By Devlin Marino
A tall, quiet man slinks into a loud, boisterous and smoky room. He sits down, opens his laptop, pops on earphones and gets to work. After about 30 minutes or so, he packs up, daps everyone up and heads out. In that small microcosm, one could see just who the artist and producer that Gaine$ truly is, without even hearing a song.
For those unfamiliar with Gaine$, he is one of the pacesetters of the underground Buffalo Hip-Hop scene, acting as an example for truly following your dreams with an unrelenting will to get there. Gaine$ has been making music since the late 2000s, eventually founding Koolie High with Toneyboi, Jordan “Koolie” Hood, and Skateboard in 2010,with many other Buffalo hip-hop scene main-stays joining the ranks in years to come. Eventually they rebranded “in a way”, founding Ooze Gang in 2017.
Gaine$, the artist, is true and authentic to himself. From small glimpses, one can see his drive and love for music, free from any sort of vanity or fallacy. He feels no need to put on any type of front to sell himself but that still took time for him to reach.
“I found it easier to rely on just being myself. You know, rely on how I truly feel about things. My day-to-day. My take on life. My take on shit that’s happening around me. And instead of just trying to give those same ideal answers to everything, it’s like “nah, my shit is just real to me.” says Gaine$, “I could only paint a picture of what I’ve seen. You could also paint pictures of things you imagine but I’d rather be real.”
In 2018, Gaine$ released his solo project Tuxedo Dreams and Gaine$ Stands for Profits 2019, branching off of Ooze Gang as a collective and beginning to understand the space of being your own artist. Soon to release in 2020 is Gaine$’ third solo album Native Son, displaying his own experiences and growth as an artist.
“This project, it was super authentic to me, that’s how I was thinking. This album set a foundation for me. It’s like ‘okay, this guy really can rap, this guy can tell a story, and this guy can tell his story. This guy can make it feel like his story is yours’. Those elements are what I am looking for. I want to be a dope storyteller over dope beats. Boom.”
The album, Native Son, serves as a “lens” into understanding Gaine$ growth itself as an artist, with Gaine$ elaborating, “a peek into myself as an artist and somewhat who I really am. For years, [my] music wasn’t able to give both sides, it’s just ‘a great creator’ but who is he? I guess it’s my step into showing those around me who I really am.”
Gaine$ doesn’t only want to communicate this message auditorily but visually as well. The album artwork, which Gaine$ collaborated with artist Jessica Saddleson, communicating his ideas for her to recreate into an exact image.
“She had taken some of the ideas I ran by her… [and] we have a good relationship so she has an idea of where my art, what direction I’m going with it. So she came up with it, took an actual picture of my eye and that turned into somewhat of a moon or sun in the sky. The river is just me standing in the middle of it. It’s kind of me, describing the image as my path to self-discovery, I found myself in the water, with myself.”
Possibly one of Gaine$ most valuable attributes, as well as Ooze Gang, is his resourcefulness and know-how of repurposing beats and verses that are over 5 years old, applying them to new tracks. Gaine$ when speaking about it said, “What’s crazy is I’ll go back to some of that stuff…just shit I recorded. I was like ‘yo these are the elements that I need to put out. Something new. Something fresh. Something that is authentic to myself versus just rapping over something, just trying to make it sound, like ‘Oh this is for the audience’.”
Gaine$ upcoming album could be viewed as a musical collage, containing both elements from his old and newer music, painting the very image of Gaine$ through the album.
“ I wanted to control how you listened to this project. So if you have a favorite song and it happens to be the second or third song out of the “Act”, you’d have to listen to the song before that to get to it, unless you fast forward. Ultimately, I want them to [listen]. It’s a short listen, only about 25 minutes long in total so you’re going to want to listen to the whole thing anyway because it has transitions. It has things that bring you into a new room, a new space throughout the ‘Acts’.”
Jordan “Koolie” Hood described the album as “a project that had no direction but we directed it”. One of my favorite elements of the album is the way that each track contains 2-3 songs inside of it. This draws a parallel to Gaine$ analogy of building songs and albums to building sandcastles.
“You’re building songs, building projects. You’re treating them like castles. Okay, I’m done with this sandcastle, build the next one. I’m gonna move and build over here, create another one. Okay, I’m gonna make another one, start another one over here. Okay cool, I’ve got three castles, now let me go back and perfect the first one before I release it. Now, go on to the next one. Add songs, new songs that I’m going to keep creating. [And] It’s like before I know it, I’m stocked and have solid work.”
I wanted to control how you listened to this project. So if you have a favorite song and it happens to be the second or third song out of the “Act”, you’d have to listen to the song before that to get to it, unless you fast forward. Ultimately, I want them to [listen].
GAINE$ ON HOW tHE STRUCTURE OF nATIVE SUN
During a check-in interview with Gaine$ weeks before the drop of Native Son, I revisited the sandcastle analogy that Gaine$ made to albums to see where that statement resonates now that he is “95% done with it”.
“Now at this point, if it was still being compared to building sandcastles, I feel like I took the experiences of building projects and my own mixtapes through all the years, it really brought it all to this one. And it’s going to be the same process for the next projects to come.” explains Gaine$, “I just [was] really taking my experiences of building and crafting, understanding my process and how much time it takes to let the music digest with you before you give it to the world. You know, sometimes we record today or make something today and then it’s out there tomorrow. It’s like, did you fully become one with that piece, you know what I’m saying?”
A large part of why Gaine$ approaches projects in this manner is because he has released plenty of music and understands the importance of patience and perfecting what you release through trial and error. What makes Gaine$ such a unique artist is how he views past released music, despite how many people listened to it, he still views it as growth.
“Guess you could say it didn’t fail, because I don’t think any project I released is a failure. Unless the goal was [to blow up]. At the time, the goal was to make music and share music and show people that ‘hey, I’m good. I got it. I’ve got something going on’.” says Gaine$, and it went from that to “Okay, well I can actually sell these CDs, you know, this is back in ‘07. ‘06-’07. I could sell CDs. Alright cool, I got away from selling hard copies and I just got deeper in the creating process of how I want to make a song. How to really put a record together without understanding what the beat calls for. What type of vibe I’m trying to set. What component in who am I in this song speaking. It’s interesting because everybody thinks that because they have a voice, that it belongs in any room, anywhere. Everybody has a voice but don’t get me wrong. It’s just how to lay and identify the person that you are through the microphone without saying ‘I am such and such’ ‘I am Gaines’. So now how do I stamp who I am? It’s your voice. Your voice is your signature.”
Buffalo Hip Hop Collective 