Q&A With San Fernando Valley’s Very Own Faze

Whats Up Faze!! We really enjoyed your latest album “Thrice Holy”!! One of our main contributors CTHREE reviewed it and gave it 7/10!! How long have you been making music? And how did you get your emcee name?

Thank you I appreciate you guys taking the time to listen and I’m glad to know you guys enjoyed it. I’ve been making music for almost 5 years now but writing for 14 years. I attended LA recording school to learn the basics, once I learned that I bought my equipment and started doing my own recording. I chose my name because of its definition. To “faze” someone means to disturb or impact them someway which is my aim with everything I write, I want to make people think for themselves and pointing out disturbing facts about reality is a way to do that.

The San Fernando Valley has a heavy underground Hip Hop scene! Tell us how the SFV influenced you in anyway!?

I grew up in the SFV, I was born in North Hollywood and raised all my life in Van Nuys so that’s where I had most of my life experiences whether it be exes, run ins with police, first time smoking weed, etc. I take my life experiences and turn them to lyrics so most of my songs are 100% from experience.

Let’s face it, social media since 2015 has grown tremendously, especially IG!!! Tell us how is your IG grind looking, and how have you been able to keep up with the high demand on social media? Do you have a website??

Honestly, social media is one place I struggle to keep up lol. I try to keep content consistent but I tend to forget about it sometimes since I keep myself busy with engineering, composing beats, and writing. I do have a website, it’s EntityCollective.com My team and I have all of our released up-to-date content on there for download along with links to the whole teams social media links.

Please breakdown the creative process to your new album “Thrice Holy”?

Every song was different. A lot of my process is emotion based, depending on what I’m going through at the moment. The first song finished on the album was “Reflections,” which was sitting in my laptop for a while before I eventually decided to add it to the album, it almost didn’t make it to the album. A few verses weren’t actually written to the beats they ended up on, for example “Faze of the Apocalypse” and a verse on “Embrace the Ending” was actually written to the “Thrice Holy” beat but ended up separate tracks because in the end once I had my track list set up it’s what made sense to me. It was definitely different from my previous project which was a lot more on the lighter side.

How often do you perform live?? Any indie DIY tours in the works?

I used to perform a few times a month but I went through a few months where I didn’t perform and wanted to focus on more content so I’m getting back on the shows and hopefully we can manage to book shows consistently. My team and I have been talking about putting together a tour of California and possibly some neighboring states, we’ll make announcements once we have something solidified.

How do you feel about the whole XAN & LEAN trend these kids nowadays are on!!!..LOL??? Be honest, do you use some of that stuff??..LOL

LMAO These kids are killing themselves but to each their own. I used to struggle with addiction so I really can’t judge but I never glorified what I was doing. I can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying either of those substances though I was curious I just never got the chance to try it, I’m ok with that though lol I’m a big pot smoker with the occasional shroom trip and I’m ok with keeping it that way, I’m not even much of a drinker. I had my fun and made my mistakes early on in life.

What you got cooking next? Anything special for 2018!!??

I actually have 3 different projects I’m starting but haven’t decided which one to go with first. We’ve been concentrating on videos lately, we just released a couple and we have a few more in the works so there’s a lot coming soon for everyone to enjoy. Aside from that the other Emcee in the group, Profound Introduction, has his new project he’s working on that I’m engineering called “Midnight City.” We have a lot for the people to look out for this year.

Our most popular question, what is your definition of “Underground Hip Hop”?

I see the term “Underground” as undiscovered by the vast majority. I know people differentiate Underground and Mainstream as one being pure and the other being commercialized and generic but I see certain artists get radio play like J. Cole and I put him pretty high up there lyrically on the list with rappers considered Underground.

Where can fans find your music? Drop all links!!

All music can be found and downloaded on my teams website EntityCollective.com and streamed on all platforms (Spotify, Google play, Apple music, etc.) the newest content is usually posted in the instagram bio @entity_collective or @hiphopfaze

Any Shout Outs??

I’d like to shout out my team Entity Collective, the super-producer SPVCECVSE who produced all but 2 tracks on the album which I produced, Profound Intro one of the smoothest emcees I’ve heard to this day, Perm the genius behind guitar, our friends who have a YouTube channel titled “Whenever We Have Time” (@wheneverwehavetime on IG) they do interviews and have live performances and stuff it’s really dope. Shout out to Destruct, Tre Hype, Lucy B and everyone who’s shown us love and been willing to work with us to help build what we’re all creating together.