Who Is Isaiah Rashad?

Get to know the latest rapper to sign to TDE.

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For Isaiah Rashad, everything is new. Less than a year ago, the 22-year-old native of Chattanooga, Tennessee was a just another former Hardee's employee with rap dreams. But in the last 12 months, Rashad has become a father, signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, and become one of the most talked about new rappers out. All before he ever recorded a full length project.

But that's what happens when you sign to TDE—a label that that boasts one of the most talented rosters in music right now. In the past two years, TDE has proven adept at finding young talent like Kendrick LamarScHoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, and Jay Rock and turning them into stars—be it budding or full-blown stars. (They also signed Maplewood, NJ rapstress, SZA this year, along with Rashad.) Today, Rashad's upcoming project, Cilvia, is one of the most anticipated albums of 2014.  

Although Rashad was able to get fans hyped for Cilvia with songs like "I Shot You Down" and its remix, as well as the more recently released "Brad Jordan" and "Ronnie Drake," there's still a lot we don't know about him. So we recently had Rashad swing by the Complex offices to talk about growing up in Tennessee, how he got discovered and signed to his deal, and why he had change the name of his debut album. Here, now, find out Who Is Isaiah Rashad?

As told to Insanul Ahmed (@Incilin

View this video on YouTube

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RELATED: Who Is SZA? 

RELATED: Who Is P. Reign? 

RELATED: Who Is Vince Staples? 

Who Is Isaiah Rashad?

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For Isaiah Rashad, everything is new. Less than a year ago, the 22-year-old native of Chattanooga, Tennessee was a just another former Hardee's employee with rap dreams. But in the last 12 months, Rashad has become a father, signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, and become one of the most talked about new rappers out. All before he ever recorded a full length project.

But that's what happens when you sign to TDE—a label that that boasts one of the most talented rosters in music right now. In the past two years, TDE has proven adept at finding young talent like Kendrick LamarScHoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, and Jay Rock and turning them into stars—be it budding or full-blown stars. (They also signed Maplewood, NJ rapstress, SZA this year, along with Rashad.) Today, Rashad's upcoming project, Cilvia, is one of the most anticipated albums of 2014.  

Although Rashad was able to get fans hyped for Cilvia with songs like "I Shot You Down" and its remix, as well as the more recently released "Brad Jordan" and "Ronnie Drake," there's still a lot we don't know about him. So we recently had Rashad swing by the Complex offices to talk about growing up in Tennessee, how he got discovered and signed to his deal, and why he had change the name of his debut album. Here, now, find out Who Is Isaiah Rashad?

As told to Insanul Ahmed (@Incilin

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

RELATED: Who Is SZA? 
RELATED: Who Is P. Reign? 
RELATED: Who Is Vince Staples? 

Growing Up in Chattanooga, Tennessee

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Isaiah Rashad: “Chattanooga is too big to be a town and too small to be a city. Growing up in Tennessee is like growing up anywhere else. I was into sports, sucked at them. I was into music, I played in the band. I grew up in the projects until I was like six or seven. I moved around a lot after that.

“My mom was a janitor. Whatever school she worked at, that’s what school I went to. Between second grade and seventh grade, I went to like five schools. My mom made sure I had the most regular life, the most untroubled shit possible. All my problems came from myself when I got older.



My stepdad and my uncle used to rap [in a group called] Vibe Tribe. It was like some Native Tongue-type of s**t. They were like locally famous in the 1980s.


“My dad left when I was three. Ain’t no big deal to me. It was then, but it ain’t no big deal to me now. When he left my mom met my stepdad. My stepdad is my father. My dad got remarried, so I have a stepmom. I got an older brother and sister and two little brothers. And I got a stepbrother. I’m directly in the middle. I’m the oldest of my mom’s kids but I’m the youngest of my dad’s kids. I get kinda treated like the prototype and the baby.

“My stepdad and my uncle used to rap [in a group called] Vibe Tribe. It was like some Native Tongues-type of shit. They were like locally famous in the 1980s. I had heard about the Vibe Tribe—and I just didn’t know my pops was in it. Now my stepdad helps my mom run her hair salon, helping her with marketing and promotion.

“My mom and my dad got into some five percenter shit for about five years, I guess that was big back in 1996. I went to a mosque for a while. My parents really got into like head wraps and my stepdad changed his name to Mustafa. But my name was always Isaiah Rashad McClain.

“There’s more culture [in Tennessee] than people think is down there. People just assume that it’s just one way, but it’s really a gang of different people. Not just people who just have a deep, country-sounding accent. I probably wouldn’t be part of TDE if I had a super southern sounding ass sound.”

Musical Influences

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Working Multiple Jobs as a Teenager

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Going To College

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Isaiah Rashad: “I went to Tennessee State University. For a minute, it was the the most credible school for Communications majors, so I went there. School is automatic to me, outside of math class it was easy. I had committed to a major but I was like, ‘I don’t know what I want to do with my life.’ I didn’t want to do none of that shit.

"I was gonna go barber school. They told me it would only take 1,400 hours. That’s like a semester, I can do that shit. But I got shaky hands, I got electrocuted one time. A lot of stupid shit. I’m a series of unfortunate events.


 

Cops followed me for like three miles. He told me this going to f**k my school up. The cop was really taunting me.


 

“Then my great grandmother died. I was smoking with my girlfriend and I drove home because the funeral was the next morning. I stopped to get some Krystal—it’s like White Castle—and I got pulled over. Cops followed me for like three miles. He told me this going to fuck my school up. I’m like, ‘Damn, you had to tell me.’ I had a roach clip, he could of stomped in out. He ain’t even put me in the back of the car, the cop was really taunting me. They gave me a citation and I had to do community service and pay a gang of money. I had to go the jail for a minute. It was retarded shit.

“But that fucked my school up. I had to do community service. I had from like November to January to do it. I waited until like January to start doing it. Those ten days, I missed like 10 pivotal days in school. And it fucked my school up, too, because they saw it was some drug-related shit. I started getting like a whole bunch of emails about not coming on campus with this and that. They started, like, looking for me to do shit. I was getting profiled.

“Then I couldn’t get a job because of the way they described the shit on the docket. It was on my record and it made it hard for me to get a job. Right before I got signed was the first time I had a job in like a year almost. And I had a kid on the way, it was crazy.”

Starting Out Rapping

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How He Got Buzzing

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Isaiah Rashad: “I wasn’t buzzing on some Internet hype shit. What I did do is pay attention to some good writing, like Jeff Weiss and Z and Max Pete from DJ Booth and a couple of the other people that I really fucked with.



At least when I sent those dudes a song and they didn’t like it, they would tell me why they didn’t like it ... It helped me build my shit better.


"Even though I didn’t have the craziest buzz, they fucked with me. I would send a song to one of the dudes I knew who knew whoever. At least when I sent those dudes a song and they didn’t like it, they would tell me why they didn’t like it. I could listen to it and see if I agreed with them or not. It helped me build my shit better.

“To me it was a type of validation. Like, ‘Alright. I’m not garbage.’ I already knew I wasn’t garbage. But even if I don’t think I’m garbage, what really matters is what other people think. I started fucking with people through the back door versus just putting out a song, because I could have been put out a mixtape but it wasn’t special.

“I hadn’t been buzzing on the outside but I’d been buzzing behind the scenes. A&R’s bounced me around a lot.”

Meeting Dave Free From TDE

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Isaiah Rashad: “I meet Dave Free last March through one of my friends, Tunji. I was in L.A. doing some other shit, having meetings with people. We went to eat and Tunji introduced me to Dave. I was high, I had been smoking all day, I thought Dave was Big Sean when I met him. After I realized who he was, I got really nervous. My opinion of who Dave was at the time was on some other shit. I was like, ‘Damn, that’s Dave Free, fuck.’

“I went to the bathroom, got myself together like, ‘Alright, I’m about to have this conversation. I’ma steer this conversation a certain way.’ I stopped being nervous. So we started talking. He was asking me about what was going on and how I felt being out there. Tunji let him listen to my music.



Getting signed to TDE is like I got accepted into the college I really wanted to be in. Except they didn’t have all of those bogus ass classes.


“I left L.A. that night and Dave called me three days later. He told me he was going to get me out there. I hassled him for like three days after that like, ‘You really going to get me out there?’ Eventually he brought me out there and I got signed. I had a son on the way so it felt like a blessing. I felt like God really swooped in. I was falling and it felt like cushion under the fall.

“When I was in college all I listened to was Schoolboy Q’s Setbacks. Then I hear ‘The Heart Pt. 2’ and I really got into that. Even though I was listening to Q, I hadn’t got invested enough to listen to everybody else. Then I realized that he is the same dude I heard on a hook of a Jay Rock song from when I was like in high school. I heard Ab-Soul, so I started fucking with all of them. It all connected. These niggas were role models to how I wanted to make music. I feel like it might be predestined.

“Getting signed to TDE is like I got accepted into the college I really wanted to be in. Except they didn’t have all of those bogus ass classes. Ain’t got to take a math class to graduate and shit. But, I will need an accountant if I do this shit the right way. Hopefully, I will need that type of math class. Other than that, I got Punch [TDE president Terrence "Punch" Henderson] as a professor.”

Being On TDE

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Isaiah Rashad: “Being in TDE, you either a sponge or brick. You going to absorb or break shit and fuck up the situation. I’m more on the side of absorbing. All this talent I’m around, I’m going to pick up. I can’t be mad. Imagine LeBron got traded to the Lakers in like 2003 when Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Kobe, and Shaq were all on the same team. You put LeBron at small forward, it’s so much to learn.



Imagine LeBron got traded to the Lakers in like 2003 when Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Kobe, and Shaq were all on the same team. I'ma LeBron.


“I’ma LeBron. He was raw talent at one time, it took him a while to do his shit. But when he got his shit down he really got every side of the game down. That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to get everything evened up. Niggas check Jordan too much instead of trying to be something new. Everybody can’t be Hov. Be new or be yourself.

“Instead of trying to chase after legend, try to create your own legacy. A true legacy, though. TDE is some new shit. It’s not brand new, but for what it is right now, it’s been a minute since it was like a gang of cold rappers together. Even selling those independent albums, that’s a walk in a different direction. I just want to continue the trend of walking in a different direction than where the game been going in.”

The TDE BET Cypher

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Isaiah Rashad: “That was frustrating. Imagine you having your verse ready and some nigga come with 64-84 bars and he hi-fiving and all that. And before he do his shit it’s like regular like, ‘Y’all niggas tore it up.’ Then you standing there watching another nigga do his shit for four minutes. It’s like, ‘Damn. I really hope they don’t forget we was here.’ That’s what the cypher was like. It helped me though, it made it even tighter. We won.”

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Making "I Shot You Down"

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Isaiah Rashad: “I was smoking cigarettes outside in the rain at my homie’s house at Murfreesboro. I was having a session, I couldn’t think of nothing, couldn’t catch the vibe, so I went and got a beer. I had a pack of cigarettes so I sat outside, wrote some raps, and I was mad. I wasn’t mad at anything in particular. I just be upset a lot. I be irritated. I hate feeling like I’m stuck in one place, like I’m chained down or something. That’s a pet peeve of mine feeling like some shit ain't going somewhere. It make me want to quit shit. Patience is not my strong point.



'I Shot You Down' and the BET cypher had me come out swinging.


“I didn’t know it was going to be a remix at first. I got surprised at the remix. I don’t have problem with it though. It’s the only song to remix. My other songs were two tracks, so it’s just the vocal and the beat. I was really recording in the closet and we didn’t have any mixing besides Pro Tools, so you can’t really do everything with little-ass speakers.

“‘Shot You Down’ was aggressive enough. That and the BET cypher had me come out swinging. I came out fighting like trying to make my own lane and everything. So ‘Shot You Down’ was just like capitalizing on it. For the people who didn’t hear it, now you have another reason to hear it. That’s all it was just taking it to another place.”

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His Upcoming Project Cilvia

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Isaiah Rashad: “I had been working on a project for two years and going over a gang of ideas. That’s really what my Soundcloud was up until ‘Shot You Down.’ All of those songs are just parts of different ideas I was going for a project at the time.



[My project was gonna be called] Pieces of A Kid. It was inspired by Gil Scott Heron’s Pieces of A Man. But then, good kid, m.A.A.d. city, two similar titles. I rethought the idea of the project after the signing.


“At first it was going to be like eight tracks for a one-and-a-half-minutes, just verses. Then it was going to be some alternative, black-power shit. Then it was going to be some eclectic-alien shit. Then it was going to be some Southern-banging shit. Now it’s kind of all of it, except for the banging shit. It ain’t like with the intention of turning up to it, that’s not my shit. I just want you to vibe out to it. Have a good time and put you in a certain mood. It’s real peaceful, real calmful.

“It was gonna be called Pieces of a Kid. It was inspired by Gil Scott Heron’s Pieces of a Man. But then, good kid, m.A.A.d. city, two similar titles. When that album came out, I was still going to call it Pieces of a Kid, but I rethought the idea of the project after the signing.

“I changed the name to Cilvia. I want it to make me feel the same way I feel when I listen to New Amerykah Pt. 2 or Tha Carter II. I’m looking for that feeling. Even if you playing it in the background and you’re not paying attention to it, it just feels good.”

Future

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Isaiah Rashad: “I wanna get a vocal coach so I can do more than just rapping. I ain’t trying to be singing but I want to do more than just rap. I just want to be able to not use other people to do harmonies. I got ideas in my head that I don’t think anybody else can do. Or I might be too ashamed to share with somebody without me showing them the end product of it. I want to get better at perfecting my craft of rapping and move on to the other sides of music like production, picking beats, and determining where a feature needs to go.



I’m just as new to you as all this stuff is new to me.


“It went from, 'Who is he?' to now they’re looking for my point of view and my perspective. People want to hear what’s on my mind. But everything's new. Y’all experiencing the shit with me. You can write about the '10 Things You Need To Know' about me, but I don’t even know 10 things you need to know about me yet. I’m just as new to you as all this stuff is new to me.

“I feel like when I asked God to make me successful in rap, he pulled through. I actually asked him that. When you ask the universe for some shit, it really comes to you. But not how you asked for it to come to you. You get exactly what you ask for, so you should be really specific about what you want. You should know what you want before you ask about it. That’s all the shit that happened to me. I asked about the shit when I was 18-19 years old. And, I’m here. But everything, all those situations I went through, put me here.”

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