How Evilgiane Made #HEAVENSGATE VOL. 1, as told by his collaborators

thefader.com:

Late last year, Evilgiane was sitting in a New York recording studio waiting for an artist to show up. He wasn’t the only one — the label arranging the session had four other producers on deck.

When I called 03 Greedo in mid-February, he didn't bother telling me any of their names — “[Giane] had every style I needed.” “It didn’t sound regional… He just had a universal sound and we locked in automatic,” Greedo recalls. “He came in, he was ready for the assignment.” That’s no small praise from 03, who has only grown more fastidious about his songcraft following a nearly five-year prison stint that froze the ultra-versatile Watts MC’s nascent career in amber. “I try to find something brand new, like no one else has a song like this,” he explains of his beat selection. “Do I like the song before I even got on it?

It has to have that energy.” His features on Evilgiane’s latest #HEAVENSGATE VOL. 1 most definitely have that energy. There’s the narcotized paranoia of “SIP SIP,” which Greedo calls “not really a rapper song — it’s a song that a pop star would make.” The aftertaste of Clase Azul is promptly washed away by the propulsive “BEN DAWAVE,” which finds 03 extolling his hip-hop dominance — he’s “been the wave,” get it?

On wax, the song-to-song transition from romantic insecurity to artistic self-assurance is remarkably smooth, perhaps because both songs were recorded in the same night.