Pitchfork: When I hit you up, Mac, about this interview, I mentioned how I'd been introduced to your music through that tape you made with Metro Zu's Lofty305 a decade ago. It was such a flashback it seemed like it blew your mind.
Mack: That killed me. When I put this tape in [Oil & Water] streaming, I didn't even have a Spotify profile yet. So Jadasea went to check if they made one [Spotify] Radio for me, and when he did, Lofty was there with, like, SpaceGhostPurrp, John Glacier, and all the internet weirdos. These are all my people but I was still thinking how are they going to do this? Funny man.
Is it a strange feeling that streaming services use their algorithm to rank you as they see fit?
Jesse James Solomon: Yes, because he will, If you like this, then you like this. And he's some guy you think is a badass.
Mack: Or some guy who washes your style. How do they distinguish what is good and what is not?
Let's take a step back. What brought you both together as artists?
Mack: We were friends first, we did it in the studios for a year or two before we did “Lionel Jesse”.
Solomon: You know when you have a group of friends, but within that group of friends you have that one person that you're just locked with? This is me and him. And so we were always making music together, but so much of it was just in folders. We didn't want it to be this way.
Was it hard not to get caught up in the way the music industry wants you to release music all the time?
Mack: No, I found it easy not to get caught. I find it easy to disconnect, but the music industry is like an economy that they try to force you into. We have real things going on, like traveling or dealing with health. I don't want to go to Soho and meet up with a playlist from Spotify. I'd rather be chilling in the neighborhood with my folks, in home studios. DIY.
What initially drew me to Sub Luna City is how organic it felt. Did you try to recapture that feeling on this album?
Solomon: Jada was the catalyst for all of this. During the pandemic, it just started to overtake us all and it was encouraging to see my brother making beats and how diligent he was about it all. I remember asking him how many songs he's released recently and he was like, “Hundreds,” when I probably had 30-something on my entire Spotify page. He rubbed against me. Now I feel like we've done a 360, like I have the same feeling making music that I did all those years ago. Because, for a time through COVID, I didn't see Mack for years. It wasn't until late 2022 or 2023 that we backed up.
