KALEB MITCHELL: CRAFTING THE LEGACY OF "SO HELP ME GOD"
The first time I heard a record from 19-Year-old Wharton, New Jersey MC Kaleb Mitchell was a little over two months ago after the initial launch of DROPS media. As I was deeply enthralled within a Soundcloud Talent search, I came across his single "Get You," an ambitious flip and fusion of Daniel Caesar's hit track "Get You" and Childish Gambino's classic "Redbone" and was subsequently frozen. The track, a stunning acoustic styling pairing the soft rifts of a guitar with Kaleb's incredibly clear, soothing and vivid falsetto, is jaw-dropping to say the least. And in the coming weeks, I was soon to find out that tracks like this were literally a dime a dozen for Kaleb Mitchell who cranks out musical masterpieces with expert precision and feverish frequency.
"Get You" was released in 2017, just after Kaleb Mitchell released his standout album So Help Me God. Now poised with an elegant new body of work and steady stream of new content, Kaleb is going to break barrier in 2018, so help him, God. We got a chance to have an in depth conversation with the Producer/Rapper/Singer about So Help Me God, the process of creating it, his aspirations and more in our nearly hour long conversation. And what we discovered is the fact that even two months after its initial release, there is a lot to be discovered about the project and its creator that only he can explain to us, with the help of, well, God and the music itself.
How does it feel to see the success of So Help Me God? Did it live up to your expectations?
Kaleb Mitchell: It completely obliterated my expectations. I told my manager - we initially set out to get this project done, honestly it was going to be a little EP of new music that we could use to perform at the live shows because I hadn’t put out a project since 2016. And I was just like, maybe it’s time to make a new project, so set out to make the project and ended up making it in a month. And I was like, ‘Man you know what would be crazy, if we got like top 50, like somewhere in the top 50 on the rap charts.’ And that was my dream goal, I was lowkey expecting it not to even show up on the charts. So the night it dropped, like my phone went dead as soon as it dropped, and the funny thing is it had a full charge, so it was like weird timing my phone just completely shuts off, and then like 20 minutes later I started getting this flood of tweets like ‘Oh man you’re at No. 7’ blah blah blah. It was a crazy night man. I didn’t know it was going to take off like it did but it completely happened and I’m overwhelmed by what it did. How did you start making music? Kaleb Mitchell: This pretty much all started when I was just messing around on this little toy plastic piano thing when I was five and long story short we found out I knew how to play songs by ear. I could listen to a song and then be able play the whole thing back after a couple minutes of just playing with it. From there, it was just years and years of me being in and around different people my dad was around, my dad wanted to be a Producer when he had me, he had a whole home studio, and after a while he didn’t really give it up he just grew and moved on to different things. But we still had the space where the home studio was and I would just come in here, and we had a Triton keyboard, and I would just come in here and just mess around on the keys for hours on end. And then eventually that turned into me learning how to sequence drums over the top of my keys with just straight analog equipment. I didn’t have a computer until I was like 13, so I learned everything on analog first, like even how to record my own vocals on analog equipment. By the time I was 11 I asked my parents to get me a computer so that I could get FL Studio and stuff like that and that’s when I really started to get into the rap side of things.
How did you go about building a platform for yourself and crafting your sound?
Kaleb Mitchell: You know, just started making beats and writing lyrics and all the rest of that and then my first solo project was Soliloquy and that was really me just trying to tell a little bit of my story and branch out beyond conventional Rap sound because there’s a lot of Pop elements, a lot of R&B elements on that project. Yeah, and then my second project was the next year in 2016 called 45 and I just called it 45 because when Michael Jordan came back he was wearing 45, and I don't know, it was kind of a little corny reference to it being my second project (Laughs). I just wanted to make it more of a boom-bapish, straight grimy Hip Hop record and that was me really just like, ‘Alright I got the whole Pop, R&B type thing, but I really wanna rap now.’ So I just started going in with my dude Wontell, couple joints by this Producer Anthony Cruz, Juice Bangers, and we just came up with this mixtape.
Can you speak a little about your process and how you can create at such a fast pace?
Kaleb Mitchell: It’s weird because with me, making a project doesn’t take that long. Like actually all three (Soliloquy, 45, So Help Me God) only took a month each to make. Like I just went in, had an idea and knocked it out, I just put em up. As far as making projects for me, see my whole thing is I don’t scrap songs. When I go into making a project, every single time I’ve made a project the concept of it is already written out in my head as a time lapse. When I make a project, I’ll have a title and I’ll start to even visualize colors and different fonts that would be associated with the title, and how I want everything to look. And then sonically is where I map things out in my head. I usually base projects around certain periods in my life. For instance, So Help Me God starts in the first track I said, “Let me take you back to 2011, I was sittin in the back of the class..” or whatever, that’s where the project starts, and then “Halfway There” is the last song and that’s present day, so I was just literally recounting emotions and feelings and experiences through those years 2011 all the way up through 2017, present day. So, in my head I have the story already written out, it’s just a matter of me putting a pen to paper and expressing those stories and ideas and concepts through songs. So when I do projects, I don’t scrap anything, I don’t make songs just for making songs sake and pick and choose which one is the best. When I make songs, I’ll even have a number of songs I wanna make, and I usually start with the first track and start crafting the last track and them make everything in between and just fill in the story.
Is that the approach you took to making So Help Me God? Kaleb Mitchell: Yeah, so that’s exactly how So Help Me God was made. I started with the first song and then the last song was written right after the first song because I knew I had to keep myself within those boundaries if I wanted to tell a somewhat cohesive story. My man Kyle Stenberger sent me the beat for the song called “All Black” and I just started writing from the very first moment I wanted the story to begin. And then I produced the last song and I knew that I wanted it to be more somber and more musical and more soulful so that I could end on less of a Trap note and I just wanted to take people out musically and all the rest of that. So that’s how that project came about. Just started from the very beginning and ending present day and then filling in my story in between. So it didn’t take that long to write, produce and arrange and all of that.
What did you want it to do for your discography?
Kaleb Mitchell: As far as my discography, although it is not my first project, I definitely feel like this is the first proper introduction to who I am as an artist. It just felt like ‘Wow this is my first forreal project.’ Especially since it was available everywhere, like on iTunes, and the rest of that. So it really is my first actual project so I wanted this to incorporate all of the styles and sounds that people have told me they love from me.
What was your inspiration behind the unique composition of So Help Me God? What were you trying to accomplish by having softer, R&B leaning tracks in juxtaposition with hard, Rap bangers throughout the album? Kaleb Mitchell: My two biggest songs that I’ve made to date were this song called “Get It” and this other song that I had back in 2015 it’s called “10,000 Leagues.” “Get It” is probably the most aggressive song I’ve ever made in my life, because it came from a really dark place. I was really down when I made that song, there was a lot on my mind. My Mom was going through it with cancer and things like that, just a whole lot of family issues and problems and there was a lot weighing on me and I felt kind of helpless. I felt like ‘Man I got this talent and I can’t really contribute to anything around the house.’ Like man, I wanna get this house fixed up there’s a whole bunch I wish I could do but I just can’t do right now and I felt like I’m not living up to my full potential and things that I can accomplish. The song literally says, “Woke up this morning, I looked in the mirror and said I gotta go out and get it,” and that’s the hook of the song, and that is exactly what happened. It was just one morning I didn’t feel like doing anything at all. I rolled out of bed, was groggy or whatever and i was just like, ‘Man I got to get it.’ And the light bulb just went off, and then ironically my man Juice Bangers had sent me a beat the week before and I had no idea what to do, then I rushed down to the home studio and open the laptop and listened to the beat and I was just like ‘Bro this is it’. And then I just got behind the mic, I didn’t even write anything down I was just like, ‘I’m gonna do this.’ A lot of that song was freestyle, there were some parts that I went back and edited, but a lot of it was freestyle. I just went in man I was like (Yells) ‘I GOTTA GO OUT & GET IT.’ I was like yelling, and then as soon as I put that up on Soundcloud, I think within the first two days it had like 10,000 plays and people were sharing it like crazy.
And I was just like ‘Man, people really gravitate to the aggressive sound I have and then there’s this other song which is like completely falsetto style singing called “10,00 Leagues”’ And that is still, to this day, my highest played song. So on So Help Me God I was like, what if I can blend those two worlds together, to where I can bring in the R&B soulful side and this straight up Hip Hop, aggressive, just straight pure, not even anger but energy. How can I bring those two together.
That’s pretty much my entire thinking behind making So Help Me God, which is bridging the gap between those two audiences. Because, even for a while, there was a group of people that would gravitate to certain songs of mine and there was another group that was like, ‘Man we want the bangers.’ But, I didn’t want those two groups living in two totally different worlds, I wanted to bring everyone together with this so that’s how you get songs like “Role Model Pt. 1” and “Role Model Pt. 2.”
“Role Model Pt. 1” was originally called “Role Model” and there weren’t going to be any parts to it, it was just going to be a straight song going from, that almost Rockish, Trap Pt. 1 and then that straight up R&B Pop sound of Pt. 2. But I was just like, even though I’m trying to bring everyone together, some people are going to like Pt. 1 and some people are gonna like Pt. 2 so let’s separate these.
Then that’s where songs like “Halfway There” come from, where the second verse I pick up the same flow as I did in the intro where I’m like, ‘Let me take you back to 2013 every single day I’m up in the lab’ like, just straight rapping, but it’s over this crazy, neo-soul type instrument. Yeah, that was my whole thinking behind So Help Me God, I wanted to put my best foot forward and show the different ranges of everything I can do and show how diverse the sounds can get when I put these two worlds together. Even there was a little bit of spoken word you could say on this track “2011” because that was something that I wanted to do for a long time, just make a spoken word type of piece, I just never knew how to incorporate it into a project. And that’s when I was just like, alright let me make it into an interlude and tell the story here about my life. But yeah, that’s pretty much my whole thing behind So Help Me God was just blending everything that I can do together.
Talk to us a little about the title for So Help Me God? What does it mean? What does it represent to you and how does it translate to the music?
Kaleb Mitchell: I think that’s my favorite part to talk about, is the title. When I came up with the title, I had the title in my head for a long time, and then the news came out that Kanye was gonna drop an album called So Help Me God, and I was just like, ‘Well can’t do that, gotta scrap that idea.’ But then he ended up calling it The Life Of Pablo and I was like, maybe I can use that title for this project I want to do. On So Help Me God, half of the project is written from the middle school Kaleb perspective when I first started telling people that I rap, I sing, I produce, just trying to get people to pay attention to my stuff, try to get people to mess with me and no one wanted to hear it. And then, having even family try to tell me, ‘Your wasting your time on this, you gotta do good in school you gotta go to college, X-Y-Z.’ There was this certain defiance, this determination that I had that was fueled by everyone’s ‘No’s. Every time someone said ‘No’ to me it was just like, you’re just adding more motivation for me to prove you wrong and that still is something that lives inside of me today, I still feel like I have a major point to prove. That title, it means a lot, it’s apart of something bigger that is going to be explained in the next few projects, but those four words, So Help Me God — when you are in the court of law you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god. And I was going to tell my story and I was going to do my thing regardless of who was watching and I’m going to be true to myself 100 percent.
What did you want to do differently, and or, incorporate from previous projects on So Help Me God?
Kaleb Mitchell: As this project is a followup to the Soliloquy project I wanted it to also have dual meanings. So, the project can be written as So Help Me God, or it can be written as ‘So help me, God.’ As in I have all these dreams and ambitions and people say that you’re real that you’ll always help me so where are you at? It’s almost like a cry for help, you listen to some songs on here like “Another Day, Another Dollar” which is definitely most vulnerable and desperate I’ve ever been on a song and that was on purpose because I really wanted to capture that feeling of being lost and not knowing where to turn next. And So Help Me God is a loop, it’s a loop so, when you listen to the last song, the beginning notes of the first song bring you right back into the project when you listen to it on iTunes. So it’s almost like this is a moment in time that I almost can’t even get out of and it will be explained further in the next one, and it will all make sense. But it’s like, this project is hunger, the title is desperation, the title is just where I was mentally and where I still am to this day, like so help me God, I’m gonna make this thing happen by any means. Like, I don’t care what no one says about me, I don’t care what none of y’all talking about, I know what’s in my heart to do, I know what’s inside of me and I know what I can offer tho this world and so that’s pretty much how that came about.
Things you feel people should know about So Help Me God that they don’t know by now?
Kaleb Mitchell: This is going to sound crazy, but every single song on the project is apart of one another. If you listen to “All Black” Intro it starts with me saying “Let me take you back to 2011, I was sittin in the back of the class..” and it’s starting with me documenting with my beginning phases of my rebellion when I was just not paying attention when I was like, man I got this idea and I need to get it out, just writing raps in class and all of that. And then you listen to the second verse and it’s like “They been plottin on me since the second grade. Teachers did me dirty kids would call me nigga,” and then it gets to that part “What’s your name again? I think that I forgot it,” and it gets kind of cocky it’s like a complete switch up, and every single song is built that way. So, “All Black” (Intro) just happens to be two different sides to everything, and there is a reason there is two sides to everything.
So even on the cover there is a skull that people usually equate with darkness and death and then there is a cross and people usually equate with Jesus, hope with faith and those two are sitting and living and co-existing on the same cover. And that caused a lot of questions for people, they were like, ‘Are you demonic,’ and I’m like no, you just have to dig deeper into it. So since So Help Me God was a follow-up to Soliloquy, I didn’t just want to call it Soliloquy 2: So Help Me God, because that was another working title, but I was like, I want this to stand on its own and I want it to be its own entity I want it to be its own universe, the So Help Me God Universe. So Since it’s going to be a follow-up to Soliloquy, Instead of calling it a sequel I’m going to make everything about it two parts. The cover, there is the Skull & the cross, “All Black” (Intro) starts with the hustle and determination and then the second part is like aww man he starts to feel himself. And then, I wake up because I’m thinking about in the second verse, “What’s your name again? I think that I forgot it,” I’m thinking about the end result, after I’ve made it on and I’m starting to do my thing and I’m dreaming of all of that and then the alarm clock rings and reality sets in and “Get It’ comes on and right after “Get It,” is “Another Day, Another Dollar” and they are the same song. They are the same exact song but there’s just two different sides of how you get that message across.
The messages in the song are the same but I just wanted to have two completely different emotions when I do it. Like “Another Day, Another Dollar” is just super sad “Another day, another dollar but a dollar ain’t enough” like, it’s just hunger it’s desperation and then “Get It” is the same exact message but I am just flipping it on its head like ‘Man I gotta get it’ and using it to charge myself up but it’s the same exact song. Like “Key To The City” and “Halfway There” are the same exact song — I wanted to end on sort of a victory lap type song but, I wanted it to be like, alright I’m ending here but I’m also looking to the future and this is just the beginning. Like “Key To The City” I’m saying like, Man I am the first artist to come out of Wharton, New Jersey I feel like I deserve some type of recognition, and then “Halfway There” is like, yeah you have gotten to this point but you are still only halfway there and still have a long way to go. So when people listen to this project I want them to keep in mind that there is a lot going on that I am not directly explaining but, everything about this project deals with duality and having two different meaning and two different sides of the story
Are you planning to stay independent?
Kaleb Mitchell: See my whole thing is, I’ve talked to countless people and — when people from labels come at me, I don’t have any beef with them, and when the contracts look crazy because when you are a new artist they try to take everything because they don’t think you have any leverage or anything like that. I don’t blame the people who come after the artists I blame the suits in the office that try to sign you for a crazy amount of years and everything like that and try to take everything you own. As far as signing to labels, I’m not opposed to signing to a label, the situation just has to be correct. I’m not giving up my masters, you’re not taking all my publishing. So when labels come up to me and my manager and get one over on us, we already know the game so it’s like, if you are not going to be adding to us and you’re just going to be taking from us then there is no reason for us to be doing business.
After So Help Me God, what’s next?
Kaleb Mitchell: There is definitely going to be a follow-up to So Help Me God and everyone will know what the follow-up is because it’s pretty obvious what the follow-up is. But, as for coming up soon, I’m going to have a couple projects coming soon. There is going to be a lot more content, there is going to be a lot more music coming soon. There are possibilities of even a tour in 2018, we’re working on a lot of things.
