INTERDISCIPLINE
BY HENRY LYONS
Inspiration can come from anywhere. Creative ideas exist on a higher level than a specific product - a chef can be inspired by a painting as much as a recipe. The medium might be different, but the core idea will translate and manifest. My goal is to give you a personal introduction to songwriters and music producers. We will learn more about what inspires them and explore the different mediums that influence their craft.
A new profile is published every Tuesday.
EB REBEL
This week meet EB Rebel, a hip hop artist, songwriter and producer. Originally from Dallas, she recently relocated to New York to further pursue her musical career. She’s heavily inspired by visual art from fashion to painting, an inclination she attributes to her artist mother. We discussed a few of her biggest creative influences.
Watch her video for “Don’t Care” here.
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
His art is kind of crazy, it’s a little bit of slapping paint on the canvas. People read too much into that. He can do more refined portraits as well. But his art spoke more to the chaotic world that he was living in. I even have an unreleased song about Irony of the Black Policeman, which is a famous painting of his. I wrote about what I thought his interpretation of the piece might be.
SPIKE LEE
I love the realism. I was drawn to the way he depicted his reality. He was on the forefront of urban storytelling. No one was really doing it before him. It’s a cliché, but I’m inspired by my own life, so it’s amazing to see how he was inspired by his.
KANYE WEST
He’s always been a big inspiration in fashion and art in how he brings it into his videos. Everybody definitely judges a book by its cover, so you have to make it right. And I think when he goes into a project, he thinks about all of that ahead of time, even down to the album packaging. He’s always ahead of the curve. He takes more care than a lot of artists.