Interview: Brent Butler is a genre-bending misfit

Frank Sinatra famously crooned, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” He was speaking, of course, about the star-cast cityscape of New York City in his 1977 tune, aptly-titled “New York, New York.” The swingin’ jazz number was conceived by Fred Ebb and composer John Kander for Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York, embodying the grandeur and magic of the City That Never Sleeps. A big band sound melts under the command of Sinatra’s caramel vocal, and it elicits the twinkling ambiance of old Hollywood with effervescent strokes. Even if the city might have lost some of its sparkle over the past 40 years, crumbling under the influx of dream-chasers and sprightly other noise-makers, there is still a magnetism that hums through the streets, over the train tracks and onto the skin of millions just trying to make a decent go at it.

That kind of hustle is what drives Brent Butler, too. He’s a genre-bender in every sense of the word, mingling hip-hop, alternative rock and juicy pop-punk bite into an addictive mix. Out of Camden, New Jersey, a two hour drive away from the city, on a good day, he strikes without fear. In his best T.I. impression, he recites a lyric from “No Matter What” to propel him ever forward: “If ya heart filled with faith / Then ya can’t fear.” That fearlessness is born out of never apologizing, never giving in and acknowledging his weakness as much as his remarkable strengths. With his latest EP, called Lilac, Butler goes for broke, shattering expectations at every turn ⏤ from the colossal range of “Ready or Not” to the Crimdella-starring “Vybrent” to the perfectly-chilled “In the Desert,” featuring the irresistible Lauren Renaham.

He’s certainly found his identity, and he pounds his chest while howling to the moon, metaphorically speak, of course. “I hope people find [this EP] extremely honest and relatable. It’s ‘for the people’ in that it wasn’t crafted with some market goal or tailored to appeal to all the mainstream outlets. The EP is just me being me and captures a period in my life full of learning and self destruction and growth and love and heartbreak and confusion,” he tells B-Sides & Badlands over email.

Relentless, feverish and splashy, Lilac serves as Butler’s solo debut and the appropriate follow-up to 2015’s The Cold Press, a collaborative effort with rapper Deascent. While that project certainly showcased his abilities with instrumentation and hammering down sticky, glitter-drenched vibes, it wasn’t until now that he was able to live and feel free inside his own well-crafted, tight-bound beats. While on a co-headlining tour, he set about flexing his muscles with various sonic templates and learning such software music sequencers as Abelton. The (creative) flood gates opened and by early 2017, he was ready to step back into the recording studio. That’s when the thick, stacked quake of “Ready or Not,” which opens Lilac with a couple gallons of high-octane fuel, hit him over the head. “The title of that song was fitting…whether or not I was ready didn’t matter. I had something that needed to come out,” he says.

Lilac explodes outward from there. “Watching Me Closely” smokes in a classic rock kind of way, while Deascent’s breakdowns snaps back and forth on closer, “Idny.” In all, the project lays the foundation for what can be described as one impressive debut. Below, Butler discusses his musical dynamics, feeling the weight of the current presidential administration and learning to soldier tough times.

Does the musical hybrid of punk, hip-hop and rock come pretty easily to you?

It’s definitely not something that I “try” to do. My life in music started with punk, playing drums at 13, wanting to be Tre Cool or Erik Sandin. Rap and hip-hop was always around me, but it wasn’t something I actively pursued until later in life when I moved to NYC, leaving my hometown band behind and starting over. Without a band, rap became my main lyrical outlet. Later on, I met Deascent while performing live as just a rapper, and he encouraged me to bring my live instrumentation back into the frame. For me, that inevitably has a punk edge.

You deal in heavy arena-sized melodies throughout much of the EP. You set that precedent from the outset with opener “Ready or Not.” Was that something you wanted to deliver when this process first began? Or was that a discovery along the way?

I can definitely say I knew from day one that I wanted this body of work to be more melodic and vocal-rich in texture than ‘The Cold Press.’ I don’t know that I necessarily intended from the start to go big and anthemic with the hooks, but Craig Levy, the engineer, definitely encouraged me to cease those moments on records where the energy is massive, and the production can carry that.

“Vybrent” has some of the best lyrics of the bunch, especially with this line: “Decades without change / That’s why I hate the phrase ‘let bygones be bygones’ / Nah, let pythons be pythons.” What was on your mind when you wrote this song?

“Vybrent” was really meant to be about celebrating summer, feeling good about yourself and dreaming big. That said, summer of 2017 (when I wrote the song) was the first under our current administration, which I find thoroughly repulsive and morally reprehensible. I didn’t want to call out specific current events that would date the record or alienate listeners, but, in general, there was a definite feeling of “this isn’t acceptable.” Overall, I think the tone remains optimistic with the message that you have the ability to shape reality in positive ways.

What did Crimdella bring to the song for you?

Crimdella is an amazingly-talented lyricist and great friend. When the structure of the record took form and I realized it was going to be rap-centric, with nothing but the samples for the “hook,” I felt like it could use another voice and flow to flesh it out. Craig thought of Crimdella when I said I wanted a feature, and it worked out perfectly. He came in and killed it, one take.

Then, “Watching Me Closely” seemingly comes out of nowhere for a pretty intimate and powerful moment. How did this song come to be? What was haunting you?

Yeah, it’s a major juxtaposition having “Watching Me Closely” on the same EP as “Vybrent,” but both speak enormous truths for me as two points you can land on in the emotional spectrum within a single day. And hopefully “Selective Memory” in between bridges the gap, sonically, and as a moment on the EP where themes of guilt and self-doubt surface. This song is sort of a confessional for me, having been in a number of relationships where I loved somebody but wasn’t in love with them anymore, maybe from being too caught up with myself, or I felt trapped, or bored. It’s the heavy guilt of ambivalence and/or cowardly indecisiveness. You don’t care if you break up, but you’re terrified of hurting the other person, so you hope that they will choose to end it for you, and then feel guilty for all of those thoughts.

Did you learn to forgive yourself from all the promises you broke?

Recently, I’ve been learning to allow myself to like myself. I think making ‘Lilac’ and also experiencing people’s reaction and connection to it has helped me tremendously in that area.

The production on “In the Desert” feels like ice digging into the skin. What choices led you there?

The soundscape of “In the Desert” is definitely harsh and a bit bleak with some atmospheric vibes and huge reverb. That all goes to serve the subject matter of the song. On one level, it’s about being alone in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a backpack, surviving in harsh conditions. On another, it’s about redemption and seeking spiritual fulfillment. Although ‘Lilac’ isn’t a rock-opera style narrative like ‘The Cold Press,’ I definitely appreciate albums that acknowledge some sense of character development. Here we have the sobering “Watching Me Closely” followed by “In the Desert,” which I might characterize as struggling through the withdrawal and piecing things back together.

“Never Give Up” contains some of your best lyric spitting. “These hard times are here to remind me to never give up,” rings the hook. How did you come to learn this lesson in your life?

I’ve found the toughest and most painful times in my life have been antecedent to super dope times. I can recall being homeless and jobless in NYC, couch surfing and ready to throw in the towel ⏤ or years later being cheated on by a girlfriend and wildly depressed. Each of those times made me stronger and more conscious. It would be dark for a while, and then brighter than it’s ever been. So, now when I’m in one of those rough chapters, I tell myself to keep pushing because good things are ahead. This record, going off the analogy in my last answer, is where you’ve made it through the withdrawal and are ready to conquer.

Deascent lays down some sick lyrics on the closer, “Idny,” which almost has a film noir-ish glow with the guitar. What’s the backstory here?

Deascent is the best, and I worship his skills and am honored to have made so much music and gone so many places together. “Idny” is an outlier on ‘Lilac’ because it’s the one song written well before everything else on the EP (which otherwise would have ended with “Never Give Up”). Near the end of the recording sessions for ‘The Cold Press’ in 2015, I remembered a guitar riff I had come up with but had never used (which was actually while playing in a Latin rock group with the aforementioned cheating girlfriend… long story).

It was too late in the game to fit the song on our EP, but once I showed Deascent what I had in mind for it, he wrote his bars in a blink. We started doing the song live, and it became a fan favorite, people often chanting the refrain with us, applying to their exes, maybe their job, their debt, their guilt, whatever is weighing them down. Once I was in the studio for [this EP], it seemed about damn time the song had a proper recording. We actually got a bunch of the musicians that toured with us in ‘The Cold Press’ band to play on the recording and give it a live band feel.

What things from your previous work in fronting rock bands did you take into this solo debut?

Making this EP, producing beats from scratch, featuring other musicians, etc., brought me back to the feeling of writing in bands. Every musical idea has infinite directions it can go, which is incredibly liberating for a lyricist to have that control and flexibility. Also, when structuring tracks and organizing sounds, I feel I draw a lot from my experience in bands. I have to think rise and fall of energy; being conscious of how powerful certain elements can be when combined, but also how powerful silence and space can be to let something else shine.

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