Exclusive Interview: Josef Pierre

Originally from Houston, Josef Pierre is a student in sociology at A&M (2012). If you were ever to meet him, after a few soft-spoken words from his mouth you would think he was either a taciturn nerd or a mysterious, smooth rapper. He’s actually both. This young talent is about to release his first full-length album worldwide from the remotely secluded town of—you guessed it—College Station.

In 2010, Pierre released The Distant, a 7-song hodgepodge of genre playfulness with all songs leaning more or less in the experimental rock direction. Although he disavows the album as“growing pains” music, it also holds sentimental value for him. The songs embody his first attempt as a solo artist.

Now, almost two years later, he is weeks away from releasing This House is Not a Home, an earnest project which has taken nearly a year to write and record. The new album seamlessly stitches together Pierre’s vast influences—such as Radiohead, Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Church music, and Toro y Moi—into a soundscape that’s as uplifting as it is enticingly innovative.

We sat down with Pierre in Starbucks in Northgate to talk about his new album. Over a cacophony of coffee grinding and milk frothing, we also delved into Pierre’s unique “place” in hip hop and how he tricked his dad into liking his music.

This House is Not a Home will be released on noisetrade.com February 1, free to download. Maroon Weekly will also be offering fans of our Facebook page a download link in their newsfeeds in February.

MW: Tell us a little about how the new album was produced. You had over 10 people contribute to this one. It must have been hard to manage everything.

Pierre: I think that when I kinda figured out this is what I wanted to do, it was after listening to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, the Kanye album. And he has a ton of features on the project. They were actually in Hawaii and Kanye flew everyone out to this compound, and they just sat and worked on music. And you can tell they’re his songs, like he wrote them. But everybody was in his ears with ideas. And I think that’s kinda how I felt with this.

MW: You’re releasing your new album This House is Not a Home as a free download. Why free?

Pierre: I don’t ever pay for music. I can’t think of the last time I paid for any album. But I know that I’ll go see people in concert. I just paid $95 to go see a concert recently.

I don’t expect people to pay for my music at this point. So if I don’t pay for Grammy winner’s, why would they pay for an independent’s?

MW: The range of influences that you personally lend to your music reaches into seemingly unrelated genres. Did you just say one day, “To hell with it! I’m gonna do my thing the way I want to!”

Pierre: With the sampling, I wanted to do different things than most people would do in hip hop. I would say that most people have sampled a lot of soul music; I didn’t grow up on that, and I don’t listen to that much now. I respect it. But that’s not what’s featured in the album.

I listen to a lot of indie stuff, electronic stuff, and stuff that most people in hip hop might not listen to. I really took what I listen to and sampled that, and that’s why the beats are a little bit different than what you might typically hear.

MW: The music on this new album fuses elements of indie rock and Southern rap, which would seem like a highly unlikely marriage. But you take the hard edge out of dirty rap and yet you were able to keep in some licentious lyrics without setting off any alarms. On the other hand, you have another song on the album with a sample from The XX [an indie band from the UK] used predominately in your song, “The Struggle.” You manage to take the quirkiness out of the sample without becoming hipster hop.

Pierre: It’s so funny coming from Houston and then this is the music I make. I grew up listening to rap.  It’s so crazy. I let people hear the beats that I make, and they give me a weird look.  It’s good, but they’re like, “Why is it so different?” They’re just not used to it.

I feel like a lot of tracks on here are not typical, but when I listen to them, they sound like me.

Growing up, my parents were really religious. My mom toured across the country singing for Women of Faith, the women equivalent of Promise Keepers. And my dad’s been a Deacon. So it’s crazy to know what they expect [from me] and how I was raised and what I actually am. It’s not that I haven’t forgotten it. I know it’s still important–

MW: But this outlet has allowed you to ask questions?

Pierre: Yeah. It’s not like a blind faith anymore. It’s so much easier to have a blind faith. “That’s what I’m told, that’s what I grew up thinking.” I kind of miss that in some ways, but I know I need to figure things out this way, too.

MW:  So…what do your parents think of your music?  Have they listened to it?

Pierre: Over the weekend, I went home and played one of the songs for my mom, a song called “Man in the Mirror.” I was like, “So, what do you think?” And she said, “I just don’t know why you have to use that language.”

I let my dad listen to some of the songs, some of the songs in production, just the beats. And he’s like, “Meh, it’s okay.”  And I said, “What are you looking for?”  And he said, “Movie scores.”

MW: That’s probably not such a bad thing. Your parents might be good barometers for what’s poppy and catchy.

Pierre: They ended up liking a song. I tricked my dad, didn’t tell him who it was.  After listening to it, he said, “I like the beat. I like the guy who’s singing.”

And I said, “Well I made the beat and that’s me singing. Tricked you! You like my song!”