Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Isai Morales. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Isai, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?

Lokote was the first project where I started really diving into my personal life stories and where I decided to start wearing the luchador mask. At first a lot of people in my hometown and surrounding cities didn’t really understand it. Some still don’t, but it felt like once I started wearing the mask and using it for my visuals the right people started gravitating towards it. Being a Latino growing up in Ohio just by itself, has always had its moments of being misunderstood by everyone. You add being a creative and that adds a whole another factor to the equation. A majority of my life I have felt like I don’t really belong anywhere, and I speak on it in the music. But I’ve grown to realize that being misunderstood is something that’s inevitable in any creative field. Whether it’s from your family, friends, or strangers; people are going to think whatever about you regardless. As long as you’re happy doing what you do, that’s all that matters at the end of the day.

Isai, 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?

My name is Isai Morales and I am an artist of many mediums. Most people probably know me for the music, but I like to keep my brain busy by having my hands in multiple aspects of the arts, from creative direction to the administrative side.

Music saved my life, I’d like to think. It was where I found comfort as a child and served as my way to sort of escape reality. I’d like to think of my infatuation with music so early in life as being a gift, because where I come from it’s easy to get involved in the wrong type of extra curricular activities. At 7 years old I was already collecting CDs and cassettes courtesy of my grandmother for bringing home good grades. Which would turn into me wanting to create my own music in my early teen years. It wasn’t until my grandfather gifted my mother and I a family computer where I started burning my own CD’s and selling them in high school,

Being that young, I didn’t have access to recording studios or any sort of knowledge about creating music whatsoever. I used my time in school to take art and design classes which taught me to create what I wanted visually, while simultaneously teaching myself how to record music when I got home. By the time I was 17 I was designing and duplicating CDs out of my bedroom regularly. I had saved up enough money from selling those CD’s to get some better equipment and set up a makeshift studio in my bedroom which would later turn into the recording studio I have today.

Once I turned 18 I started performing at bars and colleges across Ohio. With time and growth that evolved into traveling and doing bigger events which would ultimately put me in rooms with a lot of today’s prominent artists before they were todays prominent artists. However getting started that early in music and just jumping into it, I’ll admit I didn’t really have a good sense of self or even a sound of my own. Looking back I don’t think I was ready for a lot of the opportunities that were being presented in my early to mid 20s, but you live and you learn. I was getting a bit of an inflated ego without having the music to back it up, so it was only a matter of time before a series of unfortunate events would humble me.

In 2017 after having a slight setback with an incident involving uncleared samples, I decided to take a few years to really dive inwards and completely rebranded. As part of the rebranding I created Loko Recordings in 2020, to serve as a place for my music to live. I feel like there comes a time in every artists life where they realize everything they create is going to be their legacy. With that thought in my head, I started creating with more intention. I started focusing on speaking my truth in the music and finding a way to pay homage to the things that made me who I am today. Which is why you’ll hear songs with stories about my family, or the experiences I’ve lived through, or even being in love. When you create from the soul people will always resonate with it, which is why I think I’ve been able to draw this audience over the last few years. The music has just been speaking for itself.

As for the luchador mask, that serves as my way to pay homage to my Mexican roots while also simultaneously keeping me in the shadows. I want the art to have the light and for the stories to live forever. The vanity side of things has gotten less and less appealing as I’ve grown older. The idea of being able to take my mask off at the end of the day and be just a normal person brings me comfort.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I feel as if my mission is to paint a narrative of the Latino experience in America that humanizes us more than we’ve seen in the past. I strive to do that with everything I create.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding thing has been getting messages from people in other parts of the world, saying my music has either helped them or I’ve inspired them. There’s not really any feeling in the world that compares to that. I hope every creative gets to feel that in their lifetime.

Contact Info:

• Website: lokorecordings.com
• Instagram: @holamellamoisai
• Twitter: @holamellamoisai
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@IsaiMorales

Image Credits
Thankyougabe Samuel Steezmore Prince Visualz Sophia Muñoz Ricardo Navas