Cullen The Great – Bad Intent [Interview]

Describe your sound in 3 words

I would describe my sound as charismatic, energetic, and exciting. Something that gets you hype but also feels like you get to know the real me through my music.

Tell us a few things about your new song Bad Intent. What is the main idea behind it?

Bad Intent is like my baby, I love everything about that song. I really learned a lot and had so much fun in the process of making it. There really isn’t any true inspiration behind it, I heard the instrumental and thought, ‘damn this some grimey sh*t’ so I started thinking grimey and threw my own little twist on there. Funny story, I actually started this project back in June but ran into computer problems the same day and was forced to upgrade my entire setup. I could’ve gotten my laptop reset and it would’ve been fine but that meant losing this file and that wasn’t something I could give up so I ultimately made the costly sacrifice and upgraded. I was without my computer for a month, I was literally going crazy. The only sort of productive thing I could do was write, so I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote some more. But when my computer finally arrived I was like a kid on Christmas, I cancelled all plans I had, barely had the thing plugged in and set up, and was already in the studio recording the rest of this song. I’m super proud of how it turned out and think it shows true progression from where I first started to where I’m at now. This song makes me feel like a rapper, not just someone making music in his room.

For which lyric you are most proud of?

To be honest, I’m super proud of my entire first verse. I was really diggin the rhyme scheme and flow I had going on, plus I felt like this was my cleanest sounding mix yet, so it all just fit together perfectly. But if i had to pick a lyric in Bad Intent that I am most proud of, it would be the section that goes like, “Oppressions of expressions only lead to more suppression, while progression of recession brings out all the true confessions.” Cause if you really dive deep and analyze the lyrics in that section the message behind it is mind boggling. Definitely one of those things that made me think, “Holy sh*t, how did I come up with that?”

Do you think there is a true underground hip hop sound today?

This is such a tough question for me. I was inspired to start making music during the infamous Soundcloud rapper days. That distinct style and sound influenced a lot of my music, however, I feel as though it became so
popular that the underground vibe became mainstream and the mainstream sound became sort of outdated. I do believe there is a true underground hip-hop sound, but I’m not sure the industry (and fans) are
quite over the SoundCloud era. Right now everybody is just rocking with what they got, being original, and not trying to ‘fit in’, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that!

What does hip hop symbolize in your opinion?

Change. Hope. Inspiration. Hip-Hop is oftentimes looked at in a negative light given it’s history of origin, but what people overlook is that Hip-Hop is used as a tool to express, inspire, educate, create change, give hope for a
better tomorrow, and let you know that you’re not alone in this world. It’s something that goes deeper than lyrics, it’s an attitude, it’s a lifestyle, it’s knowing that life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows and when the going
gets tough, so do you. If Jay-Z ran from every challenge change brought, or quit when he lost hope, he wouldn’t be Jay-Z. You never know what you can do and what you can accomplish in life and hip-hop is the perfect
example of that.

When not writing music, how do you spend your time?

This is gonna sound so cheesy because every other artist says the same thing, but I don’t really do anything besides make music. I truthfully spend 99% of my free time working on music, whether it be writing, recording, mixing, promoting, researching, photoshoots, video shoots, and everything in between, my life 100% revolves around music. I am a big outdoors guy though, I love to fish, hunt, camp, really anything that lets me get out in nature and enjoy nature is the way I spend my other 1%. I am a big family guy as well, any opportunity I have to spend with them I take it.

Future plans?

I have so many dreams and ambitions other than music that I would love to pursue during my lifetime. The biggest one for me right now is the fact that I want to write a book one day (I have this super sick idea that involves music, murder, betrayl, and hella twists.) I also want to eventually open a chain of studios that gives engineers the freedom to freelance work in professional settings. Eventually I’d love to act one day, but who’s got two thumbs and is a terrible actor? This guy! But of course mostly, more music. I may or may not be working on an EP currently, but we’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds for our Idols.

Thank you!

Follow Cullen The Great
Instagram

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s