We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Graahm a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Graahm, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

It’s complicated. I didn’t always know who I wanted to be, but there were signs. I was maybe nine or ten years old when my parents gifted me a digital camera because they knew I loved taking pictures. I recorded videos of myself in my room singing and dancing to my CDs, imagining myself singing to a giant crowd of people. My favorite was a CD of Queen’s greatest hits my uncle gave me. I remember it as one of the first pieces of music I loved.

My parents consistently played music around me—The Cure, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani, The Beatles—but my musical exploration kicked in when I got a Sandisk Sansa E250 around the same age. Every few months, I made a list of songs I liked so my dad could download them from Napster. He put me on Eminem around then which led me into some deep rabbit holes on YouTube, finding rappers and singers like Lil Wayne, Drake, Wiz Khalifa, Chris Brown, and the list goes on. I was a kid in a candy store. I just wanted to obsess over music and watch videos that transported me into another world, and that’s how I spent a lot of my free time.

Kanye released Cruel Summer and I was overanalyzing the absolute hell out of the tracklist…figuring out why the verses on “Mercy” were ordered the way they were, why Kanye’s served as a buildup to 2 Chainz’s, or realizing the influence Chief Keef and drill music had on the industry. Rap will probably forever be my favorite genre because that’s the first style of music I fell fully in love with. The feeling of accomplishment after memorizing an entire rap song was like defeating the final boss of a video game.

From this point forward into my preteen/teenage years, I kept finding different genres and artists I loved, listening to my friends’ favorites and showing them mine. Genius released their top 100 rap songs of 2013 list and I started listening to Odd Future, TDE, A$AP Rocky, Danny Brown, Mac Miller, Kid Cudi, Freddie Gibbs, and everyone else who was involved in that explosive period of rap. The NBA 2K13 soundtrack had a lot of crazy songs on it too. All of this is important when I look back at the development of my interest in music, because I felt such a connection to the music I was listening to, but I always felt like there was more I could do than solely listen.

Around 15 years old, I started browsing type beats and writing verses in the “spiritual lyrical miracle” style (yikes) but they were super important for my growth. The first song I ever made was in the summer of 2018 when my PlayStation friend told me we should make a song together, so I got a Blue Snowball at Walmart for $50 and I recorded a couple of verses while I had my friends in the room. It was a blatant ripoff of Ugly God and Ski Mask but I had an amazing time recording and messing around with it; I think it’s still out on SoundCloud somewhere. I released some other songs afterward just messing around and they got some traction within my high school. A lot of people were messing with it heavily cause meme rap was big at that time.

All was going well for a bit until I had a horrible experience, a lot of which had to do with my current medication and me thinking I was invincible as a lot of teens do. My mental health and self-esteem went straight down and I drastically changed as a person. I lost my purpose, passion for music, and all my close friends, mostly by my own doing. I did enjoy adding lyrics to Genius for a lot of underground artists, like $NOT when he dropped exclusively on SoundCloud. Transcribing helped me understand good song structure which is something I try to incorporate in my music nowadays.

Overall, it was an intense stage in my life, but after a couple of years, I realized music was the only outlet for myself that ever gave me a true release of emotion. Eventually, I had to ask myself, “Am I just gonna sit around all day and think about making music or do something about it?” In late 2020, I decided to be for real about recording, and I sucked at first, but eventually got the hang of recording listenable vocals over beats I found online. Within a year, I was creating the best music I’d ever made. I started singing, and the second and third songs I sang were “lovesick,” an unreleased song, and “grave!” I couldn’t even believe what I was making and my overall confidence got a boost because I broke out of my comfort zone and did something I thought I would suck at.

That pretty much concludes my story of when I realized I wanted to take music seriously, and it’s been about three years since I began seeing it that way. I’m in no rush to “blow up” or “make it big” because I don’t feel I’ve gotten to the artist I want to be seen as. People get so caught up in the idea of money and attention but ignore the hard work and that’s my favorite part about making music. If you don’t embrace the grind, you’ll go nowhere fast.

Graahm, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m 22, born and raised in Hutchinson, KS. I moved to Lawrence at 20. My parents own a small grocery store in town and having that business-oriented background plays a big role in how I view music. I had a pretty average middle-class upbringing which included lots of travel, which I’m grateful for. I find the small-town mindset exhausting and traveling as a child showed me different perspectives and ways of life.

I haven’t come up with a great elevator pitch for my music. I usually tell people it’s a blend of every art form I’ve consumed and felt emotionally connected with. Sad Boys/Drain Gang, Summrs, Juice WRLD, and Chief Keef have a huge influence on my melodies. JPEGMAFIA, Mac Miller, Earl Sweatshirt, and a lot of Tyler’s earlier work inspired some of my lyrics and having an overall vision and executing it. I’m very inspired by films too. My current top three is Eternal Sunshine, The Thing, and The Truman Show.

I’ve always treated music as my therapy and I love when people tell me it resonates with them too. There’s nothing more rewarding than creating something that helps someone. Everyone needs relatability and a way to feel less isolated. If I can provide that and make a career from it, I’ll be set.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

The most important resource you can have is friends in any creative field. I’ve met some truly beautiful souls during my journey and we all inspire each other whenever we link. It would’ve been nice to have more of that in my early days of creation because if you can find your people, everything becomes easier. Everyone wants to help each other because we all work hard. It feels good to help people who are doing everything they can to go up. Most of my friends are based in Kansas City and we recently formed our collective, “NOISECOMPLAINT.”

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

It’s common for us to feel alienated in a world where a career in creation is typically looked at as a shot in the dark. The number one thing we need is support. Be there with them, whether they’re struggling or succeeding. Celebrate their achievements. If your time and energy allow for it, help them in any way you can. Creatives are some of the hardest workers, and they appreciate anything they can get.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/admin
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1graahm/
• Twitter: https://x.com/1graahm
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@graahm3079
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/departurefromreality
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6Mf2M9xFvKwzEIM10E8RH8?si=-vRyOCOCTw2ktcpq5kCp8A
  https://music.apple.com/us/artist/graahm/1623127142

Image Credits

Elicia Castillo (@elicia.jpeg on IG)
Bobby Emerick (@bobiii.wav on IG)