Recently, Shawn Chrystopher made the trek to New York for the CMJ festival, where he was involved in a number of shows throughout the week.
If you’re unfamiliar with Shawn, take a quick look at his video for “Untitled.” Impressively, Shawn named the track “Untitled” to prevent listeners from coming into the song with preconceived notions.
This method is as interesting as it is effective, and now I realize how much the title influences my first impressions of a song!
During Shawn’s week in New York, HipHopAtLunch.com stopped by his hotel room to speak about composing his album while watching movies on mute, finding feedback from his fans, and his father’s recent passing.
Hit Shawn up on Twitter:@ShawnChrys and ask him what the best movie to watch on mute is, ha! As funny as scoring music to muted films may be, I agree with Shawn that this method will keep your music fresh.
Shawn wrote about his twenty two years of life in A City With No Seasons, and touched on very personal topics such as family, friends, and his love life. This trend of putting himself into the track will continue with his next project, which may also touch on experiences that A City with No Seasons did not cover.
One of the standout records on A City With No Seasons, “Heartbreaker,” recently hit iTunes as Shawn’s latest single. The track came about after Shawn’s fiance told him that it wasn’t working out, four months into their engagement.
I can’t wait to see what type of video Skee.TV creates for “Heartbreaker.” If they produce something similar to their video for Freddie Gibbs and Pill’s “Womb 2 The Tomb,” it will be intense!
Despite everyone in his camp pushing for a different single, Shawn chose the crowd favorite, “Heartbreaker,” as a testament to how much he loves interacting with fans and learning from their feedback.
This decision was heavily based on the Twitter love that the single was receiving as well as fans knowing the words when “Heartbreaker” was performed live.
The deluxe edition of A City With No Seasons, carrying a few extra songs, hits iTunes on November 10th. If you’re a true fan of creative music, this will be an album to purchase because as Shawn has stated, “You can’t feed your family off z-share downloads!”
For more information on Shawn Chrystopher, check out our feature article.
Artists Tagged
Shawn Chrystopher
Shawn Christopher Garrett, II
Label: Unsigned
Hometown: Inglewood, CA
Gifted since an early age, Shawn Chrystopher completed high school by 16 and received a full ride scholarship to the University of Southern California. After studying music theory, Shawn decided to leave college a year before graduation to pursue his hip hop career.
Currently Shawn is working with Elitaste (Wale & Mike Posner), and has two impressive releases under his belt in A City With No Seasons and The Audition EP. Shawn's creative lyrics and impressive production skills are building quite the buzz around the Inglewood emcee's name.
