29 Mar ALL ABOUT EON MC ETC.’S SIZZLING NEW EP, SOUTHERN L.O.
If I could press a magic button and make a cup of colorful confetti rain down on you right now, I would. Indie rapper Eon MC Etc. JUST dropped Southern L.O., his latest EP, and it’s celebration-worthy. I managed to get my ears on it in advance. Every track sizzles. (I don’t mean ‘sizzles’ like it’s time to flip the pancakes; I mean ‘sizzles’ like blazes with poetic mastery. Basically, it’s time to zip up, ride out, hater check, flex ‘n’smile, dance gritty, and possibly unzip.)
I’ve been following Eon MC Etc. for a few years now, so this new, nine-track EP isn’t my first adventure with him. (You should totally queue up Race Music and Fighting Demons, too.) The tested elasticity of Eon’s artistic abilities and his tendency to tame the wildest verses continues to leave me in awe. In Southern L.O., Eon constructs a ladder of lyrics not so he can peer down at you from above (like some other rappers that shall remain unnamed), but so you can climb the rungs and score an unobstructed glimpse into his world. It’s solid, it’s biting, and sometimes it’s even sexy. Many of the tracks, each of the nine songs will be addressed in detail by Eon in the Q & A, take you deep into his past and back to his home state of Oklahoma. The others let him have a little fun, address where he’s at now, or explain how he feels about the industry.
On a broody, rainy day, I met up with Eon at an undisclosed bookstore in Los Angeles. With an excess of escalators and without the greatest cell reception, it took us a little time to find each other…but we did. And we promptly secured our coffees – one hot Americano (for him) and one iced Americano (for me). As the caffeine ignited our conversation, we set out in search of a secluded spot to conduct the interview. Given the weather, quiet alcoves were in demand, and we soon discovered that as we found one canoodling teen couple after the next. (I don’t blame them – it’s practically an afterschool requirement.)
We finally found a corner on the third floor with rain streaked, full-length windows and made ourselves semi-comfortable on the questionably thin carpet. All faded into obscurity as the interview began and Eon unleashed an intricate account of the Southern L.O. EP and everything that went along with it. Whenever we paused (so I could stop and save an audio track) I noticed a new cluster of people listening in. Some pretended to browse books, others pretended to talk amongst themselves, but my favorite spy, by far, was the woman who set her chair close enough so she could hear everything. Now, you can hear read everything, too.
The conversation from our interview is chronicled below in a pure Q & A format.
Q & A:
Can you tell us any stories related to the making of the Southern L.O. EP?
Eon: Southern L.O. is an ode to my hometown: Lawton, Oklahoma. It was originally supposed to be a collaboration between me and a few others, but that kind of fizzled out. I felt like it was worth creating, though, so I followed through with it. The whole album let me reminisce and pay tribute to my roots.
Southern L.O. shares the name of the first REAL song my friends and I ever recorded. At the time I was twelve years old and in the seventh grade. My cousin Willie, my cousin Phil, and my friend George recorded the original “Southern L.O.” in a guy’s home studio. We sampled an old school R&B song called “Who Can I Run To” by The Jones Girls. In the original, similar to how I have it on the new version, my cousin Phil sang the line “Southern L.O.” We shifted the pitch way down, set this SUPER corny hook over the top of it, and thought it was THE COOLEST THING EVER! We showed ALL of our friends and received tons of props for it.
You know, the lead-up to that first REAL recording is worth telling, too…
I had just moved from one side of town to the other, and had to attend that area’s junior high school. I only knew three people there: my cousin Willie, my cousin Angel, and another boy who had attended my elementary school. One of the first things I did was get caught stealing. (Yeah, I got in trouble for it.) Things weren’t really going well for me in school. Then, my cousin Willie and I signed up for a talent show at a high school on the other side of town – the RIVAL high school. To be honest, I don’t know WHAT we were thinking. We were planning to perform a song together, but he was growing nervous and wanted to back out.
He kept saying, “Nah, you just do it yourself…”
And I kept insisting, “No man. We’re a group! We need to stay together. Whoopty Whoop!”
There was all of this tension between us and we couldn’t figure out what we wanted to do. One evening, the talent show committee held an informal meeting for all the participants in the show. The youngest person in the room, I knew three people of the twenty plus there: Willie and George, who were in junior high with me, and Willie’s older brother Phil, who was in high school. The four of us didn’t care that we were at the rival high school. We just wanted to perform. The organizers asked each act in the room a few questions before instructing each to perform. It was our turn to go.
Keep in mind that Willie and I had been in a rap group since we were little kids – through the years leading up to that moment, we had cycled through a bunch of different group names. Most of those were inspired by the likes of ABC, Kris Cross, Da Youngstas, and Heavy D & The Boyz; but our current name was: Short, Black, and Hard. We realized only then, when it was OUR TURN, that WE HADN’T COME UP WITH A NEW NAME! I mean, up until then, it was a nonissue for us.
The organizer asked us for our stage name.
Before I could respond, Willie answered, “Oh, nah, nah, we’re kinda still working on coming up with the name. We don’t have one yet.”
I glared at him, thinking, We GOT a NAME.
That’s when Phil instigated, “No! Tell ‘em the name, guys. Tell ‘em the name!”
I sensed there was a whole dynamic involved that I wasn’t entirely aware of, but I was still a kid and I put stuff past people, so I finally said, “Yeah. We got a name. We usually go by: Short, Black, and Hard.”
Right afterwards, Phil snickered, “Man, y’all niggas sound like a couple of dicks!”
The WHOLE room erupted into laughter, and I KNEW it wasn’t going to be good from that point forward. Phil had obviously set the whole thing up and Willie had known about it; but, I didn’t know. Willie REALLY wanted to back out now.
The week of the talent show, I was at Willie and Phil’s house. My Uncle William, Willie and Phil’s dad, was a big music guy. The music director of our church, my uncle listened to a lot of music, owned a ton of records, and often frequented clubs. We were all sitting in the living room when my uncle asked Willie and me about the talent show. He asked what style we planned to bring. We didn’t know. He asked what we planned to wear. We didn’t know. He wanted to know the name of the song we planned to sing. We didn’t know that, either.
In sheer disgust, he looked at us and muttered, “This is BULLLLSHIIIT!” Then, he promptly stomped out of the room.
Willie and I were left alone to throw something together. Since we were going to be in a hostile environment (the rival high school), we knew we needed to win the crowd over immediately. At that point, neither of us had ever performed. Willie thought we should do a bunch of chants to get the crowd rowdy. He came up with, like, five or six different chants, and I said, “I don’t know, man. I don’t know if we should be doing this before we start rappin’. Shouldn’t we just start rappin’?”
But Willie wouldn’t give it up, and he insisted, “Nah, nah, man. It’s gonna get ‘em into it!”
So…the night of the talent show Willie and I take the stage and start off with all these stereotypical rap chants trying to hype the crowd. They took it for a good forty-five seconds. When we hit the minute mark, THE WHOLE CROWD TURNED ON US and booed us offstage! Phil emerged from behind the curtains all mean-mugged and protective.
Shortly after that, we all went to the studio and recorded that first version of “Southern L.O.” and that served as our little redemption.
Does anyone still have that original recording? Any relatives secretly hoarding it?
Eon: I don’t think anyone has it. I HAD one, and it was a cassette tape. I have no idea where it is. It might be gone or in the bottom of a storage box somewhere.
Let’s dig into the Southern L.O. EP, which JUST DROPPED. Can you give us some insight into each of the nine songs?
Eon: “Criminal Manifesto” is multi-layered. Much of what I make is multi-layered. On the surface, I’m talking generally about the industry; and, underneath, I’m referring specifically to the people I know – how a lot of rappers and artists are kind of like crabs in a barrel. No one really wants to come together, hold each other up, and help each other out. EVERYBODY wants to be top dog. This song came about because I had reached out to a few people either that I had respected or that I had history with. I wanted to collaborate, but everyone in my hometown, really my home state, kind of has this thing where no one really wants to come together. Everybody there wants to be THE man – the first one to come out of Oklahoma. And I’m all over here, like, NONE of y’all are comin’ out of there if you do it like that. You do realize that, right? Everybody’s just kind of like feeling themselves and getting high off of their own hype. At a point, I just grew tired of it. You know what, if chest thumpin’ and nut grabbin’ is what y’all wanna do, that’s fine, because if push comes to shove, I don’t think any of y’all should feel good about how you stack up against me. You’re gonna lose.
“Fire” is a different way of attacking the mentality of people. I grew up in a place where opportunity was scarce. People might not consider it a ghetto, but there wasn’t opportunity and there wasn’t anything to occupy young people. So, as a youngster, what did we do? We fought each other or we fought people from other places. I wanted to address that – that culture, that mentality, and that blindness that can you possess when you don’t see anything different. There’s a line in the song, “You grow up in a violent home, in a violent city, in a violent state, in a violent country, in a violent world. Then, they wonder why you’re violent. That makes me want to hurl,” which sums up what I feel. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the reality of life for a lot of people. That was reality for me for a long time, before I had the chance to see something different.
“Southern L.O.” is pretty straight forward. I make a few references to home, give a couple shout-outs, and, other than that, I try to flex a little bit lyrically and try to flex a little with the flow. It’s really just a feel good track.
“Elevate” is meant to be a seductive song. I like to approach things from my own angle. Obviously, lots of music artists have released songs about hitting on somebody or wanting to take somebody home, but it’s all kind of redundant. You have to find your own way to say it. “Elevate” is obviously a metaphor for climax and floating into space and all that, but it’s just a more poetic way to say it. I guess the little inside joke for me is the lyric, “make you feel just like being in love” – On a chemical level, what your body releases when you climax is essentially the same thing your body feels when you feel that you are in love. That’s kind of like the sales pitch. I’ll make you feel like being in love. I didn’t say we were in love, just that I will make you feel that way.
“Where They Do That At?” is an expression. If somebody does something outlandish or crazy, it’s something someone might say. To me, it’s pretty much my whole upbringing. All of the games we played, and all of the stuff we did – it was all super outlandish and off the wall. You know, I had a fight club in junior high. We only had two rules: no hitting in the face and no hitting in the balls. We’d just go in and fight. A winner would have to be determined, and no one was ever seriously hurt. Many times we fought people we didn’t even really know.
I didn’t have a lot of adult interaction as a kid. My friends and I would just make stuff up. We had a game where we wouldn’t allow corny jokes. At all. It was considered a HUGE offense. So, if you told a joke that we felt was corny, then everyone in the room would come up to you one at a time, grab your head, and throw it. That was the game. The only rule: if you laugh, you can’t throw. If you were in the room with us, YOU were in the game (even if you didn’t know about it). So, you might be hanging with us and decide to spout your little punchline. If nobody laughs, you gotta put your head down and every one of us will come up one by one.
On the track, I shout-out my cousins Willie and Phil, my brothers Nathan and Chris, and my friends Bill and Tango. I’m really just talking about how I came up. I moved a lot. It was an unstable situation, except for the couple of years I was living with my grandparents. It’s about the turmoil at home, the turmoil at school, and the stuff we did to entertain ourselves: play ball, make rap, joke around, and fight in our club. It’s the light version of my story.
“Coulda Been” is funny to me. It’s about being disillusioned as an artist, specifically an artist who’s rapped for a long time, hasn’t really gotten that far, and sees how the industry has evolved into heading downhill. It’s like a girl you used to have a crush on and you planned to have a future with, but she made a HORRIBLE decision and ruined everything. That girl is hip hop, and you’re thinking, him? HIM!?! You’re walking in the rain with the diamond ring and that’s the sentiment of the song. It’s one big metaphor.
“I Am Legend” is more or less me talking shit. I wanted to put one track on the album where I just rap and get to go old school competitive. I went all in and slapped a hook at the end. It’s just me saying, “I am legend. You can feel however you want to feel about it.”
“Hollywood Heist” is a track that I got from Tino, a guy from overseas. I had actually asked for the track much earlier than I had received it. Tino had this whole compilation of these swing/hip hop beats he had made. I heard that one, and I knew I wanted it. When I asked if I could use it, he told me he already had plans it and offered to send me something else. I ended up making the song “Cliff’s Notes”, which appears on my Race Music EP, out of one of the alternate tracks he sent. When Tino heard “Cliff’s Notes”, he really liked it. A few months later, he reached out to me again and told me that I COULD use the swing beat I really wanted.
Once I had it, I didn’t know what the hell to do with it. I kept listening to the track over and over and over. And then one day it came to me. I HAVE TO SWING. I can’t just rap over this. It’s a swing beat. Making “Hollywood Heist” was my attempt to fuse hip hop and swing. I put some of my personality and my quirks into it to make it my own. It’s a fun track about being a country boy coming somewhere like LA and trying to make it.
“Thunder Up, Yeah!” is a fight song for my favorite sports team, The Oklahoma City Thunder. You know, we never had professional sports in Oklahoma. People thought there wasn’t enough interest to support a professional sports franchise, but those people didn’t know just how sports obsessed everybody in that state is. People in Oklahoma will watch ANY sport on TV: wrestling, rodeo, you name it. When the Oklahoma City Thunder came to town, the team took over. It unified the people in the state like never before. There are many reasons why many of the people in the state don’t get along with each other, but sports is the one thing there that everyone has in common. Everyone in Oklahoma is a Thunder fan and thinks the world of those basketball players and the organization. Since I made this album as a tribute to my home state, I had to throw something in there about the OKC Thunder.
As a whole, what do you want your listeners to take away from Southern L.O.?
Eon: I wanted to make something that had a little more mass appeal. Not to water myself down, but a lot of the more recent stuff I’ve done – some has been experimental and some has more hip hop based – has created the perception that I’m a hip hop artist. In reality, I’m a multi-faceted musician. Hip hop is something I was exploring, rather than where I came from: the rap side of things. With this EP, I took the opportunity to show that THIS is what I’m best at. I also wanted to create something that people can bump in their car and enjoy. You know, have a couple of laughs and all that. Nothing’s super deep on this album, but none of it is frivolous, either.
What I like most about the album is that you can really journey through every emotion.
Eon: I was hoping for that.
How would you categorize your music? (You do not need to use typical genre tags.)
Eon: I mean, this might sound cliché, but it’s more like organized chaos. There IS a thought process, and there IS a lot of planning that goes into it; but, for the most part, a lot of it is just magic. I say ‘magic’ not because I think I’m doing something extraordinary, but because I’m, technically, not a trained musician. Everything I know I pretty much taught myself.
If you’ve ever taught yourself something, you know there are other ways, besides the formal way, to accomplish things. You might not know the terminology or the proper structure or anything, but you can still reach the same end result. For me, a lot of it is feel based. And there are some things I don’t even know how I know, but I do. The majority of it just kind of comes together. People always search for something to credit it to. They want to say it’s one thing or another. I feel like, it might be that THIS time, but NEXT time, who knows? I base my approach on whatever the track sounds like, regardless of whether I made the track or somebody else did. I listen to the track, and the track dictates what direction I head in.
You’re an independent artist – your artistry is not dependent on or dictated by a corporate agreement. What are some of the joys and challenges that come along with that?
Eon: Being an independent artist comes with a huge sense of pride. One of the most important things in society for people is ownership: to create something that’s yours and nobody else’s. When you create something as an indie artist, you can do whatever you want with it; and, win, lose, or draw – success or failure – it’s yours. You don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. You don’t have to ask anybody for money.
While it instills a huge sense of pride, creating indie music demands a huge sense of responsibility. You don’t have someone to communicate with, to find a studio, to block out time, and to pay for it all. There’s no money guy, so YOU have to price it all out and figure it all out. There’s no one giving you feedback, telling you if it’s good enough or if it isn’t good enough. That could be seen as a hindrance, but that could be seen as a help, also. Bottom line: you’re on your own, using your own discretion.
It’s challenging. Even in the digital age, when things are probably more democratic than they’ve ever been, it’s still more difficult to reach a lot of people. You have to be creative in finding different avenues to be heard and to be visible. It’s a job. You don’t make your music and reach a stopping point. Once the music is done, you have, like, a hundred plus things to do: now, you’re the CEO, the marketing executive, the VP of sales, and your own assistant. It’s constant work and can be a pain, but I think there’s nothing more rewarding than controlling your own destiny as an artist.
Tell us about the United Statements record label.
Eon: Ah, the United Statements record label. The name goes back to when I was in New York. My friends JR, Bamboo, and Devon and I formed a group. We named ourselves the United Statements since we were all from different parts of the country. We initially had the vision that we’d recruit a guy from every state and play shows all over the country.
At the time what states were represented?
Eon: I’m Oklahoma, JR is North Carolina, Devon is Vermont, and Bamboo was a New York native. We got together, smoked a whole lot of weed, came up with a whole bunch of ideas, freestyled like fifteen million times, and recorded NOTHING. The name and the spirit of the name stuck with me, though, so when I was out in LA recording my first album, I kept it. That was in 2007, and I had everyone’s blessing. That’s how it all started. Some people straight up just use their artist name, but I wanted to have a label name separate from my artist name. I chose United Statements because it meant something to me. I will always publish under that label.
Would you ever consider taking on other artists under the United Statements label?
Eon: Absolutely. Right now, for the most part, it’s just me and some personal friends. But, I intend on doing this for a long time, and I’m always looking for new artists to work with. I’ve mentored a couple of artists, so I would definitely be open to it. It’s just not something that has happened yet.
What’s it like to live in Los Angeles as a recording artist?
Eon: I have lived in a lot of different places. I grew up in Southwest Oklahoma, where they actually call it Texhoma. Then, I moved to Kansas City and was there for nearly two years. After that, I was in New York for a couple of years, then I was in Iowa, and now I’ve been in LA for a long time.
The thing about the neighborhood I live in now is that it’s kind of in the sweet spot. You always have these pockets of places, and I have noticed this everywhere I’ve lived. You have a neighborhood, and, you know, it’s kind of a hidden gem. It might be a little hood and not look the greatest, so you need to think about what street you are on and not be out too late and stuff. The artists will live there, some business people will move in, some restaurants will open up that are really good – but only a few people know about it. Over time, other people find out about the area and the word spreads. That’s when the developers come in and start building all sorts of things. The next thing you know, your rent goes up by $200/month and you start asking yourself, Man, can I stay here? I don’t know…
My neighborhood, the Eagle Rock/Highland Park area, is kind of one of those places. It’s artsy. There’s a college nearby. It had been kind of hood for a while, but there’s a lot of really cool shops, local musicians, local artists, art galleries, and record shops. I’m not going to get into any of the specifics, because I don’t want anyone else finding my spots. My neighborhood has received lots of upgrades lately and the vibe is slowly changing. It’s getting more expensive, so we’ll see how long I stay. Right now, it’s still affordable and all of the cool stuff is still there, so I love it.
How old were you when you first started making music?
Eon: I was about six years old.
That’s adorable.
Eon: I wasn’t adorable. I know, because one of my uncles (not my Uncle William) told me so. When I was a pre-teen I was walking through the mall with him, he turned to me and said, “Man, all these little girls keep walking by here and smiling at you. You know what? You’ve turned into a handsome young man. You weren’t no good looking kid when you were little, but you’ve turned out to be a handsome young man.”
And I was thinking, What the HELL kind of compliment is that? You know what I’m saying? I was thirteen and had acne and felt like I had clown shoes, because I wore a size twelve and I was pretty skinny. All I heard was that I used to be ugly.
My cousin Willie and I used to hang out a lot because we were the youngest. There were five of us boys – my two older brothers (Nathan and Chris), his older brother Phil, and then he and I. Willie was almost two years older than me. The two of us were always stuck hanging out. I loved VH1, BET, and MTV. At six, I was already watching music videos, and I was intrigued by early hip hop. One day, we were hanging out, and I was like, “We should start a rap group.”
And Willie was like, “Okay!”
Willie had this electronic drum kit that produced some super cheesy drum sounds. Neither of us knew how to play, but, you know, we tried. We would come up with these songs, if you could call them that, because we were trying to freestyle as little kids. We didn’t have anything to say, and half the time we couldn’t think of things to rhyme. It was ridiculous!
That’s when it all started. We came up with this system. I don’t know if you remember the old tape players. If you pressed ‘record’ they would record out. We would take one little stereo and put our instrumental tape in that one and we would take another, put a blank tape in it, and set it across from the first. So, we played the instrumental in the first, pressed ‘record’ on the second, and ducked our heads in the middle trying to record our verses over the instrumental. It sounded TERRIBLE, but that’s how we figured out we could make songs. We had whole albums, too.
What do you do when you are not making music?
Eon: I own and run a whole other business. I technically do not work for anybody, so I’ve been able to make a living doing what I do. I’m lucky in that way, and I’ve actually been able to use that business to support my music. When I’m not making music, I’m either: running my other business, kicking back at my place watching the game, or getting myself into trouble on social media.
Who or What keeps you on track and continues to inspire you?
Eon: I get bored easily. I like to give myself something to focus on, so I have these mini focal points for every album. Also, as a whole, I have to have something I’m striving towards at all times as an artist. I’ve been trying to be more vulnerable, more open, and more honest. That includes trying not to make things seem cooler than they actually are.
I want to open up to people. As an individual, I’m cerebral and can talk with you about a subject and break it down. Boom. Boom. Boom. You might come away from that, thinking, Oh yeah, we had this great IN-DEPTH conversation. But, none of what I said had anything to do with ME. As an artist, I feel like my evolution, my next step, has to be: giving more of ME, not just my thoughts. That’s the direction I’m headed in.
The people who inspire me are the people I listen to who are great at doing that. I read an interview, and I want to say it was André 3000 who said that Kurt Cobain and 2Pac were the last rock stars we really had, because they both just gave you their whole selves and that’s what a rock star really is. Now, I don’t know that I’m a rock star, but I respect that belief as an artist because you can’t reach your highest level until you are willing to let go of some of those fears and inhibitions. That’s what inspires me at this point.
How do you keep your mind fresh?
Eon: That’s a good question. First of all, I think one of the key things is exposure to different things. Sometimes, I felt like the music or the ideas I had were redundant; but, when I thought about it, I noticed I was doing the same stuff, seeing the same stuff, listening to the same stuff, and nothing was expanding me. I like to read books that expand my mind. That helps me come up with new ideas. Even if I’m not using what’s in the book, it has my wheels turning, and I’m able to see more. I listen to music that expands my mind, too. That doesn’t mean the music has to be deep. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. Maybe an artist just took something in a different direction. That newness sets off little explosions in your mind. I’m always trying to see, hear, and learn something new.
What album(s) could you never part with?
Eon: There’s a LOT of them! For sure, I couldn’t part with any of Prince’s catalog, because it’s my manual. Everything he made was so different. He was a student of music. Throughout his entire career he moved from one project to the next, and he was always doing something that sounded different. He picked up a trick here. He picked up a trick there. You have this musician who is just a savant and plays all these instruments and writes all this music. Yet, he’s still studying and he’s still getting better. If you took any of his albums away from me, it would be like taking a book I was reading that contained the knowledge to enlighten my mind and removing a whole chapter from it. Prince is #1. He has a lot of bastard children, and I consider myself one of them.
Other albums I couldn’t live without: 2Pacalypse Now by 2Pac; The Fix by Scarface; Traveling Without Moving by Jamiroquai; Voodoo by D’Angelo; …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin by The Roots; Infinite Possibilities by Amel Larrieux; The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauren Hill; Off the Wall by Michael Jackson; The Way I See It by Raphael Saadiq; and Stevie Wonder’s entire catalog.
There are SO many – I could come up with 4-5 albums for every genre I just couldn’t be without, and it also changes from time to time. I have a really schizophrenic iPod, and I would feel some type of way if anything turned up missing, because I legit listen to most of it.
What artists are you currently listening to?
Eon: Recently, I’ve been listening to Robert Glasper, the new Childish Gambino, Tech N9ne, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. I listen to a lot of old music, too, but I discover it like it’s new. I just realized a few weeks ago I that I’ve been sleeping on Ben E. King – he sang a bunch of stuff – “Save the Last Dance”, “Stand By Me” – I thought “Stand By Me” was Sam Cooke’s, and it was not. I’ve actually been going back and digging into Ben E. King’s whole catalog as well as listening to some Wanda Jackson. Those are the main artists I’m listening to at the moment. I’m always trying to find something new that I haven’t heard yet.
What’s the most encouraging comment you’ve received from a fan?
Eon: The single, most encouraging comment is when people say they’ve listened to my album from front to back. When I released my debut LP, people would always say that to me. Throughout the making of an album, I obsessively listen to it, focusing on the track orders and what song flows into the next, because that is what I aim for. When people tell you they’ve listened from start to finish, you know you really engaged them and took them on a journey. They experienced the album in full. For me, that’s the ultimate. They entered the car with you and didn’t get out until the ride was over.
What can we expect in the future? Are you already working on new music?
Eon: Oh yeah, oh yeah! I AM working on new music. The next one to drop will actually be the project with the original United Statements group: Adduci, Bamboo, Devon, and myself. That one will be really good – it’s been in the works for a long time, obviously. I have a few other surprises in my pocket, too, but I’ll wait to tell you about them until they start to materialize. I’ll just be be vague and ambiguous with those, but what I can say is this: it’ll be something new and add a whole other dimension to my catalog, so I’m excited.
Do you have any plans for live performances in the near future?
Eon: You know what, I actually don’t, because I’ve been digging into the recording and trying to tie up a bunch of existing projects before I hit the road. A lot of the tracks on Race Music, the project I released last year with my cousin Ron Love, were intended for live performance, but Ron passed away early last year. Because of it, I fell into a funk and missed some deadlines I had set for myself. I’m just now coming out of that and making some new plans. By this summer, I’ll be out on the road a little, having some fun and seeing what the people think.
Are there any music videos you want to share with us? Are any in the making?
Eon: Yes, this past year, my first music video with Adduci was released for the song “Grinding in My Zone” off our project Fighting Demons – it was a vampire-themed video, which was really fun. (YouTube link provided below.) Sonny Cheebah from Camp Lo has a cameo in it. We got to act, have guns, and fake kill people. We chose to make it a short film, so we could showcase some of Adduci’s cinematic prowess. Adduci owns and manages the production company Famous Nobody. He’s also a sought after actor. It was my first music video, so we went all in. It was a crazy idea. First, we joked. Then, we weren’t joking anymore. We made a couple of phone calls. We whipped a crew together. And then I was on the east coast wearing makeup with fangs in my mouth.
There is one music video CURRENTLY in the works. I cannot comment right now as to when it’s coming out. We’re definitely going to try to top the first one, though. We’re planning to work with a lot of the same people to build even more chemistry and momentum this time. This one’s for a NEW SONG, which hasn’t been released.
Shout-outs: Are there any people you’d like to draw our attention to?
Eon: YES! I want to shout-out my buddy/coworker JR Adduci as well as: my dude Devon aka Lyric MC; my friend Bamboo MC; The Libra; my friend CMplex; my cousin Lil Donald, and my cousin Ron Love (RIP).
All the people I have collaborated with recently: Jah Freedom – super dope producer; Courtney C King – super dope producer; Moss; Vikaden; Tino Beats; Jay Beato; DJ Alkaline; DJ Ray Pena; Scott Slagle, who mixed the whole Fighting Demons EP; and Justin Mantooth, who pretty much mixed the whole Race Music EP.
I appreciate everybody who has been supportive or who has helped with any aspect of the making of or promoting of the music or bought an album. Huge artists don’t necessarily feel it coming and going – if one person buys your album or posts about your music on social media, it’s one in a million; but, as one of the little guys, anyone that buys your album or posts about you is huge. When people post or message you, you are thankful, REALLY thankful. Anyone who has been a fan or a supportive friend or family member – THANK YOU. It means everything.
Do you manage your own social account, and do you like to message back?
Eon: I absolutely manage my own account and the United Statements label’s account and I LOVE interacting with fans. Any feedback or connections are great. I want you to know it will definitely be me on the response, so please hit me up and let me know what you think about the new Southern L.O. EP!
Connect with Eon MC Etc:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/EonMcEtc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EonMCEtc
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1KNplqCyyhgGUTa9fQlQdZ
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/unitedstatements
Listen to the Southern L.O. EP:
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/southern-l-o/id1220578489
Amazon: http://a.co/8JxnVnP
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6nFxtFm0yXhLyzEihFbvLP
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/unitedstatements/southern-lo
Listen to Southern L.O. AND what Eon MC Etc. is Listening to:
Spotify Playlist (User: Ivy Cayden, Playlist: MMM: Eon MC Etc.)
https://open.spotify.com/user/1288639338/playlist/1OINDwsRAO8jfCvn4WK9HC
YouTube: “Grindin’ In My Zone” music video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlrz2xOcPc0