By Steven Burgess
Underground Hip-Hop artist John Michel recently came out with Egotrip, marking his first studio collaboration with producer Anthony James. Egotrip is a follow-up to Michel’s previous collaboration with producer Bedhead Bobby on his breakout mix-tape, Sinful Temptations (2023). Since then, through the influence of online platforms like Rate Your Music and Album of the Year, the duo’s popularity has exploded within online music circles. I had the pleasure of talking to Michel about his creative process and the two-year journey he and Anthony went through to make Egotrip.
Steven B: What was on rotation when you were a kid listening to music, and how did that influence your musical upbringing?
John Michel: The first song I probably ever remember hearing was “All Falls Down” by Kanye [West]. My mom was a huge Kanye fan when I was growing up… obviously being from Chicago, that was a huge influence… Around middle school, I discovered Chance the Rapper, and those kind of themes… that he tackles in his music greatly influenced the direction and stuff that I pursue when I make music now. I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff I listen to, people say [my] voice kind of sounds like Rick Ross… When I went to college in Philly... everybody learned the words to “Dreams and Nightmares” [by Meek Mill]... I got to learn [that] song too… I mean, I love Hip Hop.
I played the saxophone since I was ten years old, as well… Jazz had a huge influence on the way that I make music. So when I'm making the beats, we have context in jazz that… directs the themes and stuff that we go for.
Steven B: You've gone on the record saying, “it's not an album closer unless it sounds like an Earl Sweatshirt song.” How do you feel wearing your influences on your sleeve has helped you find your sound?
John Michel: There's no question about it, right? I was influenced by other artists, and I remember when I was making my first mixtape, Sinful Temptations, I [said], “the last song’s gotta sound like an Earl song, and this is what we're going to do.” Everybody can know it: I like Earl Sweatshirt’s music.
For “Sunday Morning Genesis,” I [told Anthony], “we need a beat that kind of sounds like some of them Earl songs… I want something that feels warm and fuzzy, at the end of the project to seal the deal.”
I feel like it kind of be disingenuous if I don't wear my influences on my sleeve. I want people to realize this is something that anybody can do. You know, I listen to a bunch of people, I pick what I like from them and then craft my own style.
Steven B: Throughout the record, there's a lot of references to Christianity and the Bible. How do you feel spirituality influences the writing and the sound of Egotrip?
John Michel: To some extent, [I am] constantly at odds with myself. Right? Because I mean, obviously one of the biggest Christian values is being humble… and I'm unfortunately a man with a big ego. So those things… don't get along with each other all the time.
Going to church when I was little [compared to] going to church now as an adult, reading the Bible, praying. God influences the way that I live my life... but I mean, I'm still a person, right? Those two things that… are at odds with each other in this… fight that I'm having with myself is laid out on the album.
Steven B: How do you go about your writing process: Do you freestyle, write down your rhymes, or do you wait until you get the beat?
John Michel: It's a little bit of both… Anthony
and I, normally… we'll talk about a song [and] the idea of what we want to make… [such as the case for] “PREACHER!” I tried to make “PREACHER!” 11 times… [after hearing the vocals in a] dream… I think [when we recorded, there were] 11 tracks of me yelling and then 8 tracks of me singing it underneath… There was this one sample that I heard my freshman year of college, and I was like… “We can do something with that!” Anthony chopped it and made it real hard, and then I went in and threw some drums on it.
Well now, I have a beat that's really hard and I have these giant “preacher” vocals. What do I rap about? So… once I catch a groove with what I'm writing, I'll… play the beat over and over again and just record a bunch of nothing and see what sticks, pull some bars out of that, and then be like, “what am I trying to say here?” Then… all the punch lines and stuff that I wrote when I was freestyling… evolve into what ends up being a whole song.
On other tracks like “world’s end”, I freestyled that song, listened to what I was saying and then just cleaned it up… and then recorded it… that song is three minutes [long with] no chorus… [it’s] just what I wanted to say.
Steven B: You talked about how some of these songs you've recorded 10 or 11 times, did any of the songs on the final [album] sound completely different than when they were in demo form?
John Michel: The whole second half [of “PREACHER!”], we got Colin's verse, and I recorded the second verse of that song a month and a half before it dropped. Originally, we had this whole other section with organs and strings and guitar. [We thought], we're doing too much, let's just cut it back and keep it hard and we wanted to make that song pretty, so that ended up changing [on] Egotrip.
If you go through my TikTok long enough ago, there's a video of me rapping on the original “Egotrip” beat. Way different. The verse is different. My delivery is different. Everything changed. I mean, Anthony worked on that beat for nine months [to] a year before we figured it out.
[For] “Don't Save Me,” Anthony and I knew exactly what we wanted… we [were] going to make “The Heart Part V” [by Kendrick Lamar], but a little bit more aggressive… I knew that third verse that I do, where… its just me, the bass, and Kennadi’s vocals, I was like “that is something I want to do. I'm going to do that.” Then we made it happen, you know? That song was really inspired and we knew exactly what we wanted. Some things changed, but other times… this is the sound, [this] is what we're doing, and we're going to make what we imagine up here, you know?
Steven B: Originally “Don't Save Me” wasn't actually supposed to be the intro. Wasn't it “Egotrip” supposed to be the intro?
John Michel: “Egotrip” was gonna be the intro because we're like [let’s make the] title track the intro… “Don't Save Me” was on the chopping block for a year because we're like, it's too hard. We didn't want to do it because it was too difficult. We had to honestly get better at making music to go back to “Don't Save Me” and actually execute it in the way that we had imagined. So, for literally a year, that chorus section we had [left] empty and we didn't know what we wanted to do for a chorus, until we found Kennadi Rose for “NOBODY.” [For] “Don't Save Me”... La Reezy’s verse was going to be at the end, but we didn't even know it was going to be La Reezy.
Once we finished “Don’t Save Me,” [it was] probably the most technically proficient song that we had made. It's like… all of the stops are pulled on [“Don’t Save Me” with] live instruments, live piano, we recorded our own strings. You could take the sample out [of] that song and barely even notice.
Steven B: How much of Egotrip do you think consists of live instruments?
John Michel: Sometimes, I like to just turn off the sample and just listen to what we made because I remember when I made my first project, Sinful Temptations, some jackass at my school was like, “it's not real music because you're just sampling it, this is easy, I could do that.” So when I started making this new project with Anthony, we started doing more live stuff, and we kind of became obsessed with… live instruments… and not a lot of people really go after that kind of thing.
How many live instruments? I don't know. “THE KEYS (interlude pt. 1)” [uses] the “Father Stretch My Hands” sample, but [what] a lot of people don't notice is [that] we slammed that [song] with organs. My one homie just got one of those Nord pianos, and for three hours, we were just pulling out the stops on the organ, going at it, and that huge punch when the beat comes in, that comes from four different tracks of organs.
For other songs… like “PREACHER!”, that guitar [part] wasn't there until Anthony was like, “my one boy, he heard “PREACHER!”, he wants to record guitar on it.” Boom! Let’s do it, send it. “world's end” guitar was a part of the ethos of that song… We [wanted] this Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix thing… Whenever we were thinking, we got somewhere and we're like, “I want some more texture, some more movement, some more sauce.” Let's call up one of our friends… we went to Drexel [and] they have a pretty big music program, so they had studios all over campus. Let’s go into one of the studios, reserve it and lay down this guitar, lay down these drums.
Steven B: Being college students when you made Egotrip, how did you go about the process of collaborating with other artists?
John Michel: As far as Ben Crosbie, Kenny Blake, [Jett Mann], even Griffin Lyon who helped out on “PREACHER!,” a lot of those names, those were people that we knew in college… I was in the Drexel fusion band, right? I played saxophone… [and] I met some of these people like Jett, he was in the band too… Luckily, Sinful Temptations did well enough where people at [Drexel] knew my name too, so they were a little bit more inclined to work with me and Anthony; then as far as Senju and La Reezy and colin! and KidTokio and all them, once we started posting the music, it kind of became easier to [say], “hey, here's my discography. Do you want to feature on this next song that we're making?”
Thank God [Yung Senju] said yes… because he agreed to be a primary artist on “NOBODY,” [which was] well deserved. His verses are just as long as mine. Right? He definitely influenced the direction that song went. With [“NOBODY”] being on his page, that elevated the streams a little bit. When [Anthony found] colin! [and] KidTokio… he was like, “they would sound good on these songs.” Word, let's send it.
Steven B: I was able to dig up “Thank you, Mr. Bradley.” [Could you provide any context?]
John Michel: Griffin is one of my best friends from elementary school, probably fifth grade. The first song I ever made was with Griffin [and it] was “Thank you, Mr. Bradley.”
I still try to work with [Griffin] as much as I can. He helped out with “PREACHER!”… The biggest thing that he's been doing is listening and giving us advice on what to do and stuff like that. This project was primarily me and Anthony… I literally called him and I called Bobby, the person who made Sinful Temptations, [and] I'm like, “we're all working together now. For this next thing, whatever we do, let's put all of our brains together because we're in a spot where we should be doing that, so we can all elevate each other.”
Steven B: Bedhead Bobby helped produce your last mixtape. What was the difference between working with Bobby compared to Anthony?
John Michel: With Bobby, it was my first time doing music [seriously]… This was the first time I was rapping on somebody else's beats because before [working with Bobby], I was just making my own thing, recording and not really posting. Sometimes with Griffin, we’d make the beats together, we made one song called “Pablo”... [Working] with Bobby, it was a lot of learning… what sound do we want to sound like… If you listen to Sinful Temptations, it sounds all over the place because I didn't really know where my voice sat… I was still learning a lot.
With Anthony. I was like, “we are making really big sounding rap music, and that's what I want, that's what I'm good at, and that's what we're going to do.” [I would] quote that DJ Khalid clip where he’s talking crap about Tyler [the Creator] and he was like “mysterious music, I don’t want mysterious music.” Jokingly, I say that to Anthony, I'm like, “nothing mysterious! Nothing weird! We're just making things loud and big.” That took some work, but eventually we got to a point where probably the biggest insult you could say is that… [Egotrip is] all really big, yeah, well that's what I wanted… I [wanted] 12 songs that [are] in your face loud.
Working with Anthony was a lot more of me telling him what I wanted, whereas with Bobby [it] was him asking me what I wanted. Obviously Anthony and Bobby both had their DNA all over both of those projects, you know, without them, we wouldn't be doing this interview right now.
Steven B: Were there any songs that were cut off Egotrip?
John Michel: Yeah, there were a few… if you scroll on TikTok, there's this one song called “2000,” and it was the goofiest thing we ever made. It [went], “I spent $2000 on a one night stand.” It was just silly because we didn't know how serious we wanted to take this project, so I threw in something silly, and we're like, “oh, this is going to be our ‘Gold Digger.’”... A couple months later, we listen to it again and we're like, “this sounds sucks.”
There’s one called “Run Hot”... There were a bunch because we were working on Egotrip for two years. “Take No More” came out forever ago… In between that, there's so many songs that either evolved or we just literally never touch it again… at least 15 or 20.
Steven B: What sparked the connection between you and Anthony?
John Michel: The way we met is actually hilarious. I did a show for Sinful Temptations at Drexel. I got Kidz at Play… to come to Drexel and I was like, “I'm gonna open for them, so I can launch Sinful Temptations.” That was my mastermind plan and we made it happen. It was really cool, and I got Wiseboy Jeremy to come as well.
Anthony really liked my performance… and he was really drunk, too. He came up to me eight separate times [telling me], “I need to make music with you.” I was like, “word dude, this is kind of getting weird because this is time number six. Let's pump the brakes.”
The next thing, he sends me a bunch of beats and I'm like “oh, these are really nice.” There were a few people that sent me stuff [but with] Anthony, I'm like, “this is it.” So I start rapping on some of his songs, we start posting some of the songs, and then he's really receptive [when I told him to] change XYZ to ABC.
We both improved so much where it's a lot less of me telling him what I want and it's kind of him [telling me], “I made this and it's undeniably hot.” So I'm like, yeah… I'll rap on this, you know? So we're both growing together and our sounds are kind of merging in a way. That relationship is invaluable. I really can't imagine making music with random producers or anything like that right now.
Steven B: What was the hardest song to produce [on the album]?
John Michel: “Don't Save Me” is definitely up there just because there's so much going on in that song. I did the sample chop and then [Anthony] went through and did his own run of things that he wanted to add… Then we started recording piano and bass and stuff like that. We just had so much music to parse through and figure out how to arrange and that became extremely difficult… just generally arranging [asking ourselves], “where do I put this chorus?” The first chorus is half as long as the other two, La Reezy’s verse was a whole beat switch in the third of his verse because he recorded 24 [bars] for some reason, instead of 16 or 32, that threw us off like, “what am I going to do here?”
“ONEWAY” was also just a weird hodgepodge of different things. There's three samples happening in “ONEWAY” and making those [match] BPM] clicks so it all sounds like one [was very difficult]. “NOBODY” started off as Anthony's beat and I was like, “no, we're doing it this way.” I remade it and then… I threw a bunch of the stuff that he made back into it.
I would say the hardest songs were the ones where we disagreed, where we both wanted to make the beat… but it ends up all working at the end. Those are the ones that are hard because things will be shifted over one click because I re-chop the sample and now it's chopped a little bit differently than the way he did it, so my drums don't hit the same way on his file anymore. Those weird technical issues that you would never think you would encounter [happened] all the time. I was like, “why is everything out of sync, right now?” [At times], we were recording two different versions of a song that [were] entirely different, you know? That made things difficult, but I mean, we worked through it [and] we got to where we got.
Steven B: Did any mistakes or [happy accidents] end up on the final record?
John Michel: That beat switch on La Reezy’s verse on “Don't Save Me,” I had that sample put into my MPC and I was chopping and I hit the button. Anthony and I started talking while I was showing him the chop and it goes like, “Do you know the reason, let me know.” That part just started playing, and we’re talking, and Anthony says “Keep it! Keep it! Keep it! Whatever that is, keep it in! Use that whole section!”
The intro to “Take No More”... I kind of did that as a joke. I was like, “what if we just made a pump fake for the beginning of ‘Take No More?’” Anthony was like, “this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard.” [I told him], “give me a second. Let me cook here.” I threw it in there, I made it happen.
Steven B: Who designed the album cover and what's the significance to the record?
John Michel: [Matteo DeVito] designed it… Basically, I was kind of copying myself. So [I made] Sinful Temptations artwork, and so after making that… I kind of wanted to do the same thing [on Egotrip], but kind of messier and darker… [I wanted] art and a shape that looks like turmoil.
Somebody put it on albumoftheyear.org and everyone is like “did Swans drop a week early?”... I didn't know what Swans was… apparently we were inspired by Swans. I'm very glad that [Birthing by] Swans looks like us because that’s probably one of the biggest reasons that people started to listen to [Egotrip] because it looks like Swans. I still have yet to listen to Birthing, but I'm sure it’s great.
If there's any confusion, whether or not, new Swans was dropping and we copied them and this was some whole ploy, entirely not the case. I was copying myself and copying Sinful Temptations. If you want to call me uninspired, call me uninspired for copying myself, not for copying Swans.
I didn't know what albumoftheyear.org was until two weeks ago. I made the account and I was just like, “hey guys, thank you for loving the music.” I didn't know what it was, and it's really funny now to see they changed me and Swans “must-listen” [label] to a circle instead of being a star… So yeah, thank God for that website because honestly, they put me here.
Steven B: What is some feedback you've [received] from people online or your friends?
John Michel: It's really easy to focus on the hate. So firstly, everybody that took the time out to review it and be like, “this was great.” That makes my day every single day. [It's] honestly insane that [so] many people messed with what I do. I think there's some really valid criticism in there [too]... I [wanted] to make really loud and big songs and do a whole album like that, but I can see how it can probably be a little bit tiring to the listener… up until the last song, it is just in your face. That criticism of [varying] it more, I'm like, “oh, yeah, word. Definitely, that makes sense.” So definitely, there's some good criticism in there… I was just informing myself of what people wanted to hear because I was just making what I wanted to hear.
I'm looking for different things in myself, [to] challenge my [music] into [directions] that I'm less comfortable with, right, which are different sounds and stuff like that. The music that we’re working on, it's still really similar, but we're just kind of testing ourselves with how we can pull this into a different direction and test ourselves [with] different kinds of [approaches other] than big, right.
The people would just call it ass, I hate you. Go away. At least say something. At least tell me why it’s ass, that's just no fun… For the most part, it's been overwhelmingly positive, and the non-positive ones that have been helpful, have been super helpful.
Steven B: Would you say there's been any surprise reactions from artists you admire or kind of look up to that have listened to the album?
John Michel: Steven Dos, he made a cover of “Teenage Dream” that blew up on TikTok. He just DM’d me the word “insane.” So that was cool. JahTalksMusic is a person [that] I watch… and he talked about Egotrip, and that was also insane.
[Anthony] Fantano will probably never happen. Maybe the next project, if it does better, that would be crazy, but the fact that he acknowledged one of Anthony’s TikToks is already insane, so maybe he's listened and just didn't make a review. I wonder if he has and what he thinks. I would get nervous of a Fantano reaction, and then he gives me a four, and I'll just be sad for a week. So maybe it's a good thing that he hasn't reviewed it.
Steven B: Do you have any other dream collabs?
John Michel: JEV is definitely who I'm aiming at right now. I got to make something that he's going to rock with. People compare me to redveil a little bit, [but] that dude can sing way better than I can. I think we could have a good vibe there. If I was rapping, he was singing, that'd be really cool. Those are things kind of further down the line. I kind of want to work with what's working.
Senju and I, we were texting the other day, we're going to try to make something else happen, make another song. [We’ll] probably throw Kennadi in there too, because that's a formula that I was like, “yeah, we can do that. That works. We sound good together.”
[I want to] work with some people I've worked before, like… Wiseboy Jeremy, I love his voice and I like his sound, you know, people from the first project… People that feature on our songs are [artists] that I listen to, so if I can [continue to] work with people that I'm a fan of, I want to keep doing that.
Steven B: Is there anything we can expect from you and Anthony in the near future?
John Michel: We're working on music every day… Luckily, I got off work early today, I'm gonna go make some music, you know? So it's just like, when it's done, it'll be done. No dates or anything like that yet… But yeah, definitely soon, 100%.