Much has been written about the millennial generation. Some of it good, most of it bad. Really bad. I can admit that I too can be the old man shaking his fist at times. However, the creative class within the youngest members of my generation continue to inspire. Like his contemporaries Raury and Chance the Rapper, Pell is continuing to push the boundaries of the title “rapper”. I was excited to chat him up about music, the power of the Internet and the inevitable growing pains, all over some chicken biscuits. 

Pell is originally from New Orleans, so I thought it would be cool to bring him to Cheeky Sandwiches in Chinatown. It’s traditional New Orleans fare down to the Zapps Chips. It would be a celebration of the city that he once called home. We were fresh off the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the storm that sent Pell and his family to Mississippi. “I miss things that I’ll never be able to get back. I won’t know how it really affected me until 10 years from now, because over the course of the years in Mississippi, I had a great time. At the same time, I was excluded from New Orleans events. I didn’t go to jazz fest. I didn’t go to my grandmother’s house. I didn’t go to family reunions. Those three hours made all the difference.” 

Pell’s upcoming album title, Limbo, was especially triggering. Aren’t we all just trying to figure it out? Are millennials eternally living in the in-between time or will the light reveal itself one day? I rationalized that the title spoke to his transition from New Orleans to Mississippi. Instead, it’s a direct response to his move from Mississippi to Los Angeles. “Being thousands of miles from the people I grew up with and my family is a hard thing for me. It’s been very isolating. I feel like perspective was coming from a place that was between here and there. I’ve come such a long way from a year ago, but I still have a long way to go.” Packing up his personal belongings with no one but his manager in tow, Pell embarked on a journey that would stretch him as a person, but also bring him full circle. 

Enter Dave Sitek.

Growing up on everything from jazz to gospel greats BeBe & CeCe Winanas, Pell was heavily exposed to music. The move to Mississippi, however, unlocked the door that would shift how he approached making his own music. “I started listening to a lot of alternative music and rock. I listened to Vampire Weekend, Fleet Foxes, Crystal Skulls, TV on the Radio for sure. ‘Wolf Like Me’ had me hooked!” Fast forward a few years and Pell finds himself in a studio with Sitek, member of TV on the Radio. It was in these early sessions that the first single from Limbo, “Café du Monde” was made. 

Pell is taking special care in crafting the follow up to his first project Floating While Dreaming. After a few full scraps, he settled on 30 songs. Ten will make it to “Limbo”. “I kept recycling things and refining things because I realized that great artists edit. They don’t let something stand at face value. They go a little bit deeper so you can understand them as an individual. The only way that I can be understood is if I actually care about what messages I’m sending out and what I’m saying.” The conversation was flowing perfectly as I began to wonder how exactly he wanted his listeners to see him. With the media image and curated Instagram posts, we often forget that the artists we love are people. “I want to be perceived as someone who cares about music, but also cares about people who have gone through struggles. I know what it feels like to lose something, because I lost my entire life. I know what it’s like to have growing pains and find your identity when it’s been swept away from you. I just want people to understand that I feel for them and feel for this culture. I want to bring my influences to the forefront and people can be inspired by a new movement in hip-hop.” 

In between geeking out over Hype Williams and cracking #TeamLightskin jokes, we talked the millions of genres now being created in music. He, himself, has been siloed into a mythical category called “dream rap”. “In hip-hop and R&B, there is a reliance on comparisons,” he explains. “When something can’t be compared to something else, they try to explain that it’s something different, when it’s really just unique. It’s still a part of that same genre. You can’t say something is not hip-hop or R&B because it’s inspired by different things.” The word “access” ruled our conversation as we discussed the way the Internet has been a treasure chest of inspiration for artists of any medium. “People in my generation, we have so many influences because we have so much access to all of these different sounds, producers, and bands,” he says. “Back in the day, a kid in Harlem wasn’t listening to Led Zepplin or David Bowie. Now, we have a fascination with finding things outside of our immediate surroundings. We can see it as soon as we get online. So, why not explore if it’s right at your fingertips? I feel like genres are changing and bending. There’s a point where access meets inspiration and you can’t fight it. Once those two things are aligned and they intersect, it’s over with.” Pell even gave me homework listing out musicians from Mississippi I should know about. 

LVBaby

Lightbeam Rider

The Weeks

Bass Drum of Death

Dent May

Flywalker

Tito Lopez

His talk is hopeful, but not in that idealistic, youthfully naïve way. Pell knows and understands who he is at this moment in time. As we wrap up dinner, dusting powdered sugar from beignets off of our hands, Pell leaves me with a powerful takeaway from one of his favorite books, The Picture of Dorian Grey. “It’s very important to be self-aware in today’s society, especially someone attempting to become a musical figurehead. A lot of times on this journey, you run into redefining yourself at every turn. Every time I have an accomplishment, it’s something that adds to who I am. Therefore, I’m forced to change. At the same time, I want to make sure that I’m constantly looking at who I was so I don’t forget how far I’ve come.”