RUE’s EP is a Chill Reminder to Find Your Inner Child
Rue’s music style can’t really be described by any particular genre. It’s somewhere between R&B, rap, and even freestyle spoken word. Whatever it’s not, we can tell you it’s honest, and comes from the rawest place of emotion.
Art can sometimes exist as an escape for people, and whether they choose to share that with the world, it’s the thing that makes us relate to each other. For Rue, “RED” was a secret project that she kept from even her closest friends.
“I felt like this project was sort of my first thing I ever did that was completely and authentically myself. I didn’t even really tell anyone I was making a record,” she said.
For someone who claims to be terrible at expressing her emotions, this was the project that allowed her to do just that — to strip it all away and arrive at a place of pure simplicity. With the cover art featuring a photo of Rue in Nicaragua, where she grew up, it took a friend noticing the possible metaphor behind it.
“That picture is me in my absolute purest form,” Rue said. “I feel a big part of adulthood is going back to who you were as a child and finding yourself after years of people trying to tell you who you are. That picture is me as a child in adult form. I was lucky that a friend of mine was [saw] that picture in my room and point it out to me.”
The EP features four stellar tracks with dusty drums and Rue’s poetic and often hypnotizing freestyle vocals gliding overtop. It’s truly a collection of songs that gives both chill vibes and can serve well for the soundtrack to any sort of pensive/intellectual rainy day you may have on the calendar.
Take a listen here, and then check out Rue’s Q&A below.
https://soundcloud.com/rue7/sets/redep
What was the inspiration behind this EP?
This EP was inspired mainly by my own metamorphosis from girl to woman. I think I was just trying to make sense of the world around around me. I’m very much in my head and internalize everything, and these songs are a product of my feelings making themselves known without me even really knowing what was happening. I would start writing the songs with something else in mind, but something in me would just take over and make it something else. It felt a lot like an out of body experience. It was everything I wished I could say but never felt like I could — whether it was being in love or feeling like I never was enough. My pride died repeatedly while making this project.
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Why did you choose to call the EP Red?
To me, Red is the color of rebirth and passion, both of which were the cornerstone of me making this record. This is the first project I ever made and I made the whole thing in a month, in the midst of which everything I thought I needed to be happy fell away. I had nothing and yet I had everything. On top of that everywhere I went I just saw the color red in everything, it was like a sign.
Which of the songs is your favorite and why?
Guardian. It’s the most raw.. I wrote the first part and then just free styled the rest in the studio. I think we did the whole thing in like two takes. I cried afterwards because I didn’t even know how deeply the situation surrounding that song was affecting me until I let it out.
Out of the four songs, which one has your favorite lyric and why?
Edelweiss. There’s a line that says “I’ve got no interest in emotional hell, too busy drowning in my figurative wealth.” Edelweiss is a song about shedding your past self and all of the things people have told you that you are and should be. The things make you become a shell of what you really are; you become numb to who you are because you’re living a fake life to fit into what’s around you. Your emotions are dumbed down, your dreams are dumbed down, your essence is dumbed down —all because people can’t understand it so they try to break you and box you in. That’s that line. You can’t feel anything because you’re too busy drowning in your fake reality — people have everything and yet they have nothing.
How do you hope that people will relate to your music? What message do you hope they’ll take away?
The most important message [is] to not run away from yourself and everything that you are. I’ve said it before, but pain is a huge part of what inspires me — it’s such a huge part of what shapes us; what we experience and how we grow from it. People keep trying to hide it, but I feel like that’s what creates such a massive misunderstanding between people. I would just hope that people can feel themselves when they listen to my music, that it helps them in some way to understand that we’re all in pain, we’re all trying to get through this thing called life, and that’s perfectly okay. They don’t need to hide — I would know, because I’ve spent a lot of my life hiding.
What would you say your music is the perfect situation for? Chillin’ with friends? Getting ready to go out? Hanging with your significant other?
I think my music good for a variety of situations, but I think it’s what you turn up at full volume in your car or your house to just get into yourself… just to feel, not to think. It definitely needs to be at full volume though.
What are your plans next?
I’m already working on the next project. I’ll be at SXSW, and am working on the video for Bleach, among other things.
For More on Rue
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