RAPS + CRAFTS #40: Cavalier
1. Introduce yourself. Past projects? Current projects?
Peace. I am Cavalier. I am Brooklyn born and raised, currently residing in New Orleans, Louisiana for the last decade. I made my formal debut in 2014 with CHIEF, but many in Brooklyn knew me from well before that. I put out a demo on CD called The Breaking and put a lot of pressure on myself and it to be a breakout moment. That demo allowed me to gain access to my artist community and hone my craft until my official release. CHIEF was released right after I completed Niggas Is Men with Quelle Chris (2013), mostly recorded in my home in Bushwick, Brooklyn. After CHIEF, I dropped the Lemonade EP with Iman Omari followed by Private Stock. After the success of the connected works of Lemonade EP and Private Stock, I released Lemonade REDUX which turned the original EP into an LP, nearly doubling its length with new, unreleased songs and a different sequencing of the original works. In 2022/2023 Quelle Chris and I birthed a direct-to-audience series, Death Tape. Death Tape 1 | Black Cottonwood remained exclusively available from Cavwins.com until the tug of war within our community pushed us to make it available on streaming a year later. 2024 was my first time dropping any releases with a label, and billy woods’ Backwoodz Studioz would find home to second quarter’s Different Type Time followed by CINE, a collaborative record with producer Child Actor in November that same year. Nestled between these Backwoodz releases Quelle Chris and I managed to drop Death Tape 2 | We Gon’ Need Each Other featuring our brother in pen, Denmark Vessey. Currently I have a lot of art in the works…we’ll see how the portals open for that.
2. Where do you write? Do you have a routine time you write? Do you discipline yourself, or just let the words come when they will? Do you typically write on a daily basis?
I write wherever I can and need to. There are times when I am writing in the studio for a collaboration. I used to write on the train or the bus. For a stint of years I had to learn to write in a small notepad while riding a bike and then eventually started using talk-to-text features. I jot. I annotate. Sometimes I record voice memos for myself. There are times when I am extremely disciplined. Death Tape 1 was conceived unexpectedly; written, produced, and recorded in a few days. I wrote and recorded all my parts for Death Tape 2 in one day in a city I had never recorded before. Then there are days where I feel like I am not doing enough, and it suddenly feels like I haven’t penned a verse in months.
3. What’s your medium—pen and paper, laptop, on your phone? Or do you compose a verse in your head and keep it there until it’s time to record?
I keep a notebook. I write and jot in notebooks. I also use my mobile device for speed and convenience to keep track. Lately, I have been using a combo, transcribing my written notes to a digital document. Makes it easier to share lyrics later when necessary.
4. Do you write in bars, or is it more disorganized than that?
Both.
5. How long into writing a verse or a song do you know it’s not working out the way you had in mind? Do you trash the material forever, or do you keep the discarded material to be reworked later?
I don’t necessarily trash material, but material may not be used. Sometimes an idea will evolve into something different, or become steps on a ladder that took you somewhere you previously couldn’t imagine.
6. Have you engaged with any other type of writing, whether presently or in the past? Fiction? Poetry? Playwriting? If so, how has that mode influenced your songwriting?
I never considered myself a “poet.” Maybe I am defining it differently in my head. The only other acknowledgeable writing I can say I’ve done or participated in is script writing and punching up dialog for scripts.
7. How much editing do you do after initially writing a verse/song? Do you labor over verses, working on them over a long period of time, or do you start and finish a piece in a quick burst?
I often labor over verses, particularly the ones I am writing for myself or my own projects. There are sometimes, a bunch in fact, where a verse will write itself. A lot of times I feel like I am not even writing it, but that I am listening for it. It is almost like fine tuning yourself to pick up a specific broadcast channel. And then once you really tap into it, you kind of capture it.
8. Do you write to a beat, or do you adjust and tweak lyrics to fit a beat?
I write to a beat more these days because I am working on specific songs. But not all ideas or writings come to me because I was listening to instrumentals. Words often come from moments.
9. What dictates the direction of your lyrics? Are you led by an idea or topic you have in mind beforehand? Is it stream-of-consciousness? Is what you come up with determined by the constraint of the rhymes?
If I am collaborating on a song I like to feel like myself and the other contributors are actually on the same song. Songs are like mini worlds. Stream-of-consciousness is always a part of the process for me, though; it’s connected to the tuning in and listening I mentioned earlier. The rhymes aren’t so much a constraint but a way to code and decode. Sometimes the “constraint” of rhyme will lead you to express in new ways or learn something you didn’t know before.
10. Do you like to experiment with different forms and rhyme schemes, or do you keep your bars free and flexible?
I like to experiment with different forms and rhyme schemes, for sure. Every beat or piece of music offers new possibilities and I tend to rhyme in key.
11. What’s a verse you’re particularly proud of, one where you met the vision for what you desire to do with your lyrics?
I’m sure this will change, but off top, and at the moment, one memory of this type that comes to mind is after I finished “Philosopher Stoned” for CHIEF. I knew what I “wanted,” if that makes any sense. I felt like I was waiting for it to come to me on some “eureka” shit. When I heard the beat that Scud One made, I knew that was the track for the vision I had and everything else started to fall into place the way I envisioned.
12. Can you pick a favorite bar of yours and describe the genesis of it?
I am not sure how to answer this, but I can share bars that people have told me they really enjoyed from different benchmarks on my journey.
“The season finale for viewing that'll season your food,
Last sleep, he had a dream that he graffiti'd the moon”
—“Ink” from The Breaking
“Yet from curbside my panoramic pain makes fans
To your Instagram worldwide… figures
So in my hood, I take pictures of white people who take pictures”
—“Philosopher Stoned” from CHIEF
“all these indecent horrors still harbor a decent aura, got to
Start feeling sorry for yourself the army of darkness got you”
—“Heavy Crown” from Lemonade EP
“Seen broken jaws on the iron horse
I asked where niggas was at, they said: ‘Dyin’ off’”
—“Heavier” from Lemonade REDUX
“So catch me on the corner of the new necropolis
The last weed man in the apocalypse, Holla kid”
—“Holla Kid” from Private Stock
“I’m like the last Peter Tosh in the eagle flock
A cock diesel disc jockey changed the peoples’ plot
You can’t tell me we won’t free the block”
—“Flourish” from Different Type Time
“The cheese flex lactose
Keep it G mighta lacked toast
But D kept the strap close (facts) No stud”
—“Gifted & Talented” from CINE
Most of my writing is guided from memories, personal experiences and observations. I can find bars in any song I’ve written that are the byproduct of a whole story of their own.
13. Do you feel strongly one way or another about punch-ins? Will you whittle a bar down in order to account for breath control, or are you comfortable punching-in so you don’t have to sacrifice any words?
I almost never punch in. Not opposed to it at all though.
14. What non-hiphop material do you turn to for inspiration? What non-music has influenced your work recently?
Non-hiphop music that I turn to, more for enjoyment than direct inspiration, is calypso from the 1930s, jazz of course, and there is just something special about 90s R&B. I am as much a visual creator as a music one, so I spend a lot of time working on visual ideas whether they are time-lapse visuals seen with Different Type Time (which are photo based) or more involved vignettes like the material that accompanied Private Stock and Lemonade REDUX.
15. Writers are often saddled with self-doubt. Do you struggle to like your own shit, or does it all sound dope to you?
I definitely waver back and forth between perfectionism and hating it all.
16. Audiologists can explain why so many people cringe when they hear their recorded voice played back to them. For MCs, the voice is crucial to how the writing is communicated to the audience. Are you satisfied with your voice? Does your rapper-voice match your regular voice, or do you affect it on the mic? Do you routinely rely on any mixing techniques (pitch adjustments, reverb, double-tracking, echo, etc.) to affect how your voice sounds on record?
I tend to use a more natural style as far as how my music is presented. Because I rhyme in key, it isn’t uncommon for me to sound different or have different tones on tracks that are vastly, or even subtly, different from one another. Tone is very important to me and I also enunciate, which is not always a popular approach. I know my voice. Doesn’t mean it does everything I want it to in my head.
17. Who’s a rapper you listen to with such a distinguishable style that you need to resist the urge to imitate them?
I am inspired by a sundry of many great artists, current and legacy alike. Even if I felt so moved to dive into any of these artists’ material I could only see myself, at best, either intentionally referencing them in homage or subconsciously nodding to how they triggered some inspired ideas. I do not see myself imitating anyone else.
18. Do you have an agenda as an artist? Are there overarching concerns you want to communicate to the listener?
There are some overall things I aim for across my work. One is I want to make music that both emotes and warrants an almost emotional response, whether it is in appreciation of beauty or intense melancholy or even, at times, nostalgia. I also believe in making music that is still rooted culturally. My dream is to make music that puts my legacy in the conversation to be considered amongst the greats, not just great from the scope of talent, but great by the impact of their work on people and the culture.
RAPS + CRAFTS is a series of questions posed to rappers about their craft and process. It is designed to give respect and credit to their engagement with the art of songwriting. The format is inspired, in part, by Rob McLennan’s 12 or 20 interview series.