Kacy Hill: Jack of All Trades, Mastering One

The album, independently produced with industry powerhouses Francis Farewell Starlite, BJ Burton, and Jim-E Stack, is a dazzling, heartbreaking, and endlessly listenable parable of an artist searching for her new relationship with fame and herself. As the title suggests, it’s a logbook of someone questioning the road she has taken to reach a new milestone. It is certain to evoke a resonance with all people who have been lost, and know the joy of wandering back home.

office spoke with Kacy Hill about her new album, concussions, LinkedIn job searches, weightlifting, the BMW 3 series, and her cat.

Hi Kacy, how are you?

I’m good! How are you?

I’m all good, where are you right now?

I’m in LA, sitting on my bed.

What’s on your mind?

I think the most pressing thing is I’m pretty sure I gave myself a concussion a few days ago.

No! From what?

I do weightlifting and I smashed my face into the barbell, like right between my eyeballs. I’ve kind of felt like I’m on a boat for three days.

I totally hear you, I was concussed recently. You feel a little dumber after it happens the first time. Makes thinking a challenge.

Yeah, I feel like I lost some brain cells in the process. It just feels weird. I feel like I’m just slow.

When bad stuff happens it makes the good stuff better, you know? Like you are maybe concussed but you got this album coming up, pretty exciting.

Pretty pretty exciting. I’m stoked. I’ve been working on and sitting on this album for so long now.

I really loved it. It’s always nice to cover someone whose work I really admire.

Oh my god, thank you! 

Yeah! How do you feel about it?

I’m really excited. It’s the first thing I’ve put out that I feel really proud of. I had control of everything. I’ve been involved in every step of the way. It was my money. It’s my baby. And I don’t feel quite over it yet. Sometimes you put something out and you’re like, ‘God, I hate this.’ But I still really love it. And I’m ready to fight for it in any way I have to.

This is the first thing you’ve done since 2017, so what have you been up to this whole time?

Gosh, so much. I think the biggest thing is finishing this album. I spent a lot of time getting out of my last deal. I feel like there was a full year between releasing ‘Like A Woman’ in 2017 until 2018 where I was just like, ‘I really don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know if I’m meant to do music.’ On the worst day, I was like, ‘Let me go on LinkedIn and find what type of jobs are open at a winery at Napa or something, I don’t have any other skills.’ I was just in so deep.

Well now you’re weightlifting so you could do the Olympics.

Yeah! Exactly. But I just spent a long time soul searching. This sounds kind of cheesy but I just fell in love with making music again and finding my purpose in it. Feeling like it had meaning for me. I didn’t feel like that the first go around. I spent a lot of time writing and enjoyed it. Finishing the album because I enjoyed it and loved it. I just want to get better at what I do all the time. 

I actually want to get into that. The first time I heard you and I’m sure the first time most people heard you was your feature on Travis Scott’s ‘90210’ which is one of my favorite songs, and not long after you released ‘Bloo,’ which was, what, five years ago? How do you feel now versus back then when you rocketed your way into the music world?

Gosh, that was so long ago. I feel now I’m a lot more connected with the person I was then versus who I was in 2017. I was so new to doing music. I wasn’t exposed to people or money or fame or any of that where I grew up. That was the epitome of, ‘Ok! Sign a record deal, move into an expensive apartment get a BMW 3 series because that’s what you do.’ It felt so horrid and I felt embarrassed that I didn’t grow up with money and I have no family in any entertainment. I had no connections. I just erased certain parts of who I was to assimilate more into the LA world and life. All that shit that comes with certain cliques of the music industry. I don’t know, I just feel for young twenty, twenty-one-year-old kids who are thrust into this world. I just had no idea about it.

I looked into what everyone was calling you at that time, ‘Kanye’s New Protégé,’ ‘Who is Kacy Hill, Kanye’s New Protégé?’ ‘Kanye’s Protégé, Kacy Hill, Leaves G.O.O.D. MUSIC.’ It was all anyone called you back then. Now that you’ve left G.O.O.D. MUSIC, I wanted to know how you felt at the time about being labeled so immediately with such a designation that you maybe didn’t feel reflected reality.

What’s weird about it is that I’ve always felt so thankful to the opportunity Kanye gave me and what that situation gave me. It’s such an interesting thing to say, ‘Protégé.’ I never worked with Kanye on any of my stuff. I always felt a little disconnected from that. I don’t know if it was true. He gave me a record deal which is fire and there were a couple of meetings where he gave me really really incredible advice but…he’s busy, you know? I wasn’t anyone’s protégé. I was like, ‘Cool, you can call me that,’ but I don’t think anyone who worked with either of us would say that. The relationship was not that close.

Going off of that, could you elaborate on why you left G.O.O.D. MUSIC?

I mean, there are so many reasons. Number one, it was really difficult to navigate the world. G.O.O.D. MUSIC felt like two different labels. G.O.O.D. MUSIC wanted to put out culture-shifting records while Def Jam wants to make money, it’s commercial. I never felt like I was making good use of myself. I was either trying to please Def Jam, being commercial or poppy, but when working with Kanye’s people it was like, ‘Make this cooler.’ I wasn’t actually bringing anything I wanted to do. Part of the time I was convincing myself that I was in control and it was what I wanted to do, but I don’t know that I even knew what I wanted to do. It was very confusing considering I was so new and that wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own. I also was tired of the bureaucracy of a major label. It was so frustrating. I think it all had to do with the situation I was in with management and everything else. Like, ‘Look I just finished this song, I want to put it out.’ And they’d be like, ‘Cool, we’ll put it out in six months.’ Waiting for everyone’s approval for budgets and artwork. Everything was so draining. It kills the creative process for me. I want to be involved and I want to be able to have control over everything and I didn’t feel like I was in control.

You mentioned on the new album you feel more in control, so I’m guessing you feel leaving G.O.O.D. MUSIC was the right move.

Yeah! I mean, there are some days where I’m like, ‘Hmm…was that a mistake? Now I have to invest a lot of my own time and my money into this.’ There are a lot of successful artists who are still on G.O.O.D. MUSIC who are navigating it well like 070 Shake and Teyana Taylor. I think they’re so sick and I have a lot of respect for them. But at the same time, I felt like I needed a change in every area of my life. I changed management, I changed labels. I just did everything differently and I needed to find my head again, find myself again, and figure out what I want to do.

That makes me think about the title of the album, ‘Is It Selfish If We Talk About Me Again?’ It’s such an assertive name for an album, do you want to speak on the thought behind the name?

Thanks! Yeah, I think it’s just this idea that I’ve always been afraid to occupy too much space. When I was young I was really shy. And if we’re gonna get into childhood stuff, I think with my mom, I wanted to be really well behaved and I didn’t want to cause a disturbance. I wanted to keep shit together. And in my adult life that’s translated into me having to be assertive when I ask for things. I find myself having to apologize for a lot of the time when I do when I ask people to do things for me or to help me. There’s the idea of wanting to talk about me again and make everything about me but feeling guilty about it, having to ask for permission.

The album was produced with Francis Farewell Starlite, BJ Burton, and Jim-E Stack. What was it like working with them?

So much fun. There was such a small group of people working on it. All three of them are in it for the music. I needed that. It’s the first time that I’m not worried about the name or the money part of it. I wanted to make music that I enjoy with friends. I enjoy them as people and hugely respect what they do. They’re all so fucking good. For me, it was such an honor and I’m so proud of it and so happy that they were willing to work with me.

I listened through the album three or four times and I’m not sure I got everything out of it. There are so many reflections on fame. What were the themes you were going for?

It was really about finding myself again. I don’t think I’ve been in love the way I am now. So much of me is given to this person and it’s kind of terrifying. So I wrote a lot about that and the idea of, ‘Oh shit, the more you fall deeply for someone the more they can fuck up your life.’ And a lot of finding myself after the first album and feeling like I need to reconnect with the little Kacy that grew up in Arizona. Finding myself through all the bullshit. Also reassuring myself that I’m not a failure. I think after the first album especially I was so depressed. I felt like I failed in so many ways. I have the tendency to be hard on myself. Label things when they don’t go as planned.

What have you been doing to keep yourself energized during quarantine? You’ve been weightlifting and it looks on your Instagram like you’ve been playing Mario Kart and making shirts for the LA Food Bank.

Yeah definitely a lot of that. I haven’t been making tons of music. In the beginning, I was feeling pressure to pump out music. I’m such a collaborator that I was just frustrated. I’ve been honing my piano skills and using that to write songs in a new fashion. I’ve been making lots of t-shirts. I made a little screen-printing factory here. I’ve been tie-dying a lot, weight-lifting a lot. I got a cat. She’s so fucking cute. Kind of been vacuuming a lot. Journaling. I need to stay busy or else I get really anxious.  

I also wanted to know if you’re interested in getting more involved in the fashion industry after spending time as a model when you were younger, making these shirts. Would getting into fashion be something you want to pursue?

Hell yeah. I definitely want to explore every avenue I can. I’m focused on making everything sustainable. If I can expand it into something sustainable that would be great. I want to source everything responsibly. So many artists are into fighting climate change but we use so much stuff. I’m trying to be active in sourcing everything sustainably and I’d love to grow it into something more. Saam: Now that you’re on this path to explore your avenues of creativity, what else do you want to explore? Kacy: God, everything. I want to try everything I possibly can. I would love to act. I would love to find more clothes. I would love to cook and do a cooking show. I’m down for everything at this point. Everything good that’s happened in my life at this point has been so unexpected. I’m gonna let the wind take me wherever it does and let it happen. I’d be so down to move to a vineyard or a farm or whatever and help there. I want to live a full life. I want to try everything I possibly can.