CJ RUN

ON PERSONHOOD, GLOBAL MUSICAL INFLUENCES, AND THEIR NEW SINGLE

I saw you open for Sir Babygirl last fall. How did you two connect?
It was mainly that Empty Bottle was looking for openers and my booking agent was able to put that together. I do believe that Kelsie picks who opens. So I was put up on a list of artists and she liked what I did.

It was a really electrifying set. Are all your shows that high energy?
It depends on the crowd, but I always bring that energy to my shows. It’s up to the crowd to give that back to me or not. But I think because that show specifically was an all-queer lineup that everyone was excited to have a gay old time.

I feel like your sense of humor comes across in your lyrics and also in your live performances. Have you always been an entertainer in that way?
Yeah, you know only recently people in my life have described me as funny. Growing up I was just considered weird so my sense of humor didn’t become appreciated for real until college or the last few years. I grew up watching sitcoms so I’m all about punchlines and corny jokes. I watch standup comedy routines as a way to learn about performance. Humor and making people laugh and having a zinger at the end is something I’ve always done.

How long have you performing professionally?
I’m twenty-one right now so…it’s been the last four years. Since I got to college.

Is that something you knew you wanted to do in college specifically?
Definitely. When I started rapping at thirteen, I knew I wanted to do it professionally but I wasn’t sure how to get there. When I was close to graduating high school I had a whole plan that I wanted to go to college and get my entire college to fuck with me. If I could get everyone at my school like me…I figured that would work in the long run.

You just released a new song called “Psych” on Christmas Eve. Tell me about that song.
I live in Chicago now but I was back in Urbana to make music with my friend and collaborator yourbeautifulruin. We were all just in someone’s house making music and it really came from a session of being around other musician friends and the lyrics just wrote themselves. I wanted it to be a tribute to my college days and the scene and place that has helped me catapult my career to where it is now.

I really do attribute growing my craft in Urbana and going to school out there for the reason I am the musician I am now. It was a good springboard for me so the song is a tribute to that. We filmed the video during a house show and during a weekend out there to give that feel of this is what it was like when I used to live here and the house shows I used to play and these are the people I played these shows with and give people an insight into where I’m coming from.

So is “Psych” the start of a new album or project or is it a standalone?
“Psych” is a standalone. Like when you hear something from me don’t expect to hear another song like that. It was kinda like end of the decade, thanks for everything, here’s a new single, goodnight type of thing. Everything you hear in 2020 will be different than that.

Can you give any hints or tell me about your music coming out this year?
I’m approaching a sound that reflects me where I am right now. I’m working with a lot of different producers and producing myself. I can’t give away too much but people are gonna love it and it’s gonna be different than what you’ve heard before.

Are there themes you find yourself coming back to constantly in your songwriting?
Something that I return to is concepts around love and romance but I approach it from a lot of different angles. The relationships I’ve been in make me want to talk about all the not so romantic parts. I grew up listening to R&B and I’m used to super romanticized love songs so I like to challenge those stereotypes surrounding love songs. For example, being open in a love song about emotional unavailability and things people don’t want to talk about.

Also personhood and growing up into yourself. I’m a very introspective nostalgic person so I like to refer back to past versions of myself or the version of myself that exists only in my head.

In that concept of personhood, do you have a song that best represents that?
Yeah, “Dear Diary” for sure. That’s the epitome of me writing about myself, it’s confessional, about myself and what I’m feeling. It’s my favorite song off my last EP Here for Now.

What was your process in creating Here for Now and putting those songs together in that way?
The EP was created during a time when I had just dropped out of school and so had my producer yourbeautifulruin. We started working together when we both decided not to go back to school. And it was this weird alienating feeling of living on the campus that I no longer attended. I was just making music, not in school anymore and I didn’t want to be there anymore but I was trying to be content…we made about fifty or sixty songs over the year and then narrowed it down to that handful of songs. It was based on the concept of like not knowing where you’re supposed to be but you’re just trying to find the next step. Here for Now was the next step.

You were born and grew up in Germany and the UK before moving to America. How do you feel like that global experience is reflected in your music?
Coming to America there was American music I liked but I found the American music I gravitated towards the most was the non-mainstream music that was more popular in Europe and Asia. It’s given me a world perspective on all different kinds of music, the different sounds that resonate with different groups of people…It’s almost a social science now knowing about all these sounds and grooves and understanding why they come from  that specific place.

The way I make music now is like…I’m a British-raised individual who is making music with Americans and I feel like my music is kind-of cross-continental. I like that people all over the world could listen to and be inspired by and enjoy my music. It’s not music made by someone who was born and raised in one place and has one set of references. It’s like a mosaic where everyone can find that one piece that speaks to them and makes sense to them.

How do you like living and making music in Chicago full time?
I’ve been here full-time for six months now. I work a lot so I feel like I don’t always fully embrace or live in the culture. I’ve made a lot of friends here, there’s still  musical connections and dots I’m trying to connect. I’m grateful it’s a bigger city so I can meet more black and queer people to make music with  because back in Champaign my collaborators were mostly straight men. It’s been cool coming to the city and connecting with people who get me outside of just my music. So far I’m content and happy to be here.

In the past few years we’ve seen a rise in the queer identity be used as a marketing asset. How do you navigate using that, not using that?
I feel like the queer thing as a marketing tool is something people project onto me. I have a personality and musicality that goes beyond just being gay or non-binary. Those are things that inform my art but not everything. But we live in a time where representation is important and we love hyphenated identities so everyone wants to talk about “this non-binary rapper,  gay this, gay that, blah blah”

I mean it gets the clicks, it’s nice to have this thing people are interested to write about because it means more promotion of the art and fans can find me. Obviously I can’t ignore that I have queer fans old and young who listen to me because they know we share a certain experience. I don’t push it, though. I don’t want people to just listen to me because I’m representation, I want people to like the music and not only because it has gay themes.

I’ve been making music since I was thirteen before I knew anything about my sexuality or identity. It goes beyond that. But the media sensationalizes identity, so we have to talk about it eventually. I’m so much more than that.

Do you have a New Years or New Decade resolution?
I would say it is to not to second guess myself and to talk less and do what it is I do. I  was talking to my friend the other day about how all the wrong people have imposter syndrome. All the wrong people overthink what they say. There’s a lot of confident mediocre people but everyone who is actually talented is always like “I don’t know”.  I’m just  going into 2020 more confident more self assured, explaining myself less and just letting my work speak for myself.