playing, because they would be in the car and hit play. My mom really didn’t like the cuss words and stuff, so whenever I was in the car with my dad, he would play Jay Z with me and put his finger over his lips, like be quiet. I would just put my hoodie on and start jammin’. But in high school, the one person I gravitated to the most would have to be J. Cole, because he tells stories of his life, and I feel like me and him have the same story. We came up the same way, from being homeless, to being okay, to being where I’m at now. And of course after I moved out here, I started listening to Paramore, Panic! At The Disco, The Strokes… 

Nice, yeah, I definitely hear a pop-punk influence in your music. 

Yeah, and the craziest part about that is that I never really grew up around friends that listened to that type of music, so after high school is when I really fell into it, and it just felt right. Pop punk is very me. 

How do you think growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas shaped your taste in music?

Music there is very different, I won’t lie. I would never listen to country music, but since I was living in Texas, that’s all they’d be playing. Sometimes I’d be like, “Oh, you know what, I actually kinda like this.” In Texas, they gravitate a lot toward SoundCloud and finding the underground artists that haven’t come up yet. 

And you came up that way too, right?

Exactly. Whenever I first started, everyone in my city was kind of trashing my name because they were like, “What is this sad music? Nobody wants to listen to that.” I had people come up to me like, “You don’t want people to think that you’re like this—that you’re always sad all the time.” So, it was a pretty good change. I think I inspired a lot of people in my city as well, just to do whatever it is you feel like you need to do to live your life. 

So you feel you can serve as an inspiration for people from your town?

100 percent. It’s a tiny place, and the only artist to ever come out of there was Selena. She passed away in my hometown. She’s from there, and she was the only person who ever really made it. It’s proven that it’s possible, even if you come from a city that only has a mall and a beach, you know? 

What are some of your musical inspirations for I’m Gone?

I would say while I was making this project I was listening to a lot of Kanye, and I was listening to a lot of Speaker Knockerz. But besides that, I was staying away from getting inspiration from any other artist for this project. It was really all myself. We were talking about where we were trying to go with it, and I was just telling how I was feeling, what I wanted this track to bring out of me, and what emotion I wanted to bring out. 

And what emotion is that? 

In this EP, there’s a lot of anger, there’s a lot of frustration. I mean, I was just upset. This is the story of me figuring out what it really is to live in Hollywood: from signing deals, to become an artist, how it actually is versus how I imagined it would be. 

I definitely sensed that listening to it. There’s anger, but I also feel like there’s a delicateness to the emotion. The whole thing isn’t necessarily aggressive, and I really liked that duality of anger but also being sensitive at the same time.

Exactly, because whenever I get angry about something, I’m not the type of person to get angry about it for the rest of my life. I want to find the reason why it happened, I want to fix the problem, and I want to get on good terms with whoever it is. So in the project, I explain my sadness about the situation, and say, like, “I really fucked with this person. I’m angry, and I’ll talk about it, but this is what I really want to happen.” And that’s all my music is. I want my fans to get the idea that things could be a lot worse, and you’re always in a better position than you were before and to always remember that. 

What was it like to collaborate with artists such as Lil Baby, Machine Gun Kelly, and Travis Barker as a new artist yourself?

It’s very inspiring. MGK, Travis Barker, they’re big brothers to me right now through all this. The first session I ever had with MGK was at Travis Barker’s studio, and honestly that was hands down my favorite session that I’ve ever had in my life. We made “Sick & Tired,” and we made a song for MGK’s album that should be coming out shortly. It makes me very happy, because my dad used to listen to Blink-182 all the time, so it's just awesome for him to see me working with Travis. The Lil Baby feature also made me very happy. Big deal for me. 

How did you find your way to rapping?

Ah, this is actually a funny story. So my best friend that, you know, I recorded “Emotions” in his closet, he had just bought a studio set-up, and he was like, “I’m trying to find an artist to work with… We’re gonna blow up,” and I looked at him, and I was like, “Cool, hope you find him.” And all my friends were like, “Yo, make a song. You have a cool voice. You should try to make a song.” And I was like, “Nah, nah, nah, nah.” Then, they started calling me to start recording or whatever, and I was like, “Ight, bet.” I made a song, and I actually liked it. Everyone was vibing and saying, “Your voice sounds cool as hell.” So we put it out on SoundCloud, and it was the first song I ever put out. It’s not on SoundCloud anymore, but they put it out, and it got 100,000 views, and we were like, “What the hell?” Yeah, after that I just started taking it seriously. 

I know that you were always a good writer, and that’s one of the reasons your friend originally hit you up to do a song. So, I was wondering what your writing process is like?

Whenever I’m writing a song, I let the beat tell me the story. It’s kind of hard to explain, but as soon as I hear the beat, I know where I’m going with it. I pull out memories. Sometimes I can mix two memories that I’ve had in my life into one song. I never sit there and try and think about it for hours, because then I’m not inspired anymore. The song speaks a lot better whenever I just go in there and say what’s one my mind, say how I feel.  

What is your favorite part of this EP?

My favorite part is that it is 100 percent me. Every single song, from front to back, was me in the studio. Some of these songs were finished in, like, ten minutes, where I didn’t write a single word to them. But they mean more to me than a lot of the songs that I’ve put out recently. I kind of have this emotional connection to every single one of these songs in I’m Gone.

What does it feel like for you to release an album in this political climate and while you can’t play shows?

It’s a strange feeling to know that I can’t go perform these songs and really show the emotion that I put into them when I was recording them on stage. But it made me appreciate other things. Like now, I have to make sure that my fans feel like they’re with me, and they fully understand what I’m saying and what the message is in these songs without me being in front of them. So it’s all about making the story very understandable. 

How are you spending quarantine?

I’ve been spending quarantine really getting to know myself again. I would say that before quarantine, I didn’t have time to do that. I was just focused on what I had to do that day and how I could do everything that I had done in the past better. With quarantine, there’s nothing going on, and I can sit there in my room and think and process life again, and just become closer with myself. But I’ve also been putting my emotion onto canvas, and creating art with how I feel, because I’m also inspired by Basquiat, and I think me and him are very similar in a lot of ways. He was also half Puerto-Rican. Other than that, I’ve been playing guitar, just trying to stay busy. Like I said earlier, it’s very depressing with everything shut down right now. 

What does the future hold for you?

Right now, I’m working on my album. Very, very, very excited about it. I’ve made some of my best music with Travis. It’s basically gonna be I’m Gone, but a bigger version of it. I’m tapping into funk music, pop music, punk pop, we got some rap in there… I’m learning how to play guitar, so in one of these songs, I will have a guitar solo that I record myself on there, which I’m very excited about. The future is endless.