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Kaleb Mitchell

 
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In this episode of Testimony a Musician’s Story, presented by Sound Seekers, rapper and singer Kaleb Mitchell shares his Christian testimony. He discusses losing his best friend to gun violence, discovering his dad’s drug addiction, and meeting and working with Def Jam’s former CEO Paul Rosenberg. Kaleb additionally breaks down his latest album and movie, So Help Me God II.

*The transcription of any lyrics and some of the interview content may not be entirely accurate.*

[00:00:00.580] - Gaelika
In this episode of Testimony a Musician’s Story, presented by Sound Seekers, rapper and singer Kaleb Mitchell shares his Christian testimony. He discusses losing his best friend to gun violence, discovering his dad’s drug addiction, and meeting and working with Def Jam’s former CEO Paul Rosenberg. Kaleb additionally breaks down his latest album and movie, So Help Me God II. And he talks about that entire experience in the full circle-ness of him starting off rapping because of Eight Mile.

[00:00:48.870] - Gaelika
But let's go ahead and first start with your first music memory, whether it be a song you heard a video or a performance you saw, your first music a memory

[00:01:00.690] - Kaleb Mitchell
first music memory? I think the first one that stood out to me was, um, I was I was like five, five or four years old and. This dude wearing a polo and a backpack, 106 and Park, my older brother is watching it and I'm like, who is this? It's the video premiere for a song called Jesus Walks. And I was like. Wait, this sounds like the music that my mom plays, but this also sounds like the hip hop my dad plays, this is this is like a cross between two worlds .And I was like, this is blowing my mind. And from that moment, I was a dedicated hip hop and five year olds. So my older brother started playing me like the edited version, The College Dropout, Late Registration, and all the rest of them. So from that point on that, I think that's one of my first real memories of just me being a fan of music.

[00:02:10.050] - Gaelika
All right, so your first real memory is Kanye West's Jesus Walks. Yeah, I mean, that's a major song. That was a big record at the time.

[00:02:18.960] - Kaleb Mitchell Oh, definetly it is.

[00:02:22.440] - Gaelika
It's interesting to hear you were five years old when that came out.

[00:02:26.790] - Kaleb Mitchell Yeah. I was was while that's crazy.

[00:02:32.370] - Gaelika
So and going to your childhood and where you were raised you were born in what, Morristown, New Jersey.

[00:02:40.620] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah, I was born in Morristown Memorial Hospital to be exact. We lived in Union, New Jersey for a while and then my younger brother came along. So we moved to Mars County and a group in Wharton went to schools and Wharton and stuff. So I was. Junior high when I went to high school in Denvil, so pretty much I've been all around North Jersey, Morris County, pretty much my entire life.

[00:03:13.500] - Gaelika
OK. And your household, who was in your household, you mentioned, an older brother?

[00:03:21.550] - Kaleb Mitchell Yeah.

[00:03:22.340] - Gaelika
You have any other siblings?

[00:03:24.340] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah, I'm a middle child, so I have an older brother and a younger brother, mom and dad. That is from Jersey. My mom is actually from Kenya. So I had like pretty much the best of both worlds for was

seeing, you know, just how people operate and, you know, the Kenyan side and the customs and traditions and just how they operate and and obviously Jersey and a lot of northerner and energy and all the rest of it. So I kind of got have the best of both worlds.

[00:03:55.570] - Gaelika
One of OK, so I didn't know that Kenya that your mom was from Kenya. I mean, that does bring you into the household. And in that area, was it heavy, heavily populated with just immigrants at all? And then was it I mean, because, you know, there's usually like like Caribbeans like on the East Coast are. Yeah, Nigerans are pretty much everywhere. But Kenyan's without a huge community?

[00:04:25.150] - Kaleb Mitchell
Not a lot. There's not a lot of canyons that you can find. A lot of Jamaicans, some. So my friends are Haitian. A lot of my friends are either, you know, Colombian, Puerto Rican or anything else, but not a lot of Kenyans. Like I think I may have met one other Kenyan around here in my lifetime, which is just kind of wild. But, yeah, we're we're the only I think only Kenyan family for for a while.

[00:04:52.900] - Gaelika
And then I mean, how is that, though? Because you have the two different dynamics. Your dad, who's from here and, you know, East Coast, like, that's a whole nother just culture and his own. How did those, like, collide and how was that?

[00:05:13.120] - Kaleb Mitchell
It was interesting, to say the least. You know, somethings mom would agree with that. In some things. Dad vouched for mom where it was. It was I mean, I I'm grateful that I was able to grow up in a household like that because I am more I guess I'm more in tune with, you know, my roots and I can see exactly where I come from and just being able to, you know, have conversations with family and like my grandmother before she passed and just get knowledge from different things like other than in a traditional American experience. I was I was pretty I was grateful for that. But yeah, it was especially when it came to doing the music thing, like the whole college situation that was a fight over the fight because, yeah, it was college.

[00:06:06.120] - Gaelika
If you had her from Africa, you're going to college.

[00:06:09.820] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. So that was a it was an interesting debate until, you know, things started to materialize. And it's like, OK, this isn't just like a pipe dream, like she's actually trying to make something happen. So I was all right, but there was no way to fight for a while.

[00:06:30.250] - Gaelika
And was it a Christian household?

[00:06:33.940] - Kaleb Mitchell Yeah, on both sides.

[00:06:36.970] - Gaelika
So did you go to an American church or African?

[00:06:44.740] - Kaleb Mitchell
I grew up in the Baptist Church my entire life, actually. Calvary Baptist Church in Morristown, New Jersey, to be exact, where I was baptized there, like four years old, grew up. There was a play keys and in the children's choir when I was younger, my little brother actually play the drums like it was actually it was a big part of, you know, well, who I am. And just growing up, like making a whole bunch of friends, like a lot of my friends are from there, even if we've moved around and stuff, we're still tightly bonded. Like we never really lost that connection.

[00:07:21.640] - Gaelika

OK, and so pretty much your whole time in church, you were playing music?

[00:07:27.250] - Kaleb Mitchell
From the age of five. Yeah, I well, it's actually a funny story was I think the song I think by Kirk Franklin my mom was playing it because she was listening to the radio. And I like this Casio keyboard that I got gotten for Christmas and I hadn't touched it until that day. I came home and I just I tried to mess around with it and I was able to, like, play the song back by memory. And that's how we learned or discovered that I knew how to play things by ear. And from five until now, I haven't really stopped. And it's just evolved in different stages of trying to play other people's music then. OK, how do people make music today? OK, what's with the software with X, Y, Z and just evolving. Evolving until I started making my own albums and stuff.

[00:08:28.500] - Gaelika
That's crazy. So the Kirk Franklin song when you were playing that, by how old did you say were you?

[00:08:35.580] - Kaleb Mitchell Five.

[00:08:39.270] - Gaelika
Wow. Well, you're definitely definitely born with it. So you were playing music in the church, that means you were attending church multiple times a week because you had worship rehearsal, have to rehearse for that. When did it become real for you? When did you personally give your life to Christ?

[00:09:07.150] - Kaleb Mitchell
Um, I think it really became a real thing for me around. I want to say I was like 13 or 14. It just there was just a whole lot going on with, you know, my mom being sick and she she had gotten diagnosed with cancer and there was just certain things happening and certain things beginning to happen, even things that I kind of touch on on the new album. Those were like in the beginning stages. And it was just it was a weird time and I felt like. I just kept seeing things that I couldn't explain other than being God like ways being made that were part of a human hands. And I OK, maybe this is like like you hear as a kid, you hear from other people. You see you go to church, you see people falling out. And all the rest of it is like, what is this about? You don't really understand it until you start experiencing life. And I feel like just with certain situations, I kind of kind of had to grow up quick and and I guess go through things that, you know, a lot of my peers really didn't see or experience until they were older. And I don't know, it just became more apparent to me that I'm not really in control of this thing here. And there's somebody else who's guiding me through the situation.

[00:10:37.310] - Gaelika
So it wasn't necessarily one main thing, it was a series,

[00:10:42.320] - Kaleb Mitchell
yeah, it was like it was a series of things.

[00:10:46.550] - Gaelika
And so around what age do you think that was?

[00:10:52.340] - Kaleb Mitchell
Thirteen, fourteen. Kind of kind of became more real to me, and I kind of developed, I guess my own relationship to themselves is like being dragged to being dragged to church. Another as a kid, you kind of. I kind of stood back and felt like, oh, well, something feels different and maybe I want to start, you know, learning on my own and just just growing. Just growing.

[00:11:22.780] - Gaelika
And you said that you were experiencing things on a lot of your peers weren't. Did your peers know what you were going through at the time or did you keep igt all inward?

[00:11:34.310] - Kaleb Mitchell

Oh, yeah, that's actually a big thing that I had to kind of grow out of here. Well, you know, you're still sort of trying to grow out of is internalizing things. And that's that's something that I kind of tried to shed with this new album. It's like highly personal. And it's a lot of stuff that even may have been going on throughout my career that whole time. I'd be making, you know, really turnt- up songs and happy songs. Stuff like like that. A lot of these situations have been ongoing. But I felt like there was it was kind of like a breaking point where I felt like I if I don't. If I don't start getting more introspective and start No. Expressing things other people in. Oh, stop trying to hoard all these emotions and stuff, because it's only going to it's going to hurt me in the long run, I, I definitely use music as therapy and started opening up a lot more to the people around me. And it was it was interesting seeing people's reactions because they some of them had absolutely no idea what was going on with me or anything like that. So it definitely deepened a lot of my relationships, especially with my manager Erin. It's so strange how a lot of things in our lives are kind of parallel and she's she's kind of the same way or she like a really, really strong person. So so she'll try to handle everything herself. And we both came to the realization, kind of like we have to start now depending more on each other and opening up more than just being a lot more honest with each other, because it's only it's only healthy. It's right for everyone to have someone to go to.

[00:13:29.500] - Kaleb Mitchell
Right on. That's true. So at this point. For those who don't know, like I actually interviewed Kaleb when he was like around this age and said 15, 14, 15. Yeah. And so Testimony: A Musicians Story he was featured as an up and comer with Rockstar J.T., if you want to hear that one. But I feel like since then. At that point. Your life switched up and things changed, and even though probably when we were talking, you were internally going through these things, but it didn't come up. We didn't know about this. So first, I want to ask about your mom. Do you mind if I ask what type of cancer was it?

[00:14:17.960] - Kaleb Mitchell
Was it was breast cancer. She was diagnoised I think when I was 12, 13. Yes, I was in I think it was in like middle school or something like that, and it was really kind of it was kind of a shock for us because she. That's another thing she's really like she's my hero pretty much because, like she she knew like before Christmas, but she didn't she didn't tell us until, like, the next like January pretty much because she wanted us to enjoy the holiday. So just things like that, just she kind of like, oh, no, she superstrong she's an inspiration for me.

[00:15:03.390] - Gaelika
She was sheltering you guys. And how is she now?

[00:15:05.490] - Kaleb Mitchell
She's good. She's good. By the grace of God, she's good. You know, you still have to do with, you know, certain side effects and keeping up with prescriptions and all the rest are kind of stuff. But she's she's out of the woods, so we're grateful for that.

[00:15:21.630] - Gaelika
And because of your honest music, because you're very transparent in this, you know, latest project, we know about the loss of your brother and your father being an addict. Let's start with your brother. When did you lose him?

[00:15:42.960] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. So that's it's actually like my very good friend that, you know, I call my brother. Thankfully, my older brother, and younger brother is still with us. But you know, this my my guy. My guy from day one. Jahad Pain, we grew up in the same church together and literally since day one, we actually met in the choir stand at choir rehearsal as kids hear the goofiness, most kind hearted person ever. He was 23 when he passed. He kind of dedicated his life to, you know, working with kids, especially kids with special needs and he. It was it was it was weird, we kind of. We kind of like stumbled into each other into like this friendship, like I think I may have been 11 years old and I was just because my mom would work in the church. So after school on like Friday, I'd go to the church with her. She'd pick me up from school. I go to the church and I'd be in like the chapel or something like that, practicing piano, because it was the only place that was like quiet. And he walked in one day and I was like, what's up.

And I think I was playing I was playing some song that I heard on the radio. And he was like, you know how to play this song. And I was like, yeah, I could and I played it. And he's like, what the heck? Like, you're mad talented? And then we just became cool after that. And it was just. He was just one of those people that that were if if he's for you, he's like for you, like this man stood outside with me in the heat, passing out my CD like he's like as a 13, 14 year old. Like when I started making music, he would go to people like Yo, Check My Boy album, like he was a special kind of person like you only you only get a once every hundred years. Like, he was very, very special. It was just, you know, wrong place, wrong time, Jersey. I love Jersey, but sometimes I hate it because it's just it's a violent place sometimes. And he was he was caught in the wrong situation and got shot. So, yeah, that was that was twenty nineteen. It was it was the most weird, weird day because it was. It was actually around the time that I was starting to work on the album and we were actually supposed to work on something together because he he was musically inclined, he actually painted he was, you know, graphic graphic design or whatever, like he painted he drew all the rest of it. And he had offered a long time ago, like, yo, one of your albums, I want to be able to draw it. I was like, of course. And he had actually called me months prior, like, yo know, we've got to start working on something. And this was after the whole, I think nine, seven, three. And the Mitchell albums, they had all come out and I was getting ready to start working on the next one. And he called me at the right time. I was like, yeah, of course we can work on whatever. And so going into my new album, it almost felt like dang. I think I learned this term survivor's guilt. It is so weird knowing that some of this music I was supposed to work on him with and it was just that was a lot. And I felt like if I'm going to do this, I want to be able to make them proud and make it like the best thing that I've ever done.

[00:19:29.240] - Gaelika
That's crazy. So I didn't realize how fresh that was. Just 2019. Yeah. Where were you guys around the same age then?

[00:19:38.030] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. He was two years, two years older than me. So it was he was kind of like a big brother. But we really like view each other like that. We just, we were just brothers for real.

[00:19:51.890] - Gaelika
Still my condolences. And then you also talk about your father. I know he was like also playing a major part in music in your life. and then he also turns out he's an addict. Is this something that you were aware of, like most of your childhood? You found out earlier or later on, like, how did that all come about?

[00:20:22.760] - Kaleb Mitchell
Um, there were certain things. It was certain things that as I grew, I kind of noticed because, I mean, you grow up, you experience the world, you start seeing certain traits, certain signs like, you know, like even I talked about on "Role Model 3", I was like being a little bit sneaky, you know, not knowing the things you say that going to show in different places. And it just started things just started adding up where it was. It was like, all right, either it's either A or B and I'm I really hope it's not A, but then, you know, it turned out that it was that situation and it was on. It was it was it was kind of like. My worst suspicion coming true, and, you know, I kind of known, but then he kind of came clean one day and it was the culmination of a whole bunch of different others situation. So, yeah, that was that was something I kind of suspected for a while, but. Yeah.

[00:21:33.350] - Gaelika
So I mean, when he came clean around what age were you then?

[00:21:37.790] - Kaleb Mitchell
This, this is like fairly recent and I think it was maybe. No, this is actually January twenty, twenty. It's a this is really still like an ongoing thing, like I was in the dead middle of working on everything, even trying to fight through, not having not having my voice and not knowing how I was going to make my next album. It was that was that was another thing. It was. Yeah. There was a lot there's a lot that was happening at one time. But yeah, we um January twenty twenty is when, you know, things kind of finally came to a head and then. You know, he went off to get help and all the rest, the kind of stuff

and, you know, people kind of separated and things like that, so it was like fairly recent.

[00:22:35.050] - Gaelika
So when. When you found out, did you already write "Role Model Part 3" or was it after?

[00:22:42.320] - Kaleb Mitchell
No, I was. Wow. Wait, I'm trying to figure out the. Funny enough, I had to be I had to be in like, no, I know exactly when it was it was Halloween. I was actually at the Def Jam Studio. I was in the studio with my guy, Inzo and Anthony Cruz, and I knew that I was going to continue that series because it was something that I was I was like dealing with the kind of sounds like I wasn't talking about it and wasn't talking about, you know, the family situations and all the rest. And I knew that that series was going to continue and it was going to be, you know, about him and stuff I had to beat, but I hadn't written it yet. And Halloween 2019, we were just over in the studio and we we had this guitar loop and we put drums on it. And I didn't even write it there in front of you because I knew this is going to be something that I had to sit down and kind of and kind of take my time with. And I just told them he sent it to me and name it role model part three. They're like, oh, word. This is not gonna be fun. But then then everything happened. And I kind of I kind of had time to process everything and just sit down and flush out all my ideas. It actually took me actually something like. I think 20 times to record all of those sources, especially the last one, last one, you can actually hear my voice crack a bunch of times and I decided to keep that in there because I felt like it was more authentic, like I didn't want to go back and polish myself and and sound the sound good or sound proper, because it's not it wasn't that kind of song. I felt like it needed the emotion that that that came out naturally. So I just I left it. I left that in there for, you know. Just see, when I make music, it's for me, but I know that, you know, other people are going through the same thing. So I want to be as transparent as possible because I know my story may not be that unique and other people may be going through the same thing. So I just I just felt like I owed it to people, to be honest.

[00:25:16.780] - Gaelika
No, thank you. I mean, you could feel it. You can definitely feel it in a role model. That's crazy, though, because you put all that out there before you're dad officially told you who he was.

[00:25:30.680] - Kaleb Mitchell Yeah.

[00:25:33.140] - Gaelika Wow,

[00:25:34.500] - Kaleb Mitchell
it's been a it's been like an ongoing it's been an ongoing thing for a while, but I just I just in. I didn't have all the details, but you see certain signs and stuff like that, like some old swings and changes in behavior and all the rest, that just there was a lot of just a lot of arguing and yelling from the time I was super young. So it was just it was just something I kind of like had in the back of my mind for a minute.

[00:26:06.780] - Gaelika
And let's talk about you getting sick and yeah, when did this happened and how?

[00:26:15.300] - Kaleb Mitchell
So I think mid twenty nineteen. I started feeling weird. It felt like, I felt like I just had a normal cold so I kind of took like normal like Robitussin and stuff like that. And call drops were around when I realized I was a kid going through cough drops and kept going through medicine is over. And I was like OK,

[00:26:40.800] - Gaelika The Tussin wasn't working.

[00:26:42.240] - Kaleb Mitchell
No, not at all. And then I found myself like in the office actually at Def Jam around that time that they

they wanted to pick up, get it and use it as the season had them. And it was even hard for me to get words out like I was straining and it was a. It was it was starting to the point where it was affecting the recordings, it was affecting how it sounded and, you know, people were starting to ask like, all right, it's been a year since the last album. You know, any plans. I was it was it was missing opportunities like syncs and placements and stuff like that, like people were asking all this people you got, you know, this opportunity. And I would I would work on something and I'd be like, I can't send you this because I sound it sounded nuts. It dropped my voice so low to a point where it was it wasn't even like. It didn't even sound healthy, like it sounded almost scary the way my voice was it then it just started kind of like giving out and I had one last show to do in October 2019. And so this is after a whole bunch, a whole bunch of stuff that happened, you know, just family wise and my friend had passed and all the rest that. Started getting sick. And then I had one last show to do. And for some reason my voice held out the whole time until I did. I always finish my sets with Get It. And then I walked off and that was it. I was like, it was gone, gone. So this is like I had for point of reference. The only things I had done from my album was "Hell and Back". I knew that I was going to drop "Hell and Back" and I was kind of shooting for early twenty twenty. And I was I had hell and back finished and a whole bunch of rough drafts and it was done. I couldn't even speak. It was, it was, it was probably the scariest time of my life because music and recording and just the process of making music, even if it's something that doesn't come out, is something that I've done every day of my life since I was 13. So it it terrified me to think that I might not be able to do this again. So then just you just start going down the rabbit hole of, OK, what do I do if I can't do this? Can I, can I write can I don't know, ghostwriting for people. Can I. I do I have to get a job. Do I have to do it was and then it just you know, you sit home and like just social media, you see, you know, your friends, the people that you work with, like moving and progressing. And all of a sudden you're you're stuck like you're sick. It's a whole bunch going on. Family. You're still grieving your? And it was just it just kind of like compounded and just put me in this place was like, I don't know . I don't know what I'm a do, like, I don't feel like I have a purpose right now and a lot of that fueled. "Dawn", a lot of that fueled a lot of that fueled "Dawn", a lot of that fueled just the entire sequencing of the album, how it goes from dark.The light starts when "Nightfall" ends with "Dawn". And just that that the scripture that I used, like "weeping endures for a night with joy comes in the morning" it. That kind of resonated with me throughout that time because, you know, you hear that you you see that you may have heard that a million times, but nobody ever really tells you how long that night actually is. And it was just a lot it was a lot to deal with. And I think opening up and back to, you know, opening up and being more transparent, that honestly saved my life because I was noy in a good place mentally for a while just because of everything that was going on. And I'm. Yeah, I like by the grace of God my aunt heard, or we told dad pretty much about what was going on, she just happened to have antibiotics and I started taking these antibiotics. And week by week, my voice started getting stronger and stronger. And then I just went on a spree of recording just going from intro. I think by February, like first or second we had finished, "Dawn", and then by the 14th we had shot the album cover.

[00:31:49.610] - Gaelika
OK, so how long was the time span of you not having a voice then?

[00:31:58.040] - Kaleb Mitchell
From not being able to record and making I want to say from June twenty nineteen up into mid January, like before that the entire kind of twenty nineteen from like March is when I started getting sick. So I started feeling it in like March. And then as it progressed you just got to a point where it was just I knew that I couldn't do anything. So I was just literally sitting there writing ideas down the entire second half of twenty nineteen until I started taking the medicine twenty 2020 and started my voice started healing itself and taking the antibiotics and stuff. So. Yeah, from around March-ish to January 2020.

[00:32:51.200] - Gaelika
That's crazy. Did you ever find out what exactly happened?I mean, obviously with some sort of virus if the antibiotics killed it?

[00:33:01.760] - Kaleb Mitchell
I think it started off as like a sinus infection. But because it went untreated as that for so long and I

kept coughing and I kept trying to clear my own throat, it just started damaging my voice like it was it was burning and stuff after a while. And it just like it it wasn't it just wasn't there. And like, I try to sing and I couldn't do that. I try to rap. I tried to talk aggressively like I couldn't at all. And it was you just feel powerless, like because, you know, again, this is something I've been doing every day. Like literally I'd go to go to school, I'd come home three thirty four o'clock, whatever it was, and literally until maybe 2:00 in the morning I'll be working on music and it just this. This is this really is really my life, like I, I put everything into music, like everything that I may not say to somebody else or talk about it, but look, I can talk to the microphone about and it's just it's cathartic. So not being able to do that and having no sort of outlet was kind of like scary, scary for a while.

[00:34:19.190] - Gaelika
You were like Ariel the Little Mermaid. We know that last show before you completely lost your voice like that was gone. And then I made it through like that was God, you know, you can that. But how would you say how does God's presence in your life look like personally outside of the music? But personally, what is his presence look like?

[00:34:55.510] - Kaleb Mitchell Um, in terms of like how I feel or

[00:35:01.030] - Gaelika
yeah, I mean, he's present in your life, how do you recognize his presence, or do you to feel like he's presently there?

[00:35:10.930] - Kaleb Mitchell
No, I do. It's this is something that I've been working on recently. I've been stopping myself. And. I'm trying to work on being a lot more grateful because I feel like as humans, we we may set goals and we may think of, you know, where we should be or where we think we should be in life and. You know, I have to stop myself and realize that I'm not on my own time, on God's time and. In the simplest things, when I catch myself complaining, this is something I've been doing recently, I think since since I started getting sick, I, I would stop myself and I would just look at everything around me like. I'm complaining about not being able to do X, Y, Z when somebody would kill to have a roof over their head right now. Somebody would, you know, kill to have this hot water that I'm just absentmindedly washing dishes with, like, just certain things that I'm. But I've been blessed with that, I'm not that I just take for granted and I just apologize. I'm like, I'm sorry for not realizing just how blessed I am, like despite my circumstances, despite whatever I'm going through, like, I still have breath in my body and I'm still able to make something happen, you know, like that's my philosophy. Pretty much like as long as I'm here, I have a presence of mind of activity in my limbs, like I'm still here, like these. There's still story for me left. So either that that kind of that kind of showed itself a little bit on all on knowing where I was kind of. Just thinking about all the times that I felt like, you know, this story might be over and there's really no hope. It was like, you know, you're you're here, you're breathing. You still have a chance. You saw another sunrise. It's like I feel I feel God in, like, the simple things. It's just I feel like we were kind of kind of try to make it a lot more complicated than it actually is. Um, I can I can I can breathe right now like I'm here. I'm physically here. And it's just just things like that was, you know, I feel close to.

[00:37:45.050] - Gaelika
All right, we're going to move on to a topic or area called the Hot Topic.So what's trending on Twitter and about two trending topics kind of. We'll discuss get away from some of the seriousness we were just discussing. But the first one, Lady Gaga, is trending. I don't know if you heard, but her dog walker was shot four times by thieves last night, who then stole two of the singer's French bulldogs, Coji and Gustov. And she had three of them, the third one escaped. Oh, yeah. So now she has a reward. She's like asking no questions. She just forgot how much the word was like five hundred thousand or something.

[00:38:40.670] - Kaleb Mitchell
humanity is. I mean, see, that's the kind of thing that. See those type of situations and just hearing about people's homes and stuff being broken into and a lot, you just people were in the public eye.

Just it's just this is something that I've I've always been kind of like wary of is just being too accessible and just that that kind of stuff. Just it just makes me paranoid. Like even I'm nowhere near Lady Gaga. But, you know, sometimes I've had situations where I've kind of had to, like, get people away from me, because when people see an opportunity, it's kind of like they don't really see you as a human. It's kind of like it's weird because it's like walking Opportunity. It's just strange.

[00:39:42.810] - Gaelika
Definitely is strange. People are strange. The world is strange. It's like they say for nobody, like we already know as an artist, especially when, you know, as a rapper it's not safe, you know, you know, even just, you know, recent years with Nipsy and Pop Smoke. But dog walkers, like the dog walkers ain't even safe.

[00:40:16.440] - Kaleb Mitchell Shot the dog? For what?

[00:40:19.710] - Gaelika
It had to be in the get a reward for the dog that has been in like they had to know that she would pay anything to get the dogs back. I don't know. Why else would you shoot a dog walker and still a celebrity's dogs?

[00:40:33.690] - Kaleb Mitchell
That's crazy some people are just, you know, just the actions of some people do it. People people are desperate. I mean, it's a wild world to live in.

[00:40:51.550] - Gaelika
Another trending topic is Post Malone. He's released a cover of Hootie and the Blowfish, his 1995 hit, The song Only Want to Be With You. And people are going nuts over loving it. I don't know. I heard about that. I actually have heard that.

[00:41:11.770] - Kaleb Mitchell
I have not heard it once he goes.

[00:41:14.440] - Gaelika
Are you familiar with the hoodie the Hootie song?

[00:41:19.260] - Kaleb Mitchell
I believe I believe so, I believe so, I think I know what's song this is.

[00:41:24.090] - Gaelika
I'm going to play just a snippet for you.

[00:41:28.020] - Kaleb Mitchell
That's man. Post is talented. I got to give it to him.

[00:41:36.780] - Gaelika
I can see why people are excited because the song was a classic and it's Hootie and Post Malone. But it sounds like Post Maolone like I don't know, he just always sounds the same. Um but I mean how important as an artist you think it is to express yourself and experiment with different sounds and, you know, play with something like that?

[00:42:06.360] - Kaleb Mitchell
Oh, for me there's literally been everything. I kind of found myself and my son through experimenting and cover, bring other people's records and things like that. Like I've I've met early career, like I covered John Beltrán records, I've covered Frank Ocean Records, I've covered Drake records of so many different people's songs. And I feel like I found my sound and what works for me and what I feel most comfortable doing just through all of my other influences. And it just saw the kind of you know, you have people who shape your sound, but then it comes to a point where you you figure out your

own path through all of your own influences and stuff. So, I mean, in regards to POWs, I'm happy just far away from the white Ivison days. You know, most of them I just, you know, wasn't rocking with their whole esthetic, you know. Oh, glad he's doing what makes him happy.

[00:43:13.860] - Gaelika
Do you think that you also have to think and consider your audience and whether or not I mean, if you experiment with something totally new that they're not used to you doing, or do you think you should keep them in mind or just create and, you know, use your artistic expression to make what you want to?

[00:43:33.790] - Kaleb Mitchell
Oh, that's something that I actually I actually deal with a lot, because even when even when it comes to, say, rapping and singing, you have people who who might, you know, love you for different reasons. And if you rap a bunch, you know, you might be neglecting a certain section of your audience. And if you sing a bunch, a bunch of people, you bro where the bars at? and this is like it comes to a point where you can't please everyone. So I try to find I try to find a happy middle ground of between me, you know, experimenting and trying things and, you know, knowing what my audience wants and knowing the things that would get them excited and just, you know, trying to find trying to find a clear middle ground through all of that, because it's it's impossible to please everyone at the end of the day. So I just try to I just try to cover all of my bases all the time. Like, I definitely make sure that I definitely sing a bunch of and I definitely try to at least have a couple, you know, more aggressive, like lyrical, heavy records and just just being able to not please everyone but, you know, just make everyone make everyone happy. I guess at the end of the day, just with with progressing with my sound.

[00:44:59.700] - Gaelika
I think you do a really good blend of it. I don't think I've ever been like I wanted to hear more of the and less of that with your stuff. So I'll get into your music so we know that you started playing the piano at the age of five and discovered that you just pick up by sound. And we discussed when I originally talked to you getting into rapping at the age of eight after watching 8 Mile.

[00:45:31.220] - Kaleb Mitchell Yeah.

[00:45:33.260] - Gaelika
When? When did you like heavily for those who aren't really too familiar with your music, like when did you like heavily really start making music and start getting noticed as a rapper? Singer?

[00:45:52.710] - Kaleb Mitchell
So yeah eight years old? That's when I wrote my first rap. Because I saw I saw it myself, I was literally watching the movie, and the funny thing is I'd seen it earlier as a younger kid, but I couldn't really I just, like, appreciate it. By the time I was eight, there was just something about the the rap battle scenes that I don't know, I just kind of like being able to or the idea of being able to, you know, express yourself in and just this like aggressive form of like storytelling. I really enjoyed that. And I kind of that's what I mean. I had already been a fan of rap, but I had no, you know, ideas of trying it for myself. Like, I admire Kanye and the Lupe's and all the rest of that. And I just I enjoyed it as a fan. But then I don't know something about the battle, the battle scenes and just battle battle rap in general. Like I'm still a big battle Rap fan to this day. Also, shout out my brother Th3 Saga, you know, blazing a path, you know, Christian battle rapper and stuff. I just I started taking it seriously when I was. I want to say 13 is when I started working on my first album, and then by 14, I had made my first project, that project is like long, long from the Internet, though I hated it in retrospect. So I took it now. But then soliloquies really were kind of, I guess, cemented like my name is an actual artist. It just, you know, I posted it on the Internet for free and SoundCloud and stuff like that in different publications just picked it up and, and it kinda took off on its own that I wasn't really expecting because this is something I just made of my laptop with no budget and I just put it out for, you know, for free. And from there, that's when things really started getting.

[00:48:01.260] - Gaelika
And how did you connect with Erin Knight?

[00:48:06.320] - Kaleb Mitchell
Actually, a funny story, so I said before that covered, Frank Ocean, this song was a "Strawberry Swing" off of Nostalgia Ultra, I put it out on SoundCloud. And funny enough, Xavier Omar had followed me and heard that. And he reposted on SoundCloud now. And I have no idea who I was. She was following Xavier. I was 16 and she heard me. She heard me sing Strawberry Song. She was like, who is this kid that she went and found 45 and Soliloquy and stuff like that. And she emailed me, I think you would email me or DM'ed me on Twitter, I don't remember what she said it I. I think I have to find these messages. Yes, she contacted us and it was just like, you know, I just want to be able to, like, chop it up into an exercise deal like that. So it turned into us like talking to every Sunday just about music and strategies and things like that. And she had she never like was like, here's this contract let manager you. And it was it was just more like, I just want to be able to kind of grow with you and stuff like that. So we actually officially met the year later when I turned 17, I actually went down to Atlanta. We met and from there it just it just kind of started rapidly progressing like by by. I want to say March, March or April of twenty seventeen, we actually did our first live show together or two shows, we sold out two shows in Toronto and that was that was crazy. That was I was still to this day is a highlight for me because first time getting out the country, first time really like leaving leaving the state and stuff on my own like. Just being. I guess moving around, I guess, is an actual artist and, you know, have emerged with me and all the rest of that kind of stuff like that was my first real experience doing that. So, yeah, we started we started rocking when I was 17.

[00:50:25.270] - Gaelika
So, all right, and and then let's go benchwarmers. Yeah. Can you tell us about Benchwarmers and that's all you.

[00:50:36.760] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. Yeah. Benchwarmers me. So I was this funny. Was actually around the same time I was 17 and I really didn't know. Uh. What I guess my base or my fan, but I don't really like using the word fans is kind of feels weird to me, like the people who support me. You know, Rhianna has the Navy, you know, like there's the Deadheads. You know, there's the there's the different groups of people who kind of live under one banner and something that something that I knew it was going to have to be kind of like sports related just because sports was a big part of my life growing up, like up until the time that I started releasing music, like, seriously with like so help me God being the first commercial effort, like I was basketball and football literally from the time that I was like five. And there was one season. There was one season when, you know, I don't even want to say his name, but shout out to that coach who just had a vendetta against me for whatever reason. And he and it was like it wasn't like I was no or nothing like I was on varsity and stuff. Like he he just would not let me in these games. Like, I'd get in for five minutes and for the rest of the year I'm like, yo, what's the issue like he just buys me all the time for whatever reason. I don't know why he like me, but I kind of sat back and thought like, all right, I know that I'm capable. I know that I'm equipped to be in this game. But, you know, it just takes that one opportunity for them to let me off the leash and be able to do it and do what I have to do and show my full ability. Libo. I'm going to call us, this is going to be benchwarmers, this is this is going to be benchwarmers and I kind of just ran with that. And it's just it kind of it turned into multiple different facets, like I've Benchwarmers publishing now. So every time I write a song that was in the Benchwarmers Publishing Benchwarmers LLC which is like the actual, I guess, label or whatever. For me it yeah, it kind of just took a life of its own. And like even still to this day, I'll see kids like put benchwarmers in their Bible and things like that. And it's just it's kind of it's a beautiful thing to see, like just a concept that I have just turned into something physical. So yeah, that's that's what the entire idea came from.

[00:53:12.090] - Gaelika
All right. And let's talk about. So Help Me God 2, you had a movie and an album. Yeah. Now, I was fortunate I didn't get to see the movie, so that was a really cool experience. For the rest of the world, how and when will they be able to see the movie?

[00:53:37.770] - Kaleb Mitchell
February twenty seventh. If you hit the link in my bio on everything right now or my pen tweet on Twitter, Iink in my Instagram bio, there's a link that sends you to Eventbrite and you can choose between the different tiers and you're going to either just pay five dollars and just see the actual movie or you can, you know, pay a little bit more. There's a merch bundle that comes with it. There's a call afterwards where you talk to me about it and everything. Yeah, we're releasing it one night only like a digital premiere. And we're working on some other things, too, that we you still can't really talk about. But we're you know, we're just. We're I'm I'm really excited about this. It was it was really a this is nuts because it's kind of a spur of the moment thing that my manager popped up on me. I had no idea that she was, like, dead set about. He was like, we should make a movie. Okay. Like, this sounds cool. Not like like. Right. The treatment. I was like, oh, like right now is he's like, yeah, OK. So then by the time I was literally moving I was moving in. I think I wrote the entire treatment of for him before I had to get up and like move the last pieces of furniture out house and. It worked like I just chronicled, like different events in my life, and it just a shot out the you shut out the branding shout outs, you know, forwent three creators, Preston, for just the crazy cinematography. So that's Amir who played younger. Me, she. Oh, my God. Like it was it was it was I was in the room, like in the certain scenes like where he's he's in the room writing and stuff like I'm in the corner off screen, like almost trying to hold back tears because this is actually stuff that I did as a kid. And it was and it was amazing. It was a it was an incredible experience, just making that.

[00:55:45.740] - Gaelika
And so the album, what about the let's talk about the production one? Yeah, it is so sick. I know. I think you mentioned Anthony Cruz. Yeah. Was there other producers on the project?

[00:56:04.550] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yes. There's a bunch of producers. Let me see if I can name them all. Anthony Cruz would really like took the helm of everything Anthony Cruz, who goes by 1995, Kilowatts. Enzo Grand, Dillon Graham, who did "fool" and "Proud", Obed Obade, who did guitar on a bunch of different songs from Dopeboy's, who actually co-produced on "fool" Pellom Junior, who also co-produced Lungful, Kyle Steinberger, who did "Ballan." And. And he did "Hell and back" with me. It was it was really like all of my friends that, you know, we may have worked on even different projects together. We all kind of came together and worked on stuff for this. And it was it was a process. It was like it was it was during the time I was still trying to navigate, you know, not having a voice and stuff like that. So I'm like, yo, can you just send me the most, like, off the wall, like, weird stuff that I would never send anybody else. And that's kind of how we got "Numb". "NUMb" came from two different demos and it was just like, I don't know why, but I hear these two being together and they fit. And I'm going to tell the story about, you know, X, Y, Z, and I'm going to piece it together with these different sound effects. And then I put a first half of this song and another demo together, and I was like, this has to stay this way. It just it was just a process of just finding different things that we wouldn't do otherwise. Even "Dawn", we kind of stumbled upon by accident. I was sitting in my friend's those basement and he just plays me this like guitar loop. And he was like, I have no idea what I to do this. I was like, yo, something about it just like jumped out at me and I was like, yo, send me that and I'm going to work on it. He said it to me and it was just a moment of of like. Pure creation and not even thinking about I didn't even write anything for Don, it just it just just the the the instrumentation kind of just spoke to me and I kind of I kind of knew that this was it wasn't going to be a. I mean.And where it's going to be like really repetitive and stuff.

[00:58:46.810] - Gaelika
I lost you for a second. So I didn't get anything after all you're talking about, "Dawn," and you were saying I knew it wasn't going to be ending.

[00:58:56.150] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah, I knew it wasn't going to be like super Lyric heavy. I knew it was going to be something where it was I was going to, like, repeat the same phrase a bunch of times. I just didn't know what I was going to say. And, you know, that was the time where I was I was I mean, I talked about before, I was just, you know, feeling like I don't have a purpose or, you know, maybe feeling depressed and just going through a whole bunch of different stuff and. I kind of feel like. That scripture was kind of God telling me, like, I'm not done with you yet, like weeping into us for a night, but Joy comes in the morning, like,

long as you're still here, I still have a plan for you. So I just I just kind of went in and just stood in different I stood my ground up and stood in different sections of the room and kind of like made a one man quiet and just that my voice on top of each other. Then I got my friend Aaron Cole to, you know, to do like like I just was like, yo, lead the choir like like like you just have a solo or just go crazy. And he just shows his different pockets and stuff like that. And just just this entire process was just it was just so much more involved with other people. Like usually I'm kind of like self-contained, like even if I get production from other people, it's kind of like me taking it and just going back and and just working on it by myself. But this time I actually went different places and this first time I actually travel to other studios because I record by myself usually. But this time this time I actually went and sat and went to Anthony's house and Angela's house went like, this is how we're going to do the master. Let's listen to a bunch of times, make different versions. So it was a lot more involved this time now.

[01:00:43.720] - Gaelika
And I was curious about your role as far as in the production, knowing how musically you are like how. How much input you had? But it sounds like you kind of were orchestrating it all?

[01:00:59.260] - Kaleb Mitchell
Oh yes. Some of the songs I even I did by myself, like "Smile", I produced the second half of "Hell and Back" that kind of tribal, tribal kind of like B portion that came from a completely other different song that I was trying to work on. And I don't know, it just felt like I needed. I like having changes of pace in records. This is something I've been doing on different projects. I have two halves of a song stitched together and I feel like hell and back kind of needed, even though nightfall is technically the intro hell and back is really the introduction to everything about the project. And I just wanted like a grand moment. So that beat that was entirely produced by me, that second half. And I knew it was going to be it was going to be right at the end of that. And I just kind of I just took it from another song and I just tried something that I placed. In the end. It actually fit perfectly that I worked on. I worked with the ones that while Ive co produced I co-produced on so many different records, like I try to not I try not to like mess with other stuff, but it just comes to a point where I'll do something weird in the way I record and I have to like adapt to how I sound. So it literally does so many different records where I'll take the drums out and I put my own drums or I'll do this and I'll get somebody else to play guitar or something. That's so I'm like heavily involved in the production process.

[01:02:39.040] - Gaelika
I see, I mean, I love the way that you just have the whole album flows and and even like how you said what you did with "hell and back" how just the beats, which is and it just gets that grittier, you know, it comes out of the Heavenly Father and the and the beats, which is again supervening and then plays again into the Heavenly Father and then transitions that sound like all of that. And but that's like how I grew up on music. So it's it's rare these days for newer artists to make music like that. They're so focused on the singles. I just having a song on a playlist. But the beauty of this project is the entire it's in in its entirety like the songs are now. But when you listen to it in its entirety, from start to finish, now everything flows. It's a totally different vibe.

[01:03:36.140] - Kaleb Mitchell
That's definitely something that I pride myself on. I feel like, I don't know, like everyone around me always makes a joke that I'm like secretly 40 years old just because it just goes on like they always are mad, old. And I'm like, I mean, I guess it's just I grew up with a lot of stuff that was before my time. Like, it's is I just I appreciate a lot of things that are kind of like before my era, like after after "Jesus Walks" I honestly wasn't like so much so into the newer hip hop. Like I can say right now. Fugees like The Score was the first album that I sat and listened to. And there's so many different things that bleed into other tracks in the interludes being just completely different stories and others. And it's just like that fascinated me as a kid. So it was it was only right that I kind of adapted that because I feel like today is like that's also something I kind of I kind of beast with just with, you know, just people with labels and stuff like that because they're they're so hyper focused on, OK, what's the single, what's the single. And if you think about it like we put no metal as a single and that's not supposed to work as a song because two different song. But he did for some reason. And it's just for me it's just about the art. Like, I just I just like being able to have like a cohesive, you know, body of art. I want I

want this to be an experience every time somebody listens to an album. But I also want, you know, people to be able to pick their favorite songs like we can. You can take "bust down" out of the lineup and it'll be it'll still stand on its own. Like you put in a random playlist somewhere. Like I try to I try to meld like those worlds and bring them together. Just, you know, having something that's an overarching storyline, but then also having these records to be able to stand by themselves.

[01:05:47.680] - Gaelika
Well you did it. What about the. Decision to make the album parental advisory.

[01:05:57.460] - Kaleb Mitchell
Honestly, it just became it was honestly wasn't even like a thought to me.It just it just happened when especially when I was writing records like "role model" and stuff like that, like, I don't know, I just felt like. Some of it, especially those those deeper records, some of it had to be. The way it was, and I felt as if I'd be I feel like I'll be pulling a punch if I went back and try to, like, change it or or censor it, because I felt like in throughout the entire project, I try to do things from the standpoint of just like complete honest storytelling, like you're never going to you're never going to get me on a song you hear me talking about Lean In. And I was like, just stuff that I'm not about, but I'm going to be 100 percent honest about who I am. And this project, I feel like, is the most accurate depiction so far of who I am now as an artist and just know growing and getting older and just being a lot more forthcoming with information about me. And it's just just more expression, more expression, like I feel like before it was it was good music, like there's was good music I made I felt like maybe a lot more people don't know why I'm on a deeper level. So I felt like it was just it wouldn't make sense for me to write something out of, you know, just needing catharsis and then just going back and trying to pull punches and things like that. So I just I left it the way it is.

[01:07:37.410]
Yeah. Makes sense. And just on a side note, I want to say thank you for the John Gives rap feature.

[01:07:54.240] - Kaleb Mitchell
That's still exciting to me because I don't know. I've been trying to get on a record since I was like 15. I had this song off of this album, Soliloquy and "focused." I left this second half open and I was like, I really want to give this. And he's been following me since back then. So I was like, dang, maybe if I just shoot, like, I might be able to get away. So it was a it was a it's almost like a full circle moment. There's a lot of full circle moments on this album, like even Xavier getting on it. It's just like he's the reason I found my manager and just this whole full circle thing of now he's finally on my album and he's just, I don't know, just everything just kind of fell into place this time. And it was it was it was an amazing experience just putting this thing together.

[01:08:50.530] - Gaelika
That's awesome. And and then OK, because this has just been bugging me with the John Gives song. What is that sample? There's a simple

[01:09:00.310] - Kaleb Mitchell
I literally wrote it down, Hold on I wrote it down.

[01:09:05.260] - Gaelika
It keeps bugging me, I'm like, I know this. It feels like 90s I what is the song?

[01:09:13.300] - Kaleb Mitchell
So what we took you from was the original. It's called Petite Flair by Chris Barber's band, Chris Barber's jazz band. It was put out in 1959, but I'm pretty sure Diddy had used it in something like it.

[01:09:30.560] - Gaelika
That sounds like Bad Boy. Like I know. Yeah.

[01:09:33.650] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. Diddy had used it in something but we took it from me from the original site.

[01:09:39.010] - Gaelika
What was the guy's name again.

[01:09:40.690] - Kaleb Mitchell The Chris Barbours Jazz Band.

[01:09:45.010] - Gaelika
oK, yeah. Well yeah with that feature and then John Givez was just like what's this song.

[01:09:52.840] - Kaleb Mitchell
OK, that was actually his first reference in a while. Like I kind of convinced him I was like for I know you're R&B thing bro. I kind of need to rap bro.

[01:10:02.120] - Gaelika
That's why I specifically said his rap feature. I had been seen for a while. You know, John Givez will be featured and then I'll check it out. And it's either him on the hook or him doing background vocals. I'm like, really? So. Let's. The album, OK, we finished the album, I think we covered a lot in there. It's amazing that the work is amazing and hard in the movie. You even use that song for John Givez.I remember that in a way. I don't know. It was just it was amazing.

[01:10:45.940] - Gaelika Thank you so much.

[01:10:47.530]
Let's talk about this Def Jam Connect, what's going on with Def Jam and then taking the get it anthem and it being for the Jets, what's all of it.

[01:10:58.270] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. So it was it was actually a while. It was is a wild situation. There was a shout out to Jason Jason Peerless A&R at Def Jam. He found my music and he was he was a fan of the music and he was like, yo, I just want to talk to me. You know, maybe you can go into all of this X, Y, Z. So I actually brought Erin up to we met and they were like, yeah, Paul Rosenberg wants to meet with you or whatever.

[01:11:33.460] - Gaelika
And you said, what brought Aaron Cole, Aaron who came out?

[01:11:36.610] - Kaleb Mitchell No Erin Knight.

[01:11:38.050] - Gaelika
You to get to meet Paul Rosenberg. What? OK, continue.

[01:11:43.600] - Kaleb Mitchell
So, yeah. So me being the kid who literally started because of 8 Mile, I'm like, oh, like the guy on the skits on his albums like oh yeah. I walk into the office and start to make things worse. This dude is like six six. So he's mad, intimidating like yo like this is nuts. He's like, hey, I'm Paul. I'm like, dude, I know this is this is nuts. So yeah, they brought us in, we were just talking and stuff like that and they had actually sent it to like I guess the media department or whatever the judge, because they were looking for an anthem for the for the 2019 2020 season and. Apparently, somebody in the Jets office was already a fan of mine and they were like, oh,that's Kaleb, like he yeah, I know this kid, but he's super dope. So they had someone who was already vouching for us and I had no idea who it was. So it was almost like this, like just divine being kind of like just fell into place. And then they, you know, presented us with a single deal and stuff like that. And to be able to use the record and things just happened super fast after that. They just they put the record out again. We released it and the whole, you know, like hyped video and commercial playing with him every single time that they played at the

stadium. The song would come on as they came out the tunnel. And it was yeah, it was just nuts. And we were able to get, you know, Casanovva and stuff on the remix. And it was just nuts. It was super cool experience, you know, being being on the inside and seeing just how No Labels work and stuff like that.

[01:13:47.520] - Gaelika
That's super dope. Alright. is there anything else we should know, anything we should be looking forward to in the future?

[01:13:57.090] - Kaleb Mitchell
Oh, I don't want to, I don't know, ruin anything. I don't want any surprises. But, yeah, I'm back. I'm not finished. Oh, definitely not for me. So. We will be back soon. That's all I got to say.

[01:14:14.880] - Gaelika
And how does God's presence look like in your life musically? Meeting Paul Rosenburg

[01:14:30.820] - Kaleb Mitchell
I feel like honestly, situations like that, like just things I feel like the way things came together, especially through the hardships of trying to create this album, just how easy things came. Came to us like this as a group like the group, they created the project, just just certain things that just wouldn't have happened, like it just wasn't happenstance that these things happen. Like example my friend Kevin Hackett, who did the art is from Vancouver and. He just happens to have a flight layover in New York near my house. On for like a day, and we're able to finally, after years of working remotely, he's finally able to actually shoot my album cover himself. Just things like that happening. Just it's just like, all right, this can't be a coincidence like this. I don't have a voice. And we're still making this album like this. This can't be a coincidence. So I definitely, you know, just feel him in the things where I just I just go and I trust them, mean, you know, things things actually come together.

[01:15:51.610] - Gaelika
And my final question, now that you actually done two interviews with me, what would you like to see me? And whose testimony would you like to hear?

[01:16:07.670] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yes. I said, that's a good question. I know. Let me talk to Aaron

[01:16:23.720] - Gaelika Aaron Cole.

[01:16:24.750] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah, yeah, I actually just started blowing towards the end of the year, so that's available. OK, ok, OK.

[01:16:34.250] - Kaleb Mitchell
Because I just thought the story is pretty interesting because you started even younger than I did.

[01:16:39.170] - Gaelika
So it is, that was an hour and a half interview right there. It was fun on.

[01:16:49.600] - Kaleb Mitchell
Would you do would you do an interview with someone who isn't an artist?

[01:16:56.470] - Gaelika
depending like I would love to talk to Erin Knight..

[01:16:59.930] - Kaleb Mitchell
I was just about to say that I was just about to say that because I feel like she has lost a lot of a lot of knowledge to share in a lot of, you know, just a lot of personal experiences that she can can from. And which would be an incredible interview, in my opinion.

[01:17:14.560] - Gaelika
Yeah, no, I definitely would be down to do something like that. So or yeah, that's a good recommendation. And hopefully we can make that happen, especially if she watches this.

[01:17:28.430] - Kaleb Mitchell
I'm sure she's going to see every single second of this.

[01:17:33.490] - Gaelika
Awesome. Well, I definitely appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.

[01:17:38.290] - Kaleb Mitchell
Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.

[01:17:40.270]
Yeah. Looking forward to hearing more music from you.

[01:17:43.180] - Kaleb Mitchell Most definitely.

[01:17:49.960] - Gaelika
Hey, what's up? Thank you. Thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for watching the show, however you consumers. Thank you. Please subscribe to the show and if you really enjoy the content, please leave a review. It really does help with the ranking of the show. And if you want to go an extra mile, share the show, share this episode. And for all things, testimony, visit testimonystories.Com until next time. I'm Gaelika Brown, the music lover, constantly seeking positive music.

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In this episode of Testimony a Musician’s Story, presented by Sound Seekers, rapper and singer Kaleb Mitchell shares his Christian testimony. He discusses losing his best friend to gun violence, discovering his dad’s drug addiction, and meeting and working with Def Jam’s former CEO Paul Rosenberg. Kaleb additionally breaks down his latest album and movie, So Help Me God II.

*The transcription of any lyrics and some of the interview content may not be entirely accurate.*

[00:00:00.580] - Gaelika
In this episode of Testimony a Musician’s Story, presented by Sound Seekers, rapper and singer Kaleb Mitchell shares his Christian testimony. He discusses losing his best friend to gun violence, discovering his dad’s drug addiction, and meeting and working with Def Jam’s former CEO Paul Rosenberg. Kaleb additionally breaks down his latest album and movie, So Help Me God II. And he talks about that entire experience in the full circle-ness of him starting off rapping because of Eight Mile.

[00:00:48.870] - Gaelika
But let's go ahead and first start with your first music memory, whether it be a song you heard a video or a performance you saw, your first music a memory

[00:01:00.690] - Kaleb Mitchell
first music memory? I think the first one that stood out to me was, um, I was I was like five, five or four years old and. This dude wearing a polo and a backpack, 106 and Park, my older brother is watching it and I'm like, who is this? It's the video premiere for a song called Jesus Walks. And I was like. Wait, this sounds like the music that my mom plays, but this also sounds like the hip hop my dad plays, this is this is like a cross between two worlds .And I was like, this is blowing my mind. And from that moment, I was a dedicated hip hop and five year olds. So my older brother started playing me like the edited version, The College Dropout, Late Registration, and all the rest of them. So from that point on that, I think that's one of my first real memories of just me being a fan of music.

[00:02:10.050] - Gaelika
All right, so your first real memory is Kanye West's Jesus Walks. Yeah, I mean, that's a major song. That was a big record at the time.

[00:02:18.960] - Kaleb Mitchell Oh, definetly it is.

[00:02:22.440] - Gaelika
It's interesting to hear you were five years old when that came out.

[00:02:26.790] - Kaleb Mitchell Yeah. I was was while that's crazy.

[00:02:32.370] - Gaelika
So and going to your childhood and where you were raised you were born in what, Morristown, New Jersey.

[00:02:40.620] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah, I was born in Morristown Memorial Hospital to be exact. We lived in Union, New Jersey for a while and then my younger brother came along. So we moved to Mars County and a group in Wharton went to schools and Wharton and stuff. So I was. Junior high when I went to high school in Denvil, so pretty much I've been all around North Jersey, Morris County, pretty much my entire life.

[00:03:13.500] - Gaelika
OK. And your household, who was in your household, you mentioned, an older brother?

[00:03:21.550] - Kaleb Mitchell Yeah.

[00:03:22.340] - Gaelika
You have any other siblings?

[00:03:24.340] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah, I'm a middle child, so I have an older brother and a younger brother, mom and dad. That is from Jersey. My mom is actually from Kenya. So I had like pretty much the best of both worlds for was

seeing, you know, just how people operate and, you know, the Kenyan side and the customs and traditions and just how they operate and and obviously Jersey and a lot of northerner and energy and all the rest of it. So I kind of got have the best of both worlds.

[00:03:55.570] - Gaelika
One of OK, so I didn't know that Kenya that your mom was from Kenya. I mean, that does bring you into the household. And in that area, was it heavy, heavily populated with just immigrants at all? And then was it I mean, because, you know, there's usually like like Caribbeans like on the East Coast are. Yeah, Nigerans are pretty much everywhere. But Kenyan's without a huge community?

[00:04:25.150] - Kaleb Mitchell
Not a lot. There's not a lot of canyons that you can find. A lot of Jamaicans, some. So my friends are Haitian. A lot of my friends are either, you know, Colombian, Puerto Rican or anything else, but not a lot of Kenyans. Like I think I may have met one other Kenyan around here in my lifetime, which is just kind of wild. But, yeah, we're we're the only I think only Kenyan family for for a while.

[00:04:52.900] - Gaelika
And then I mean, how is that, though? Because you have the two different dynamics. Your dad, who's from here and, you know, East Coast, like, that's a whole nother just culture and his own. How did those, like, collide and how was that?

[00:05:13.120] - Kaleb Mitchell
It was interesting, to say the least. You know, somethings mom would agree with that. In some things. Dad vouched for mom where it was. It was I mean, I I'm grateful that I was able to grow up in a household like that because I am more I guess I'm more in tune with, you know, my roots and I can see exactly where I come from and just being able to, you know, have conversations with family and like my grandmother before she passed and just get knowledge from different things like other than in a traditional American experience. I was I was pretty I was grateful for that. But yeah, it was especially when it came to doing the music thing, like the whole college situation that was a fight over the fight because, yeah, it was college.

[00:06:06.120] - Gaelika
If you had her from Africa, you're going to college.

[00:06:09.820] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. So that was a it was an interesting debate until, you know, things started to materialize. And it's like, OK, this isn't just like a pipe dream, like she's actually trying to make something happen. So I was all right, but there was no way to fight for a while.

[00:06:30.250] - Gaelika
And was it a Christian household?

[00:06:33.940] - Kaleb Mitchell Yeah, on both sides.

[00:06:36.970] - Gaelika
So did you go to an American church or African?

[00:06:44.740] - Kaleb Mitchell
I grew up in the Baptist Church my entire life, actually. Calvary Baptist Church in Morristown, New Jersey, to be exact, where I was baptized there, like four years old, grew up. There was a play keys and in the children's choir when I was younger, my little brother actually play the drums like it was actually it was a big part of, you know, well, who I am. And just growing up, like making a whole bunch of friends, like a lot of my friends are from there, even if we've moved around and stuff, we're still tightly bonded. Like we never really lost that connection.

[00:07:21.640] - Gaelika

OK, and so pretty much your whole time in church, you were playing music?

[00:07:27.250] - Kaleb Mitchell
From the age of five. Yeah, I well, it's actually a funny story was I think the song I think by Kirk Franklin my mom was playing it because she was listening to the radio. And I like this Casio keyboard that I got gotten for Christmas and I hadn't touched it until that day. I came home and I just I tried to mess around with it and I was able to, like, play the song back by memory. And that's how we learned or discovered that I knew how to play things by ear. And from five until now, I haven't really stopped. And it's just evolved in different stages of trying to play other people's music then. OK, how do people make music today? OK, what's with the software with X, Y, Z and just evolving. Evolving until I started making my own albums and stuff.

[00:08:28.500] - Gaelika
That's crazy. So the Kirk Franklin song when you were playing that, by how old did you say were you?

[00:08:35.580] - Kaleb Mitchell Five.

[00:08:39.270] - Gaelika
Wow. Well, you're definitely definitely born with it. So you were playing music in the church, that means you were attending church multiple times a week because you had worship rehearsal, have to rehearse for that. When did it become real for you? When did you personally give your life to Christ?

[00:09:07.150] - Kaleb Mitchell
Um, I think it really became a real thing for me around. I want to say I was like 13 or 14. It just there was just a whole lot going on with, you know, my mom being sick and she she had gotten diagnosed with cancer and there was just certain things happening and certain things beginning to happen, even things that I kind of touch on on the new album. Those were like in the beginning stages. And it was just it was a weird time and I felt like. I just kept seeing things that I couldn't explain other than being God like ways being made that were part of a human hands. And I OK, maybe this is like like you hear as a kid, you hear from other people. You see you go to church, you see people falling out. And all the rest of it is like, what is this about? You don't really understand it until you start experiencing life. And I feel like just with certain situations, I kind of kind of had to grow up quick and and I guess go through things that, you know, a lot of my peers really didn't see or experience until they were older. And I don't know, it just became more apparent to me that I'm not really in control of this thing here. And there's somebody else who's guiding me through the situation.

[00:10:37.310] - Gaelika
So it wasn't necessarily one main thing, it was a series,

[00:10:42.320] - Kaleb Mitchell
yeah, it was like it was a series of things.

[00:10:46.550] - Gaelika
And so around what age do you think that was?

[00:10:52.340] - Kaleb Mitchell
Thirteen, fourteen. Kind of kind of became more real to me, and I kind of developed, I guess my own relationship to themselves is like being dragged to being dragged to church. Another as a kid, you kind of. I kind of stood back and felt like, oh, well, something feels different and maybe I want to start, you know, learning on my own and just just growing. Just growing.

[00:11:22.780] - Gaelika
And you said that you were experiencing things on a lot of your peers weren't. Did your peers know what you were going through at the time or did you keep igt all inward?

[00:11:34.310] - Kaleb Mitchell

Oh, yeah, that's actually a big thing that I had to kind of grow out of here. Well, you know, you're still sort of trying to grow out of is internalizing things. And that's that's something that I kind of tried to shed with this new album. It's like highly personal. And it's a lot of stuff that even may have been going on throughout my career that whole time. I'd be making, you know, really turnt- up songs and happy songs. Stuff like like that. A lot of these situations have been ongoing. But I felt like there was it was kind of like a breaking point where I felt like I if I don't. If I don't start getting more introspective and start No. Expressing things other people in. Oh, stop trying to hoard all these emotions and stuff, because it's only going to it's going to hurt me in the long run, I, I definitely use music as therapy and started opening up a lot more to the people around me. And it was it was interesting seeing people's reactions because they some of them had absolutely no idea what was going on with me or anything like that. So it definitely deepened a lot of my relationships, especially with my manager Erin. It's so strange how a lot of things in our lives are kind of parallel and she's she's kind of the same way or she like a really, really strong person. So so she'll try to handle everything herself. And we both came to the realization, kind of like we have to start now depending more on each other and opening up more than just being a lot more honest with each other, because it's only it's only healthy. It's right for everyone to have someone to go to.

[00:13:29.500] - Kaleb Mitchell
Right on. That's true. So at this point. For those who don't know, like I actually interviewed Kaleb when he was like around this age and said 15, 14, 15. Yeah. And so Testimony: A Musicians Story he was featured as an up and comer with Rockstar J.T., if you want to hear that one. But I feel like since then. At that point. Your life switched up and things changed, and even though probably when we were talking, you were internally going through these things, but it didn't come up. We didn't know about this. So first, I want to ask about your mom. Do you mind if I ask what type of cancer was it?

[00:14:17.960] - Kaleb Mitchell
Was it was breast cancer. She was diagnoised I think when I was 12, 13. Yes, I was in I think it was in like middle school or something like that, and it was really kind of it was kind of a shock for us because she. That's another thing she's really like she's my hero pretty much because, like she she knew like before Christmas, but she didn't she didn't tell us until, like, the next like January pretty much because she wanted us to enjoy the holiday. So just things like that, just she kind of like, oh, no, she superstrong she's an inspiration for me.

[00:15:03.390] - Gaelika
She was sheltering you guys. And how is she now?

[00:15:05.490] - Kaleb Mitchell
She's good. She's good. By the grace of God, she's good. You know, you still have to do with, you know, certain side effects and keeping up with prescriptions and all the rest are kind of stuff. But she's she's out of the woods, so we're grateful for that.

[00:15:21.630] - Gaelika
And because of your honest music, because you're very transparent in this, you know, latest project, we know about the loss of your brother and your father being an addict. Let's start with your brother. When did you lose him?

[00:15:42.960] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. So that's it's actually like my very good friend that, you know, I call my brother. Thankfully, my older brother, and younger brother is still with us. But you know, this my my guy. My guy from day one. Jahad Pain, we grew up in the same church together and literally since day one, we actually met in the choir stand at choir rehearsal as kids hear the goofiness, most kind hearted person ever. He was 23 when he passed. He kind of dedicated his life to, you know, working with kids, especially kids with special needs and he. It was it was it was weird, we kind of. We kind of like stumbled into each other into like this friendship, like I think I may have been 11 years old and I was just because my mom would work in the church. So after school on like Friday, I'd go to the church with her. She'd pick me up from school. I go to the church and I'd be in like the chapel or something like that, practicing piano, because it was the only place that was like quiet. And he walked in one day and I was like, what's up.

And I think I was playing I was playing some song that I heard on the radio. And he was like, you know how to play this song. And I was like, yeah, I could and I played it. And he's like, what the heck? Like, you're mad talented? And then we just became cool after that. And it was just. He was just one of those people that that were if if he's for you, he's like for you, like this man stood outside with me in the heat, passing out my CD like he's like as a 13, 14 year old. Like when I started making music, he would go to people like Yo, Check My Boy album, like he was a special kind of person like you only you only get a once every hundred years. Like, he was very, very special. It was just, you know, wrong place, wrong time, Jersey. I love Jersey, but sometimes I hate it because it's just it's a violent place sometimes. And he was he was caught in the wrong situation and got shot. So, yeah, that was that was twenty nineteen. It was it was the most weird, weird day because it was. It was actually around the time that I was starting to work on the album and we were actually supposed to work on something together because he he was musically inclined, he actually painted he was, you know, graphic graphic design or whatever, like he painted he drew all the rest of it. And he had offered a long time ago, like, yo, one of your albums, I want to be able to draw it. I was like, of course. And he had actually called me months prior, like, yo know, we've got to start working on something. And this was after the whole, I think nine, seven, three. And the Mitchell albums, they had all come out and I was getting ready to start working on the next one. And he called me at the right time. I was like, yeah, of course we can work on whatever. And so going into my new album, it almost felt like dang. I think I learned this term survivor's guilt. It is so weird knowing that some of this music I was supposed to work on him with and it was just that was a lot. And I felt like if I'm going to do this, I want to be able to make them proud and make it like the best thing that I've ever done.

[00:19:29.240] - Gaelika
That's crazy. So I didn't realize how fresh that was. Just 2019. Yeah. Where were you guys around the same age then?

[00:19:38.030] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. He was two years, two years older than me. So it was he was kind of like a big brother. But we really like view each other like that. We just, we were just brothers for real.

[00:19:51.890] - Gaelika
Still my condolences. And then you also talk about your father. I know he was like also playing a major part in music in your life. and then he also turns out he's an addict. Is this something that you were aware of, like most of your childhood? You found out earlier or later on, like, how did that all come about?

[00:20:22.760] - Kaleb Mitchell
Um, there were certain things. It was certain things that as I grew, I kind of noticed because, I mean, you grow up, you experience the world, you start seeing certain traits, certain signs like, you know, like even I talked about on "Role Model 3", I was like being a little bit sneaky, you know, not knowing the things you say that going to show in different places. And it just started things just started adding up where it was. It was like, all right, either it's either A or B and I'm I really hope it's not A, but then, you know, it turned out that it was that situation and it was on. It was it was it was kind of like. My worst suspicion coming true, and, you know, I kind of known, but then he kind of came clean one day and it was the culmination of a whole bunch of different others situation. So, yeah, that was that was something I kind of suspected for a while, but. Yeah.

[00:21:33.350] - Gaelika
So I mean, when he came clean around what age were you then?

[00:21:37.790] - Kaleb Mitchell
This, this is like fairly recent and I think it was maybe. No, this is actually January twenty, twenty. It's a this is really still like an ongoing thing, like I was in the dead middle of working on everything, even trying to fight through, not having not having my voice and not knowing how I was going to make my next album. It was that was that was another thing. It was. Yeah. There was a lot there's a lot that was happening at one time. But yeah, we um January twenty twenty is when, you know, things kind of finally came to a head and then. You know, he went off to get help and all the rest, the kind of stuff

and, you know, people kind of separated and things like that, so it was like fairly recent.

[00:22:35.050] - Gaelika
So when. When you found out, did you already write "Role Model Part 3" or was it after?

[00:22:42.320] - Kaleb Mitchell
No, I was. Wow. Wait, I'm trying to figure out the. Funny enough, I had to be I had to be in like, no, I know exactly when it was it was Halloween. I was actually at the Def Jam Studio. I was in the studio with my guy, Inzo and Anthony Cruz, and I knew that I was going to continue that series because it was something that I was I was like dealing with the kind of sounds like I wasn't talking about it and wasn't talking about, you know, the family situations and all the rest. And I knew that that series was going to continue and it was going to be, you know, about him and stuff I had to beat, but I hadn't written it yet. And Halloween 2019, we were just over in the studio and we we had this guitar loop and we put drums on it. And I didn't even write it there in front of you because I knew this is going to be something that I had to sit down and kind of and kind of take my time with. And I just told them he sent it to me and name it role model part three. They're like, oh, word. This is not gonna be fun. But then then everything happened. And I kind of I kind of had time to process everything and just sit down and flush out all my ideas. It actually took me actually something like. I think 20 times to record all of those sources, especially the last one, last one, you can actually hear my voice crack a bunch of times and I decided to keep that in there because I felt like it was more authentic, like I didn't want to go back and polish myself and and sound the sound good or sound proper, because it's not it wasn't that kind of song. I felt like it needed the emotion that that that came out naturally. So I just I left it. I left that in there for, you know. Just see, when I make music, it's for me, but I know that, you know, other people are going through the same thing. So I want to be as transparent as possible because I know my story may not be that unique and other people may be going through the same thing. So I just I just felt like I owed it to people, to be honest.

[00:25:16.780] - Gaelika
No, thank you. I mean, you could feel it. You can definitely feel it in a role model. That's crazy, though, because you put all that out there before you're dad officially told you who he was.

[00:25:30.680] - Kaleb Mitchell Yeah.

[00:25:33.140] - Gaelika Wow,

[00:25:34.500] - Kaleb Mitchell
it's been a it's been like an ongoing it's been an ongoing thing for a while, but I just I just in. I didn't have all the details, but you see certain signs and stuff like that, like some old swings and changes in behavior and all the rest, that just there was a lot of just a lot of arguing and yelling from the time I was super young. So it was just it was just something I kind of like had in the back of my mind for a minute.

[00:26:06.780] - Gaelika
And let's talk about you getting sick and yeah, when did this happened and how?

[00:26:15.300] - Kaleb Mitchell
So I think mid twenty nineteen. I started feeling weird. It felt like, I felt like I just had a normal cold so I kind of took like normal like Robitussin and stuff like that. And call drops were around when I realized I was a kid going through cough drops and kept going through medicine is over. And I was like OK,

[00:26:40.800] - Gaelika The Tussin wasn't working.

[00:26:42.240] - Kaleb Mitchell
No, not at all. And then I found myself like in the office actually at Def Jam around that time that they

they wanted to pick up, get it and use it as the season had them. And it was even hard for me to get words out like I was straining and it was a. It was it was starting to the point where it was affecting the recordings, it was affecting how it sounded and, you know, people were starting to ask like, all right, it's been a year since the last album. You know, any plans. I was it was it was missing opportunities like syncs and placements and stuff like that, like people were asking all this people you got, you know, this opportunity. And I would I would work on something and I'd be like, I can't send you this because I sound it sounded nuts. It dropped my voice so low to a point where it was it wasn't even like. It didn't even sound healthy, like it sounded almost scary the way my voice was it then it just started kind of like giving out and I had one last show to do in October 2019. And so this is after a whole bunch, a whole bunch of stuff that happened, you know, just family wise and my friend had passed and all the rest that. Started getting sick. And then I had one last show to do. And for some reason my voice held out the whole time until I did. I always finish my sets with Get It. And then I walked off and that was it. I was like, it was gone, gone. So this is like I had for point of reference. The only things I had done from my album was "Hell and Back". I knew that I was going to drop "Hell and Back" and I was kind of shooting for early twenty twenty. And I was I had hell and back finished and a whole bunch of rough drafts and it was done. I couldn't even speak. It was, it was, it was probably the scariest time of my life because music and recording and just the process of making music, even if it's something that doesn't come out, is something that I've done every day of my life since I was 13. So it it terrified me to think that I might not be able to do this again. So then just you just start going down the rabbit hole of, OK, what do I do if I can't do this? Can I, can I write can I don't know, ghostwriting for people. Can I. I do I have to get a job. Do I have to do it was and then it just you know, you sit home and like just social media, you see, you know, your friends, the people that you work with, like moving and progressing. And all of a sudden you're you're stuck like you're sick. It's a whole bunch going on. Family. You're still grieving your? And it was just it just kind of like compounded and just put me in this place was like, I don't know . I don't know what I'm a do, like, I don't feel like I have a purpose right now and a lot of that fueled. "Dawn", a lot of that fueled a lot of that fueled "Dawn", a lot of that fueled just the entire sequencing of the album, how it goes from dark.The light starts when "Nightfall" ends with "Dawn". And just that that the scripture that I used, like "weeping endures for a night with joy comes in the morning" it. That kind of resonated with me throughout that time because, you know, you hear that you you see that you may have heard that a million times, but nobody ever really tells you how long that night actually is. And it was just a lot it was a lot to deal with. And I think opening up and back to, you know, opening up and being more transparent, that honestly saved my life because I was noy in a good place mentally for a while just because of everything that was going on. And I'm. Yeah, I like by the grace of God my aunt heard, or we told dad pretty much about what was going on, she just happened to have antibiotics and I started taking these antibiotics. And week by week, my voice started getting stronger and stronger. And then I just went on a spree of recording just going from intro. I think by February, like first or second we had finished, "Dawn", and then by the 14th we had shot the album cover.

[00:31:49.610] - Gaelika
OK, so how long was the time span of you not having a voice then?

[00:31:58.040] - Kaleb Mitchell
From not being able to record and making I want to say from June twenty nineteen up into mid January, like before that the entire kind of twenty nineteen from like March is when I started getting sick. So I started feeling it in like March. And then as it progressed you just got to a point where it was just I knew that I couldn't do anything. So I was just literally sitting there writing ideas down the entire second half of twenty nineteen until I started taking the medicine twenty 2020 and started my voice started healing itself and taking the antibiotics and stuff. So. Yeah, from around March-ish to January 2020.

[00:32:51.200] - Gaelika
That's crazy. Did you ever find out what exactly happened?I mean, obviously with some sort of virus if the antibiotics killed it?

[00:33:01.760] - Kaleb Mitchell
I think it started off as like a sinus infection. But because it went untreated as that for so long and I

kept coughing and I kept trying to clear my own throat, it just started damaging my voice like it was it was burning and stuff after a while. And it just like it it wasn't it just wasn't there. And like, I try to sing and I couldn't do that. I try to rap. I tried to talk aggressively like I couldn't at all. And it was you just feel powerless, like because, you know, again, this is something I've been doing every day. Like literally I'd go to go to school, I'd come home three thirty four o'clock, whatever it was, and literally until maybe 2:00 in the morning I'll be working on music and it just this. This is this really is really my life, like I, I put everything into music, like everything that I may not say to somebody else or talk about it, but look, I can talk to the microphone about and it's just it's cathartic. So not being able to do that and having no sort of outlet was kind of like scary, scary for a while.

[00:34:19.190] - Gaelika
You were like Ariel the Little Mermaid. We know that last show before you completely lost your voice like that was gone. And then I made it through like that was God, you know, you can that. But how would you say how does God's presence in your life look like personally outside of the music? But personally, what is his presence look like?

[00:34:55.510] - Kaleb Mitchell Um, in terms of like how I feel or

[00:35:01.030] - Gaelika
yeah, I mean, he's present in your life, how do you recognize his presence, or do you to feel like he's presently there?

[00:35:10.930] - Kaleb Mitchell
No, I do. It's this is something that I've been working on recently. I've been stopping myself. And. I'm trying to work on being a lot more grateful because I feel like as humans, we we may set goals and we may think of, you know, where we should be or where we think we should be in life and. You know, I have to stop myself and realize that I'm not on my own time, on God's time and. In the simplest things, when I catch myself complaining, this is something I've been doing recently, I think since since I started getting sick, I, I would stop myself and I would just look at everything around me like. I'm complaining about not being able to do X, Y, Z when somebody would kill to have a roof over their head right now. Somebody would, you know, kill to have this hot water that I'm just absentmindedly washing dishes with, like, just certain things that I'm. But I've been blessed with that, I'm not that I just take for granted and I just apologize. I'm like, I'm sorry for not realizing just how blessed I am, like despite my circumstances, despite whatever I'm going through, like, I still have breath in my body and I'm still able to make something happen, you know, like that's my philosophy. Pretty much like as long as I'm here, I have a presence of mind of activity in my limbs, like I'm still here, like these. There's still story for me left. So either that that kind of that kind of showed itself a little bit on all on knowing where I was kind of. Just thinking about all the times that I felt like, you know, this story might be over and there's really no hope. It was like, you know, you're you're here, you're breathing. You still have a chance. You saw another sunrise. It's like I feel I feel God in, like, the simple things. It's just I feel like we were kind of kind of try to make it a lot more complicated than it actually is. Um, I can I can I can breathe right now like I'm here. I'm physically here. And it's just just things like that was, you know, I feel close to.

[00:37:45.050] - Gaelika
All right, we're going to move on to a topic or area called the Hot Topic.So what's trending on Twitter and about two trending topics kind of. We'll discuss get away from some of the seriousness we were just discussing. But the first one, Lady Gaga, is trending. I don't know if you heard, but her dog walker was shot four times by thieves last night, who then stole two of the singer's French bulldogs, Coji and Gustov. And she had three of them, the third one escaped. Oh, yeah. So now she has a reward. She's like asking no questions. She just forgot how much the word was like five hundred thousand or something.

[00:38:40.670] - Kaleb Mitchell
humanity is. I mean, see, that's the kind of thing that. See those type of situations and just hearing about people's homes and stuff being broken into and a lot, you just people were in the public eye.

Just it's just this is something that I've I've always been kind of like wary of is just being too accessible and just that that kind of stuff. Just it just makes me paranoid. Like even I'm nowhere near Lady Gaga. But, you know, sometimes I've had situations where I've kind of had to, like, get people away from me, because when people see an opportunity, it's kind of like they don't really see you as a human. It's kind of like it's weird because it's like walking Opportunity. It's just strange.

[00:39:42.810] - Gaelika
Definitely is strange. People are strange. The world is strange. It's like they say for nobody, like we already know as an artist, especially when, you know, as a rapper it's not safe, you know, you know, even just, you know, recent years with Nipsy and Pop Smoke. But dog walkers, like the dog walkers ain't even safe.

[00:40:16.440] - Kaleb Mitchell Shot the dog? For what?

[00:40:19.710] - Gaelika
It had to be in the get a reward for the dog that has been in like they had to know that she would pay anything to get the dogs back. I don't know. Why else would you shoot a dog walker and still a celebrity's dogs?

[00:40:33.690] - Kaleb Mitchell
That's crazy some people are just, you know, just the actions of some people do it. People people are desperate. I mean, it's a wild world to live in.

[00:40:51.550] - Gaelika
Another trending topic is Post Malone. He's released a cover of Hootie and the Blowfish, his 1995 hit, The song Only Want to Be With You. And people are going nuts over loving it. I don't know. I heard about that. I actually have heard that.

[00:41:11.770] - Kaleb Mitchell
I have not heard it once he goes.

[00:41:14.440] - Gaelika
Are you familiar with the hoodie the Hootie song?

[00:41:19.260] - Kaleb Mitchell
I believe I believe so, I believe so, I think I know what's song this is.

[00:41:24.090] - Gaelika
I'm going to play just a snippet for you.

[00:41:28.020] - Kaleb Mitchell
That's man. Post is talented. I got to give it to him.

[00:41:36.780] - Gaelika
I can see why people are excited because the song was a classic and it's Hootie and Post Malone. But it sounds like Post Maolone like I don't know, he just always sounds the same. Um but I mean how important as an artist you think it is to express yourself and experiment with different sounds and, you know, play with something like that?

[00:42:06.360] - Kaleb Mitchell
Oh, for me there's literally been everything. I kind of found myself and my son through experimenting and cover, bring other people's records and things like that. Like I've I've met early career, like I covered John Beltrán records, I've covered Frank Ocean Records, I've covered Drake records of so many different people's songs. And I feel like I found my sound and what works for me and what I feel most comfortable doing just through all of my other influences. And it just saw the kind of you know, you have people who shape your sound, but then it comes to a point where you you figure out your

own path through all of your own influences and stuff. So, I mean, in regards to POWs, I'm happy just far away from the white Ivison days. You know, most of them I just, you know, wasn't rocking with their whole esthetic, you know. Oh, glad he's doing what makes him happy.

[00:43:13.860] - Gaelika
Do you think that you also have to think and consider your audience and whether or not I mean, if you experiment with something totally new that they're not used to you doing, or do you think you should keep them in mind or just create and, you know, use your artistic expression to make what you want to?

[00:43:33.790] - Kaleb Mitchell
Oh, that's something that I actually I actually deal with a lot, because even when even when it comes to, say, rapping and singing, you have people who who might, you know, love you for different reasons. And if you rap a bunch, you know, you might be neglecting a certain section of your audience. And if you sing a bunch, a bunch of people, you bro where the bars at? and this is like it comes to a point where you can't please everyone. So I try to find I try to find a happy middle ground of between me, you know, experimenting and trying things and, you know, knowing what my audience wants and knowing the things that would get them excited and just, you know, trying to find trying to find a clear middle ground through all of that, because it's it's impossible to please everyone at the end of the day. So I just try to I just try to cover all of my bases all the time. Like, I definitely make sure that I definitely sing a bunch of and I definitely try to at least have a couple, you know, more aggressive, like lyrical, heavy records and just just being able to not please everyone but, you know, just make everyone make everyone happy. I guess at the end of the day, just with with progressing with my sound.

[00:44:59.700] - Gaelika
I think you do a really good blend of it. I don't think I've ever been like I wanted to hear more of the and less of that with your stuff. So I'll get into your music so we know that you started playing the piano at the age of five and discovered that you just pick up by sound. And we discussed when I originally talked to you getting into rapping at the age of eight after watching 8 Mile.

[00:45:31.220] - Kaleb Mitchell Yeah.

[00:45:33.260] - Gaelika
When? When did you like heavily for those who aren't really too familiar with your music, like when did you like heavily really start making music and start getting noticed as a rapper? Singer?

[00:45:52.710] - Kaleb Mitchell
So yeah eight years old? That's when I wrote my first rap. Because I saw I saw it myself, I was literally watching the movie, and the funny thing is I'd seen it earlier as a younger kid, but I couldn't really I just, like, appreciate it. By the time I was eight, there was just something about the the rap battle scenes that I don't know, I just kind of like being able to or the idea of being able to, you know, express yourself in and just this like aggressive form of like storytelling. I really enjoyed that. And I kind of that's what I mean. I had already been a fan of rap, but I had no, you know, ideas of trying it for myself. Like, I admire Kanye and the Lupe's and all the rest of that. And I just I enjoyed it as a fan. But then I don't know something about the battle, the battle scenes and just battle battle rap in general. Like I'm still a big battle Rap fan to this day. Also, shout out my brother Th3 Saga, you know, blazing a path, you know, Christian battle rapper and stuff. I just I started taking it seriously when I was. I want to say 13 is when I started working on my first album, and then by 14, I had made my first project, that project is like long, long from the Internet, though I hated it in retrospect. So I took it now. But then soliloquies really were kind of, I guess, cemented like my name is an actual artist. It just, you know, I posted it on the Internet for free and SoundCloud and stuff like that in different publications just picked it up and, and it kinda took off on its own that I wasn't really expecting because this is something I just made of my laptop with no budget and I just put it out for, you know, for free. And from there, that's when things really started getting.

[00:48:01.260] - Gaelika
And how did you connect with Erin Knight?

[00:48:06.320] - Kaleb Mitchell
Actually, a funny story, so I said before that covered, Frank Ocean, this song was a "Strawberry Swing" off of Nostalgia Ultra, I put it out on SoundCloud. And funny enough, Xavier Omar had followed me and heard that. And he reposted on SoundCloud now. And I have no idea who I was. She was following Xavier. I was 16 and she heard me. She heard me sing Strawberry Song. She was like, who is this kid that she went and found 45 and Soliloquy and stuff like that. And she emailed me, I think you would email me or DM'ed me on Twitter, I don't remember what she said it I. I think I have to find these messages. Yes, she contacted us and it was just like, you know, I just want to be able to, like, chop it up into an exercise deal like that. So it turned into us like talking to every Sunday just about music and strategies and things like that. And she had she never like was like, here's this contract let manager you. And it was it was just more like, I just want to be able to kind of grow with you and stuff like that. So we actually officially met the year later when I turned 17, I actually went down to Atlanta. We met and from there it just it just kind of started rapidly progressing like by by. I want to say March, March or April of twenty seventeen, we actually did our first live show together or two shows, we sold out two shows in Toronto and that was that was crazy. That was I was still to this day is a highlight for me because first time getting out the country, first time really like leaving leaving the state and stuff on my own like. Just being. I guess moving around, I guess, is an actual artist and, you know, have emerged with me and all the rest of that kind of stuff like that was my first real experience doing that. So, yeah, we started we started rocking when I was 17.

[00:50:25.270] - Gaelika
So, all right, and and then let's go benchwarmers. Yeah. Can you tell us about Benchwarmers and that's all you.

[00:50:36.760] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. Yeah. Benchwarmers me. So I was this funny. Was actually around the same time I was 17 and I really didn't know. Uh. What I guess my base or my fan, but I don't really like using the word fans is kind of feels weird to me, like the people who support me. You know, Rhianna has the Navy, you know, like there's the Deadheads. You know, there's the there's the different groups of people who kind of live under one banner and something that something that I knew it was going to have to be kind of like sports related just because sports was a big part of my life growing up, like up until the time that I started releasing music, like, seriously with like so help me God being the first commercial effort, like I was basketball and football literally from the time that I was like five. And there was one season. There was one season when, you know, I don't even want to say his name, but shout out to that coach who just had a vendetta against me for whatever reason. And he and it was like it wasn't like I was no or nothing like I was on varsity and stuff. Like he he just would not let me in these games. Like, I'd get in for five minutes and for the rest of the year I'm like, yo, what's the issue like he just buys me all the time for whatever reason. I don't know why he like me, but I kind of sat back and thought like, all right, I know that I'm capable. I know that I'm equipped to be in this game. But, you know, it just takes that one opportunity for them to let me off the leash and be able to do it and do what I have to do and show my full ability. Libo. I'm going to call us, this is going to be benchwarmers, this is this is going to be benchwarmers and I kind of just ran with that. And it's just it kind of it turned into multiple different facets, like I've Benchwarmers publishing now. So every time I write a song that was in the Benchwarmers Publishing Benchwarmers LLC which is like the actual, I guess, label or whatever. For me it yeah, it kind of just took a life of its own. And like even still to this day, I'll see kids like put benchwarmers in their Bible and things like that. And it's just it's kind of it's a beautiful thing to see, like just a concept that I have just turned into something physical. So yeah, that's that's what the entire idea came from.

[00:53:12.090] - Gaelika
All right. And let's talk about. So Help Me God 2, you had a movie and an album. Yeah. Now, I was fortunate I didn't get to see the movie, so that was a really cool experience. For the rest of the world, how and when will they be able to see the movie?

[00:53:37.770] - Kaleb Mitchell
February twenty seventh. If you hit the link in my bio on everything right now or my pen tweet on Twitter, Iink in my Instagram bio, there's a link that sends you to Eventbrite and you can choose between the different tiers and you're going to either just pay five dollars and just see the actual movie or you can, you know, pay a little bit more. There's a merch bundle that comes with it. There's a call afterwards where you talk to me about it and everything. Yeah, we're releasing it one night only like a digital premiere. And we're working on some other things, too, that we you still can't really talk about. But we're you know, we're just. We're I'm I'm really excited about this. It was it was really a this is nuts because it's kind of a spur of the moment thing that my manager popped up on me. I had no idea that she was, like, dead set about. He was like, we should make a movie. Okay. Like, this sounds cool. Not like like. Right. The treatment. I was like, oh, like right now is he's like, yeah, OK. So then by the time I was literally moving I was moving in. I think I wrote the entire treatment of for him before I had to get up and like move the last pieces of furniture out house and. It worked like I just chronicled, like different events in my life, and it just a shot out the you shut out the branding shout outs, you know, forwent three creators, Preston, for just the crazy cinematography. So that's Amir who played younger. Me, she. Oh, my God. Like it was it was it was I was in the room, like in the certain scenes like where he's he's in the room writing and stuff like I'm in the corner off screen, like almost trying to hold back tears because this is actually stuff that I did as a kid. And it was and it was amazing. It was a it was an incredible experience, just making that.

[00:55:45.740] - Gaelika
And so the album, what about the let's talk about the production one? Yeah, it is so sick. I know. I think you mentioned Anthony Cruz. Yeah. Was there other producers on the project?

[00:56:04.550] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yes. There's a bunch of producers. Let me see if I can name them all. Anthony Cruz would really like took the helm of everything Anthony Cruz, who goes by 1995, Kilowatts. Enzo Grand, Dillon Graham, who did "fool" and "Proud", Obed Obade, who did guitar on a bunch of different songs from Dopeboy's, who actually co-produced on "fool" Pellom Junior, who also co-produced Lungful, Kyle Steinberger, who did "Ballan." And. And he did "Hell and back" with me. It was it was really like all of my friends that, you know, we may have worked on even different projects together. We all kind of came together and worked on stuff for this. And it was it was a process. It was like it was it was during the time I was still trying to navigate, you know, not having a voice and stuff like that. So I'm like, yo, can you just send me the most, like, off the wall, like, weird stuff that I would never send anybody else. And that's kind of how we got "Numb". "NUMb" came from two different demos and it was just like, I don't know why, but I hear these two being together and they fit. And I'm going to tell the story about, you know, X, Y, Z, and I'm going to piece it together with these different sound effects. And then I put a first half of this song and another demo together, and I was like, this has to stay this way. It just it was just a process of just finding different things that we wouldn't do otherwise. Even "Dawn", we kind of stumbled upon by accident. I was sitting in my friend's those basement and he just plays me this like guitar loop. And he was like, I have no idea what I to do this. I was like, yo, something about it just like jumped out at me and I was like, yo, send me that and I'm going to work on it. He said it to me and it was just a moment of of like. Pure creation and not even thinking about I didn't even write anything for Don, it just it just just the the the instrumentation kind of just spoke to me and I kind of I kind of knew that this was it wasn't going to be a. I mean.And where it's going to be like really repetitive and stuff.

[00:58:46.810] - Gaelika
I lost you for a second. So I didn't get anything after all you're talking about, "Dawn," and you were saying I knew it wasn't going to be ending.

[00:58:56.150] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah, I knew it wasn't going to be like super Lyric heavy. I knew it was going to be something where it was I was going to, like, repeat the same phrase a bunch of times. I just didn't know what I was going to say. And, you know, that was the time where I was I was I mean, I talked about before, I was just, you know, feeling like I don't have a purpose or, you know, maybe feeling depressed and just going through a whole bunch of different stuff and. I kind of feel like. That scripture was kind of God telling me, like, I'm not done with you yet, like weeping into us for a night, but Joy comes in the morning, like,

long as you're still here, I still have a plan for you. So I just I just kind of went in and just stood in different I stood my ground up and stood in different sections of the room and kind of like made a one man quiet and just that my voice on top of each other. Then I got my friend Aaron Cole to, you know, to do like like I just was like, yo, lead the choir like like like you just have a solo or just go crazy. And he just shows his different pockets and stuff like that. And just just this entire process was just it was just so much more involved with other people. Like usually I'm kind of like self-contained, like even if I get production from other people, it's kind of like me taking it and just going back and and just working on it by myself. But this time I actually went different places and this first time I actually travel to other studios because I record by myself usually. But this time this time I actually went and sat and went to Anthony's house and Angela's house went like, this is how we're going to do the master. Let's listen to a bunch of times, make different versions. So it was a lot more involved this time now.

[01:00:43.720] - Gaelika
And I was curious about your role as far as in the production, knowing how musically you are like how. How much input you had? But it sounds like you kind of were orchestrating it all?

[01:00:59.260] - Kaleb Mitchell
Oh yes. Some of the songs I even I did by myself, like "Smile", I produced the second half of "Hell and Back" that kind of tribal, tribal kind of like B portion that came from a completely other different song that I was trying to work on. And I don't know, it just felt like I needed. I like having changes of pace in records. This is something I've been doing on different projects. I have two halves of a song stitched together and I feel like hell and back kind of needed, even though nightfall is technically the intro hell and back is really the introduction to everything about the project. And I just wanted like a grand moment. So that beat that was entirely produced by me, that second half. And I knew it was going to be it was going to be right at the end of that. And I just kind of I just took it from another song and I just tried something that I placed. In the end. It actually fit perfectly that I worked on. I worked with the ones that while Ive co produced I co-produced on so many different records, like I try to not I try not to like mess with other stuff, but it just comes to a point where I'll do something weird in the way I record and I have to like adapt to how I sound. So it literally does so many different records where I'll take the drums out and I put my own drums or I'll do this and I'll get somebody else to play guitar or something. That's so I'm like heavily involved in the production process.

[01:02:39.040] - Gaelika
I see, I mean, I love the way that you just have the whole album flows and and even like how you said what you did with "hell and back" how just the beats, which is and it just gets that grittier, you know, it comes out of the Heavenly Father and the and the beats, which is again supervening and then plays again into the Heavenly Father and then transitions that sound like all of that. And but that's like how I grew up on music. So it's it's rare these days for newer artists to make music like that. They're so focused on the singles. I just having a song on a playlist. But the beauty of this project is the entire it's in in its entirety like the songs are now. But when you listen to it in its entirety, from start to finish, now everything flows. It's a totally different vibe.

[01:03:36.140] - Kaleb Mitchell
That's definitely something that I pride myself on. I feel like, I don't know, like everyone around me always makes a joke that I'm like secretly 40 years old just because it just goes on like they always are mad, old. And I'm like, I mean, I guess it's just I grew up with a lot of stuff that was before my time. Like, it's is I just I appreciate a lot of things that are kind of like before my era, like after after "Jesus Walks" I honestly wasn't like so much so into the newer hip hop. Like I can say right now. Fugees like The Score was the first album that I sat and listened to. And there's so many different things that bleed into other tracks in the interludes being just completely different stories and others. And it's just like that fascinated me as a kid. So it was it was only right that I kind of adapted that because I feel like today is like that's also something I kind of I kind of beast with just with, you know, just people with labels and stuff like that because they're they're so hyper focused on, OK, what's the single, what's the single. And if you think about it like we put no metal as a single and that's not supposed to work as a song because two different song. But he did for some reason. And it's just for me it's just about the art. Like, I just I just like being able to have like a cohesive, you know, body of art. I want I

want this to be an experience every time somebody listens to an album. But I also want, you know, people to be able to pick their favorite songs like we can. You can take "bust down" out of the lineup and it'll be it'll still stand on its own. Like you put in a random playlist somewhere. Like I try to I try to meld like those worlds and bring them together. Just, you know, having something that's an overarching storyline, but then also having these records to be able to stand by themselves.

[01:05:47.680] - Gaelika
Well you did it. What about the. Decision to make the album parental advisory.

[01:05:57.460] - Kaleb Mitchell
Honestly, it just became it was honestly wasn't even like a thought to me.It just it just happened when especially when I was writing records like "role model" and stuff like that, like, I don't know, I just felt like. Some of it, especially those those deeper records, some of it had to be. The way it was, and I felt as if I'd be I feel like I'll be pulling a punch if I went back and try to, like, change it or or censor it, because I felt like in throughout the entire project, I try to do things from the standpoint of just like complete honest storytelling, like you're never going to you're never going to get me on a song you hear me talking about Lean In. And I was like, just stuff that I'm not about, but I'm going to be 100 percent honest about who I am. And this project, I feel like, is the most accurate depiction so far of who I am now as an artist and just know growing and getting older and just being a lot more forthcoming with information about me. And it's just just more expression, more expression, like I feel like before it was it was good music, like there's was good music I made I felt like maybe a lot more people don't know why I'm on a deeper level. So I felt like it was just it wouldn't make sense for me to write something out of, you know, just needing catharsis and then just going back and trying to pull punches and things like that. So I just I left it the way it is.

[01:07:37.410]
Yeah. Makes sense. And just on a side note, I want to say thank you for the John Gives rap feature.

[01:07:54.240] - Kaleb Mitchell
That's still exciting to me because I don't know. I've been trying to get on a record since I was like 15. I had this song off of this album, Soliloquy and "focused." I left this second half open and I was like, I really want to give this. And he's been following me since back then. So I was like, dang, maybe if I just shoot, like, I might be able to get away. So it was a it was a it's almost like a full circle moment. There's a lot of full circle moments on this album, like even Xavier getting on it. It's just like he's the reason I found my manager and just this whole full circle thing of now he's finally on my album and he's just, I don't know, just everything just kind of fell into place this time. And it was it was it was an amazing experience just putting this thing together.

[01:08:50.530] - Gaelika
That's awesome. And and then OK, because this has just been bugging me with the John Gives song. What is that sample? There's a simple

[01:09:00.310] - Kaleb Mitchell
I literally wrote it down, Hold on I wrote it down.

[01:09:05.260] - Gaelika
It keeps bugging me, I'm like, I know this. It feels like 90s I what is the song?

[01:09:13.300] - Kaleb Mitchell
So what we took you from was the original. It's called Petite Flair by Chris Barber's band, Chris Barber's jazz band. It was put out in 1959, but I'm pretty sure Diddy had used it in something like it.

[01:09:30.560] - Gaelika
That sounds like Bad Boy. Like I know. Yeah.

[01:09:33.650] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. Diddy had used it in something but we took it from me from the original site.

[01:09:39.010] - Gaelika
What was the guy's name again.

[01:09:40.690] - Kaleb Mitchell The Chris Barbours Jazz Band.

[01:09:45.010] - Gaelika
oK, yeah. Well yeah with that feature and then John Givez was just like what's this song.

[01:09:52.840] - Kaleb Mitchell
OK, that was actually his first reference in a while. Like I kind of convinced him I was like for I know you're R&B thing bro. I kind of need to rap bro.

[01:10:02.120] - Gaelika
That's why I specifically said his rap feature. I had been seen for a while. You know, John Givez will be featured and then I'll check it out. And it's either him on the hook or him doing background vocals. I'm like, really? So. Let's. The album, OK, we finished the album, I think we covered a lot in there. It's amazing that the work is amazing and hard in the movie. You even use that song for John Givez.I remember that in a way. I don't know. It was just it was amazing.

[01:10:45.940] - Gaelika Thank you so much.

[01:10:47.530]
Let's talk about this Def Jam Connect, what's going on with Def Jam and then taking the get it anthem and it being for the Jets, what's all of it.

[01:10:58.270] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah. So it was it was actually a while. It was is a wild situation. There was a shout out to Jason Jason Peerless A&R at Def Jam. He found my music and he was he was a fan of the music and he was like, yo, I just want to talk to me. You know, maybe you can go into all of this X, Y, Z. So I actually brought Erin up to we met and they were like, yeah, Paul Rosenberg wants to meet with you or whatever.

[01:11:33.460] - Gaelika
And you said, what brought Aaron Cole, Aaron who came out?

[01:11:36.610] - Kaleb Mitchell No Erin Knight.

[01:11:38.050] - Gaelika
You to get to meet Paul Rosenberg. What? OK, continue.

[01:11:43.600] - Kaleb Mitchell
So, yeah. So me being the kid who literally started because of 8 Mile, I'm like, oh, like the guy on the skits on his albums like oh yeah. I walk into the office and start to make things worse. This dude is like six six. So he's mad, intimidating like yo like this is nuts. He's like, hey, I'm Paul. I'm like, dude, I know this is this is nuts. So yeah, they brought us in, we were just talking and stuff like that and they had actually sent it to like I guess the media department or whatever the judge, because they were looking for an anthem for the for the 2019 2020 season and. Apparently, somebody in the Jets office was already a fan of mine and they were like, oh,that's Kaleb, like he yeah, I know this kid, but he's super dope. So they had someone who was already vouching for us and I had no idea who it was. So it was almost like this, like just divine being kind of like just fell into place. And then they, you know, presented us with a single deal and stuff like that. And to be able to use the record and things just happened super fast after that. They just they put the record out again. We released it and the whole, you know, like hyped video and commercial playing with him every single time that they played at the

stadium. The song would come on as they came out the tunnel. And it was yeah, it was just nuts. And we were able to get, you know, Casanovva and stuff on the remix. And it was just nuts. It was super cool experience, you know, being being on the inside and seeing just how No Labels work and stuff like that.

[01:13:47.520] - Gaelika
That's super dope. Alright. is there anything else we should know, anything we should be looking forward to in the future?

[01:13:57.090] - Kaleb Mitchell
Oh, I don't want to, I don't know, ruin anything. I don't want any surprises. But, yeah, I'm back. I'm not finished. Oh, definitely not for me. So. We will be back soon. That's all I got to say.

[01:14:14.880] - Gaelika
And how does God's presence look like in your life musically? Meeting Paul Rosenburg

[01:14:30.820] - Kaleb Mitchell
I feel like honestly, situations like that, like just things I feel like the way things came together, especially through the hardships of trying to create this album, just how easy things came. Came to us like this as a group like the group, they created the project, just just certain things that just wouldn't have happened, like it just wasn't happenstance that these things happen. Like example my friend Kevin Hackett, who did the art is from Vancouver and. He just happens to have a flight layover in New York near my house. On for like a day, and we're able to finally, after years of working remotely, he's finally able to actually shoot my album cover himself. Just things like that happening. Just it's just like, all right, this can't be a coincidence like this. I don't have a voice. And we're still making this album like this. This can't be a coincidence. So I definitely, you know, just feel him in the things where I just I just go and I trust them, mean, you know, things things actually come together.

[01:15:51.610] - Gaelika
And my final question, now that you actually done two interviews with me, what would you like to see me? And whose testimony would you like to hear?

[01:16:07.670] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yes. I said, that's a good question. I know. Let me talk to Aaron

[01:16:23.720] - Gaelika Aaron Cole.

[01:16:24.750] - Kaleb Mitchell
Yeah, yeah, I actually just started blowing towards the end of the year, so that's available. OK, ok, OK.

[01:16:34.250] - Kaleb Mitchell
Because I just thought the story is pretty interesting because you started even younger than I did.

[01:16:39.170] - Gaelika
So it is, that was an hour and a half interview right there. It was fun on.

[01:16:49.600] - Kaleb Mitchell
Would you do would you do an interview with someone who isn't an artist?

[01:16:56.470] - Gaelika
depending like I would love to talk to Erin Knight..

[01:16:59.930] - Kaleb Mitchell
I was just about to say that I was just about to say that because I feel like she has lost a lot of a lot of knowledge to share in a lot of, you know, just a lot of personal experiences that she can can from. And which would be an incredible interview, in my opinion.

[01:17:14.560] - Gaelika
Yeah, no, I definitely would be down to do something like that. So or yeah, that's a good recommendation. And hopefully we can make that happen, especially if she watches this.

[01:17:28.430] - Kaleb Mitchell
I'm sure she's going to see every single second of this.

[01:17:33.490] - Gaelika
Awesome. Well, I definitely appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.

[01:17:38.290] - Kaleb Mitchell
Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.

[01:17:40.270]
Yeah. Looking forward to hearing more music from you.

[01:17:43.180] - Kaleb Mitchell Most definitely.

[01:17:49.960] - Gaelika
Hey, what's up? Thank you. Thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for watching the show, however you consumers. Thank you. Please subscribe to the show and if you really enjoy the content, please leave a review. It really does help with the ranking of the show. And if you want to go an extra mile, share the show, share this episode. And for all things, testimony, visit testimonystories.Com until next time. I'm Gaelika Brown, the music lover, constantly seeking positive music.

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