You have some of the most quotable lyrics out in rap right now. Do you know that you're feeding people the best Instagram captions out right now? Like my favorite bar might be, "Ralph Lauren, button down. My mother thinks I'm cross-dressing." Is that something you think about, or are you just saying what you are feeling?
I'm not going to sit right here and lie to you. I definitely always try to put my best foot forward with what I'm writing. But I just be hoping people feel how I feel about it because music is subjective. Of course, I'm going say I feel like I'm the best at what I'm doing, but that doesn’t really matter because what matters is whose listening to it and if it relates to them. My biggest thing is I want to make the shit I’m saying relatable to somebody who is living like how I'm living. If I'm doing that, I’m happy.
It’s actually a fucking crazy blessing when you think about it to be a little boy from the fucking northeast. I really grew up in the corner house, I am like the day-to-day kid from this urban place. And for me to put my thoughts together, and to push for some shit like this, and it's actually happening is cool. I just got such a unique point of view on how I see the world and I want to speak on it. What you hear is just my perspective and how I'm able to put it into words and translate it to everybody else. Right now, I'm not at where I know I’m going to be at, but the fact that it's promising, people are resonating with it, and it's finally showing is crazy to me.
You mentioned earlier you play guitar, right?
Honestly, I'm not the best at guitar yet, but I still remember how to play melody and all that. I actually made three or four songs on the guitar recently. I really want to get how Mk.gee is at that shit bro. He's fucking crazy with that guitar.
That's the shit that I want to show in this new project. I feel like a lot of people don't know that side of me just because my music is so new to people, but I really like that kind of music, and I make it too. I just haven't had a chance to put it out because my first thoughts of music is what I've been putting out up until this point. But I'm definitely building up my own musical repertoire as we speak.
How'd you get the name Cousteau? Is that you being a history nerd and paying respects to Jacques Cousteau or how’d that come about?
So basically it is like an analogy. My first rap name was the nickname I grew up with. It got to a point where I outgrew it and wanted to give myself a name that I really resonated with. At the time, I was moving around and I was just discovering new things in the world, from human anatomy to a new fucking food spot down the street. I was in the house one day, and I stumbled across Jacques Cousteau and all this French Riviera shit. Beyond him being a marine biologist, we're doing similar things in life. Of course, I'm making music so I feel like that's a cool alter-ego type name to have. So I changed it to that and it just made so much sense to me. It's not just me with the Cousteau name, though. We got Manny, my other homie Tay, Manny's brother Ron, there are more folks in this shit too, like my cousins. So there are definitely more Cousteaus. It's a whole group. It's a whole entity or collective.
Did you grow up performing, or were you ever in talent shows as a kid? Because it comes off so naturally when you’re on stage.
All right, so to be honest with you, my mom put me in a performing arts middle school. I was in it from fifth through eighth grade. From there, she put me into a public charter school that had journalism and media arts. So I was still in movies and shit, like we were really putting together our own movies, it was cool. So yeah, I definitely semi-acted growing up and was into theater. So I feel like that's probably why I'm able to just go up there and just be free and just do whatever I'm thinking in my brain.
That makes a lot of sense and probably led you down that path of being creative, especially with the music.
Facts! In sixth grade, I had to remember these monologues bro. We had six classes in a day, and your last class was a creative one. We had the choice to pick theater or music, and I was in a theater class. I did get kicked out of the fucking theater class, though, because I used to be a little asshole. [laughs] But, while I was in there, there was this one monologue that I resonated with, and I really spanked the presentation. There was a prize, and I won that shit. That was so important to me, like I was young as shit bro.