I made my third album, “Simple, Sweet, and Smiling” during the peak of the pandemic and my own panic disorder. Most of my time was spent at a small writing desk in the corner of my room, where I’d sing over piano or instrumental ideas I’d been given from collaborators John Carroll Kirby and Eli Teplin. Before this album, I’d always written songs in the company of others, but I found a new level of freedom and experimentation on my own. I never felt I was on someone else’s time or at the mercy of their engineering. Before this album and its predecessor, “Is It Selfish If We Talk About Me Again”, I was signed to G.O.O.D Music, Kanye West’s label under Def Jam, where I released my debut album, “Like A Woman”. While the opportunity of being signed to a major label at 20 years old was truly unfounded for me, I was quickly faced with the realities of the music industry.

It goes without saying that it is incredibly difficult to make a decent living in the music industry if you are not a global superstar or have ownership of your music. My first album was lead with a year or two of massive hype, editorials, more press than I could have ever dreamed of, and a considerable lull before and after album release. I was told to reproduce the entire album before it came out, which tacked on an extra year between when I thought the album was finished and when it was actually “done”.

While I’m thankful for the crash course in the inner workings of the industry my major label experience gave me, I ultimately wanted out (badly). I’ve been releasing music independently since 2018 and have not looked back.

My first introduction into Web3 was in February 2021 when Trevor McFedries approached me for an unreleased song for the FWB Vault. I minted a song called “Forever”, which came out of sessions for my second album. Since then, I’ve been immensely excited about how much Web3 can change the music industry.

I wanted my genesis NFT project to be something that exists exclusively in Web3 because I believe that power in music lies in ownership and community, both of which are not inherent to the artist and their fans in old music models.

This demo album is not about polished, finished songs, but about the process in making them. There are out of tune, sometimes wonky vocals, cat meows in the background, keyboard clicks, and sometimes lyric-less vocal takes, but I think sometimes the process is just as interesting as the finished product.

Each demo released on Catalog comes with unique cover art created by me based on the original album cover art mock up I made.

This is the start of a new chapter and I am thankful to have you with me.