Myles Cameron: Creating Worlds
Myles Cameron is an unconventional artist and his music cannot be defined by any particular style. While completing his degree in ethics, politics, and economics at Yale, Cameron established himself within the music scene as an artist with a distinct story to tell. His genre-non-conforming music presents a narrative centered on the unique experience of a young suburban black male.
Though the 22-year-old is primarily focused on creating music, he does not limit himself to making songs. Cameron has a holistic view of art and “creates worlds” for his music to live in. Across social media platforms, he produces content that blends with his music to create a body of art consisting of multiple mediums that soothe both the eyes and ears.
Cameron told us about selecting colors for his Instagram feed to correspond with the essence of his latest projects. As his EPs shift in tone so do the colors in his Instagram, creating a consistent feel. In Black Sheep, Cameron’s latest EP, his alluring voice shines through against reflective, mellow beats while his Instagram exhibits a darker theme.
In the midst of the current global pandemic, Cameron agreed to sit down with us for a Zoom interview. Though we were nearly 3,000 miles apart, his charismatic and welcoming personality was still apparent through the screen. While his music is often melancholic and recalls moments of feeling out of place, Cameron’s warm smile and sincerity reflected the lighter, more passionate tones of his music.
What was it like growing up in the suburbs of New York?
Um, I mean it was mostly good. To live in a suburb you have to be pretty economically okay which we definitely were growing up. On the backend though, as I’ve reflected on in my music recently in the past few years, there’s definitely a lot of feeling out of place and confused. I kind of just accepted that experience growing up and being a kid. The ways in which I kind of felt like a black sheep, I’ve been able to reflect on later in my life and identify why that was and the specific incidences that gave me that feeling. It’s weird being a black kid surrounded by white kids. That’s a position I’ve often been in, growing up and then being at a school like Yale. And it’s an experience I hadn’t seen reflected on that much in music, so I wanted to try and fill that missing gap if I could.
What’s your family like?
My family is amazing and super inspiring. My parents are huge role models for me. My dad is a super self made person like one of those people who just doesn’t put limits on himself and leads with hard work. And my mom is one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met and is just a queen of empathy. And then my sister is a college student who is very creatively motivated as well and we grew up taking piano lessons and singing lessons together. So yeah she writes songs and is into fashion as well.
What did you grow up listening to?
Well firstly there was what my parents put me on to. I have distinct memories listening to a lot of R&B with my dad in the car on the way to get haircuts and things. John Legend, India Arie, Kirk Franklin, Stevie Wonder. But I also grew up with the internet, so from middle school on there was iTunes, LimeWire, and you could literally just download whatever you wanted. So I got super into Pop punk, like Paramore, MayDay Parade and then got into hip hop around the same time. Like the Drake, Lil Wayne era of rap was like my intro.
How would you describe yourself as an artist?
Figuring it out. Hahah. I mean there are things I feel like I am and wanna be, and then a lot of room for growth. I am definitely a black artist. Blackness and my reflections on it and my experiences with it will always be a part of my expression. But, I mean I’m 22 years old. And I’ve been writing and recording for like 7 or 8 years, but having just graduated school, this is the first time that I’m really diving into it as the centerpiece of my life. I’m still figuring it out, man. But I would say that I’m a developing black artist. A genre-bending black artist.
What did you do during your gap year?
I only took a semester off, not a full year. I had this thing in my head where I had always wanted to pursue music, but at an Ivy League school and also in life it’s not thought to be a very realistic aspiration. So if I was going to pursue music, the ball had to be rolling before I graduated. The summer of my sophomore year I made a mixtape of 10 songs that I released over the course of 10 months. And one of those songs, “Caged Bird,” caught a lot of traction on Spotify which was a really exciting and encouraging moment. I wanted to be able to capitalize off of that the next summer, but then that summer I got this really dope internship opportunity to go to LA and work for John Legend’s manager. Which felt like the kind of thing I shouldn’t pass up if I wanted to pursue music because I feel like the most successful artists are business people as well as artists. You kind of have to understand that angle of things as well.
And so I took the internship, but then decided I would take the semester off afterwards so I could go learn about how music management works and then come back home and record and finish this project that I had started to follow up “Caged Bird.” Lonely Suburban Black Boy was the first project that I put out on all platforms and not just Soundcloud. I was at home in the suburbs but like taking trains into the city to play shows, and recording in Westchester in the suburbs. I was also kind of interacting with the music industry a little bit, going to a lot of meetings at record labels and meeting lawyers and finding a manager and stuff like that. So TLDR, networking, performing and recording.
Going back to your internship over the summer. What lessons did you take away from that experience?
Honestly, the biggest thing I learned was that I didn’t want to work in the music business. In that stage, I was like it would be sick to be an artist, but if that falls through, the more realistic thing would be just to work in the music business and be a manager or A&R or something. But being that close to the thing I wanted to do and not doing it. Like helping other people with their marketing strategy or gathering their stats for them or helping come up with video ideas was like…at the risk of sounding egotistical, I felt like I could be just as good if not better if I was doing it for myself. So why am I sitting here and helping someone with their ideas, I should be pursuing my own.
I also learned that management is really important. The music industry is historically pretty predatory towards artists. It’s very content to kind of chew you up and spit you out and just try to make as much money off of you as possible. So having strong management that you can trust is huge. I don’t think labels are necessarily evil or bad, but if you give them the opportunity they will take advantage of you, so you do have to make sure you have a strong team in your corner to fight for you and help you protect yourself from that.
Is fashion important to you?
Yeah, fashion is extremely important to me and is one of the reasons that I love the idea of being an artist professionally. You have the freedom to shape your life how you want. Like schedule-wise, how you choose to present yourself. The artists that I admire are not just creative in just the sphere of music but also just like everything they do. Like Tyler the Creator, the way he dresses is creative, the cover art, his fashion line. He’s been doing these online fashion shows which I think is super super sick, and won’t be surprised if every big fashion company steals the idea. FKA Twigs, Solange, everything they do is expression and I definitely want to follow in line with them and be a part of the stream of influence of those kinds of artists.
Twisting my hair is an art project for me, fashion is an art project for me for sure. Something I’ve been doing for the past few years is figuring out a color palette for whatever music I’m working on. It’s kind of what it feels like to me. And then I curate the photos and videos. I have to be wearing the colors that the music feels like to me if that makes sense. Everything has to be a world.
You said in another interview, you “try to bring objects, emotions, colors, and light into the picture.” What does the process for that look like?
Creating music for me is as much a visual thing as it is a sonic thing, so when I’m starting a project or working on new music, I like making mood boards of images I like or colors I like and I kind of try to just infuse them all. I’m obsessed with creating worlds of things that you can kind of dive into. Like you can just listen to the music if you want, but you can also go through my Instagram which has the same colors in it that the videos do. The first time I ever did it was with Everwanted, which is the mixtape that I put out with “Caged Bird” on it. I found myself, whenever I found a new artist, listening to their music and then going to their Instagram and scrolling through. So I was like how do I curate an Instagram that feels the same way that the music does so when people do that, it feels cohesive when they’re scrolling. As a kid I was obsessed with Star Wars and Pokémon and things that have a whole world to them. There are not 5 Pokémon, there are 600. So you can spend literally hours in that world if you want to. And that’s kind of what I want to do with music.
Is there a specific order for all of that?
It kind of just happens. My producer and I make a lot of music. We both view ourselves as still in the development period of our artistry, so while making stuff to put out is important, more important is just putting in the 10,000 hours. The last EP we put out, Black Sheep, was five tracks, but we made around 50 for it. It’s more about becoming better than having a hit song immediately.
So somewhere in that time of going to the studio and making a ton of songs, I’ll start making a mood board. I don’t know. It kind of just happens naturally. I’m always just saving pictures from the internet and Instagram that I like, and I’ll get weirdly obsessed with like one article of clothing or something and that will become like the color. It just kind of happens.
In the MiniDoc, Making Black Sheep, there are multiple people in the room with you. Who are those people and how do they contribute to your creative process?
Let’s see. I mean it kind of depends on the session. The core two people are me and Frankie Scoca, my producer. We’ve been recording together for like five years now. He has a home studio that we generally work out of that is pictured in the mini doc a little bit towards the end before the shots at the show. Every once in a while, we’ll have people come to the studio, friends of ours who play instruments to work, and sometimes we’ll get Airbnb’s or other houses to work out of kind of for a change of scenery. The session that was videotaped was a combination of all those things. Me and Frankie are there, and also we happened to have a friend who plays an instrument who came, and also we had a friend who raps come, and my manager was also there, and then my friend who is a videographer came. So it was all the people who come sometimes all there at the same time.
It was me, Frankie the producer, Corey Smith-West from this great 2-piece band called Bathe who are actually UPenn grads. They call their music “Surf RnB.” It’s very moody, groovy stuff. Anyway, he’s a very talented guitarist. Neither Frankie nor I play guitar, so it’s always nice to have someone who has that skill set in the studio. And then Commonminds who is a rapper and friend of ours. He was making more music with Frankie than I was when we first met. But he has since taken a bit of a hiatus and has not been making that much music, so we drag him to the studio every once in a while. He comes to all my shows and performs some songs with me. Then my manager Nishant was there, who is in charge of keeping things organized, networking, and finding new people to work with and meet with for business stuff. And then my friend Amani was there who is super into film, and works at Dreamville. She’s great at video stuff, and she shot and edited the whole thing.
How do you like performing?
I’ve been performing my whole life. I played piano as a kid and sang at recitals and did school plays. Playing your own music is definitely a different kind of feeling and different kind of rush. I’ve gotten very used to doing it infront of maybe 15 to 30 people, cause that’s what my shows have been for most of the time I’ve been writing music, but as of recently the numbers have been a little bit bigger thanks to the songs spreading on the internet, which is super, super crazy.
I played my first headlining New York show last year. About 150 people came out to this tiny basement in Brooklyn. That was already overwhelming and sick, and then a year later for this newest project we had this show at Rough Trade. It’s a 350 person venue. My manager and booking agent were like “Yeah we’re going to go with Rough Trade” and I was like “There’s no way we’re selling it out. I hope you know that.” But we did. Seeing numbers go up on the internet is cool, but it’s an entirely different experience when people buy a ticket with their money and physically go to a place to see you perform. The shows themselves are amazing though, it’s so exhilarating. It’s a feeling like few other things. It’s almost like every nerve in your body is activated. It’s very stimulating in a cool and fun way.
I read you were supposed to perform at the Moroccan Lounge. Did you get to do that before Covid-19 shut everything down?
Yeah, crazy enough we went out for a week, did the show, and came back maybe a week before everything shut down, which makes me feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be. Divine timing or something. On the flight back, I remember thinking like Should we wear masks? This Corona thing is like getting kind of serious. And then a week later no one could leave their homes.
You’ve noted Frank Ocean as an inspiration of yours. Do you have any specific songs that have really stuck with you?
I mean Channel Orange as a whole just flipped my entire world on its head. I always liked music, but the vividness of his songwriting just really affected me. I think it was a kind of a turning point in my life as a music listener. A lot of people listen to whatever music is cool and whatever their friends are listening to or suggest, and in middle school I was mostly just doing that. Like I was definitely listening to Paramore because these kids told me it was cool to listen to. I was listening to Drake because other kids told me it was cool to listen to. Frank Ocean was one of those people who I feel like I discovered on my own. I “discovered” him from Watch the Throne, so I didn’t actually discover him at all but it was one of the first times I had heard an artist’s music, been like who is this, looked it up, and decided I liked it completely on my own. I just have very vivid memories of listening to Channel Orange in bed with headphones on with the lights off, staring at the ceiling, and feeling like I was in the pyramid in “Pyramids.” Hahaha. And just seeing everything. The hotel room and the chandeliers.
Songs that stand out from his discography…“Pyramids” for sure because I just have a vivid memory of seeing everything in that song. “Lost” was one of my first favorite songs by him. Blonde is just a ridiculous album that has heavily influenced a lot of people, I feel like every artist my age was super influenced by it, just sonically what he was doing on that album. “Ivy” and “Nights” off that album and “Self Control.” And then off of Endless, the song “Higgs”, I discovered more recently because I didn’t listen to Endless until a year after Blonde came out. Any song where he’s being super descriptive with his lyrics, I just feel like I’m watching a movie. It’s amazing.
What music are you listening to right now?
Jessica Pratt is one. She plays guitar and sings, and it’s really haunting somehow. Bakar, he’s this dude from England. I think a lot of people mix like HipHop and Rock aesthetics, but he does it in a really unique way I think.
A lot of stuff has been coming out recently but I haven’t loved most of it. The more I’ve gotten into making music, the more critical I’ve become of listening to it.. Oh, King Krule’s new album. Man Alive! Is my favorite of the year so far. It’s amazing. Grimes’ record is cool too.
Why did you choose to attend Yale and what was your experience like?
I mean I’m definitely a nerd. I wanted someplace that was really going to challenge me academically. I also wanted to go to the best school that I could. I didn’t want to limit myself. I applied to Yale early, kind of just like why not. Which I think kind of comes from my Dad. Like don’t limit yourself. Always shoot for what you want because you never know what could happen. So I wanted someplace that was going to challenge me academically but I also wanted somewhere that had somewhat of a creative culture about it. When I visited Yale and spoke to people who I knew who went there, for a school of it’s academic rigor, I could tell that there was a lot of creative stuff happening there. A whole culture of acapella groups, one of which I was in. And just a lot of performances happening every week, in all different artistic mediums. Everyone at Yale is smart but also has another thing that they do. And for a lot of people at Yale that thing is music or an instrument or singing or something. It was just a very creative environment which was nice.
What was my experience like when I was there? It was great. Hahah. It was hard. It was very very challenging but also worth it. At the end of the year, I would be able to see the ways that I had changed and grown from xyz challenges. At times it was a little bit creatively suffocating just because there’s so much going on in the academic sphere. I was in an honors major and doing a lot of extracurriculars, so I didn’t really leave myself a lot of time to do music. I was mostly just writing and recording when I was at home during break and over the summer. Sometimes creatively suffocating but generally a good experience. One that I feel I grew from a lot because it was really fucking hard.
Who are some artists you wish to collaborate with in the future?
Obviously Frank Ocean’s on there, but that’s like never going to happen because I’m too influenced by him hahah, where I don’t think he would find me that interesting. I wouldn’t want to collaborate with artists that are trying to be me or too influenced by me. Um, James Blake I absolutely love. His production and self sampling is so dope and interesting to me. Dev Hynes, Blood Orange, he’s super super sick. I would love to work with him one day. Solange and FKA Twigs. Those are the top four.
You mentioned this a little bit earlier, but what does Black Sheep really mean to you?
Well the first EP, Lonely Suburban Black Boy, was a character portrait of kind of a version of me from middle school and then Black Sheep was more of like a non-linear story. I wanted to write a script for it. I kind of came up with plot points for that script. And that became part of the project but not in a linear noticeable way. The title is supposed to be about two suburban Black kids who have a romantic thing and connect over the fact that they share that experience. I have a few friends who have similar upbringings to me, and we have this weird shared understanding, like unspoken understanding of each other because of that upbringing. We just understand where each other is coming from perspective-wise. So I was imagining a romantic version of that. The title Black Sheep, to me, is plural because there are two black sheep. And “Counting Sheep,” that song is kind of one that tells that story a little bit like lyrically. To me it’s like a little easter-eggy thing because it can be singular or plural, but to me it’s plural.
What have you been doing during quarantine, and has quarantine affected your music?
Timing wise, Corona could have ruined a lot more than it ended up ruining for me plans wise. I was going to shoot a music video the week things shut down, but oh well. Creatively, I don’t know. I’ve just been writing music alone in the studio. Just making a lot of stuff. My plan for the next like year or so is to just make as much as possible. It’s the first time I’m not in school, so I can actually focus on music. Just make as much as possible and then figure out how to make it all cohesive and make sense and release it later. I feel like part of being an effective artist is taking in the world and then processing it in your art. So it is a little bit harder to be creative when you’re not out experiencing things and you’re stuck in the same place.
Do you have any plans for your next project?
Honestly no. I mean kind of. Hahaha. I have fragments of ideas. Like what we were talking about before like with color and images and stuff, I have some stuff that I’ve just been gravitating towards. And I have a few songs that I’m sitting on that I think could potentially be on the next thing I release but I’m trying to just leave it open and just throw as much paint on the wall before I start to organize it all.
For the last three projects, I did overlap a little bit. When I released Everwanted, I already had ideas for the next thing. But this is the first time that hasn’t happened as much. Kind of a blank canvas as of now.