Jamahl Edwards, better known under the moniker Small, is a musician, graphic designer, and photographer from Oakland, California. He released his debut single “SMALL world” in September of 2020 (You can read my review of the single here). Since then, Small has continuously released music over the past nine months. On Valentine’s Day of this year, Small came out with their first album entitled Please Cry 4 Me. It is on Please Cry 4 Me where Small truly introduces the many faucets of their artistry to the audience. An emotional, introspective and genre bending project, Please Cry 4 Me is only the start for what Small wants to do with his music. I had the pleasure to have a conversation with Small about the what and the why behind their artistry.

Kaila Cherry, StereoVision (KC) : Tell us a bit about yourself.

SMALL: My name is Jamahl. I would also like to say that my pronouns are he/they. I’ve been moving in this direction for a while, but I’m ready to solidify this for myself and be more comfortable in understanding my existence as a Black person to be not identified within these white hetreonormative ideas of expression. As I move through this world and try to do these performances of gender, I have tried to move away from the performance of male. Our perceptions of gender roles are fundamentally engrained in white supremacy. The reason why I started there is because I feel like that truly explains me as a person. The first thing I like to say to people that really hits home the point is “I’m a former imperial export turned current colonized subject.” This explains both the conditions of my existence and the context of my art. Because, y’know, art is all about existing and people perceiving existence and expressing existence.

KC: You have previously dabbled in photography, filmmaking, and graphic design. What inspired you to focus on music as your primary art form?

SMALL: The way I want to answer that is to first talk about my influences because they are the reason I got into music. I am a Kanye stan at heart. His influence on my music is outstanding. Growing up listening to Kanye, it’s not just music, it’s like time periods. That’s how strong of an emotional connection I feel to his music.

Another artist who I think is the reason I make music is of course Earl Sweatshirt. I get compared to him all the time. At first a part of me was like “I’m not Earl Sweatshirt, I’m different, I’m Small!” But also it’s like, Earl Sweatshirt is tight as fuck bro, I love it. If you’re applying the same lens you’re using when you listen to Earl as when you listen to me, that’s exactly why I make music. There’s also MF Doom, James Blake, and Justin Vernon from Bon Iver.

I make music because it’s one of those feelings where you hear a song and think, “Fuck, I gotta make something like that!” or you see something and think, “Fuck, I gotta make something like that!” As you mentioned earlier, I’m a person who tries to do a little bit of everything. Or a lot of everything, I don’t feel as if I do a little, I feel like I do a lot. They’ll be niggas who don’t even know I make music that’ll approach me with the graphic design tip and I haven’t designed a poster or anything in over a year. Or they’ll be niggas who only know me from photography. It’s very funny the different worlds I build within whatever medium I’m working in.

I think I’ve worked in so many different mediums because there are so many ways to tell a story. And one day I was like, “Man, I gotta make some music.” I’ve been playing music for a long time, but of course playing and making music are two different things. I took guitar and piano lessons when I was a kid but I always hated it. I felt like a nerd and was like “I’m off this!” when I was like 12. But music has always been a part of my life. I’ve always been engaging with it in a sense.

KC: One thing that I noticed while listening to your music is all the ways in which you manipulate your vocals. On some songs, your voice is heavily layered and distorted almost to the point where you can barely hear what you’re saying, like a depressed Playboi Carti. Then there are tracks that are extremely melodic with a pitched up, almost cartoony sound. What inspires you to use voice modulation throughout your work?

SMALL: When I’m vulnerable but I want a sort of shield around me, that’s when I bring in my layers, my modulation, my distortion. Yeah, I’m vulnerable, but there are so many me’s within these layers. There’s power in numbers. It feels like something I have to do, in terms of the modulation. I also think about Tyler and how he modulates his voice for different projects. I remember as a kid reading r/tyler/golfwang and being like “Oh my god! That’s what that means?” and being blown away by the amount of storytelling that pitching a voice can do.

When I pitch up my voice, it takes on its own character and that’s what that means for me. It’s more than just pitching my voice, too. It’s how I say certain things, the tone I have when I rap on certain songs. Different stories are going to be told in different ways. I want people to feel more connected and I want to be more vulnerable, so I utilize different tools to reach that goal.

KC: I admire how your music morphs over time to express different emotions and experiences. What do you mainly want to express through your music? What messages do you want people to take away from your work?

SMALL: My music is my Notes app. It’s like a time capsule, a memento. It’s an expression of “Here’s what I’m on right now.” My music is a part of me, it’s my world. And that’s what it is. I’m building a universe.

An artist I’d like to shout out is Anna Kamp, also known as August Kamp (@guskamp). She is a musician who has helped me and been there with me through my growth process as an artist. We make music together in a band called Nor There. We approach music like an anthology. She used the word first. It’s an MCU but for songs. My favorite thing for artists to do is to easter egg drop a reference to an older track or project. It reminds me of the days when I used to look things up on random Reddit threads or read Genius lyrics to “get it.” I want to build something immersive like that. I want to build a universe of Small.

KC: Let’s talk about what you’re working on now. You have a single coming out on July 2nd. Tell me a bit about that.

SMALL: The single is called “Past Me (Keep My Notes).” I’m working on this album with a lot of people. There are about ten artists working on this project with me in terms of production, being a featured artist, or even just their voice being on the album. But for the most part, this album and “Past Me” was an accident. I recently got access to a good piano to record music on and I was just fucking around on it until eventually, I was like “Damn, I should get people to sing on this.” So I invited my friends over to record and sent them tracks to lay vocals on until I had so many songs that I thought “This is a project. These songs are so good, I can’t just sit on these!” The tracks clearly had a story to them.

The process of putting this album together has allowed me to feel more comfortable as a musician. I’m trying to prove myself as a musician as a whole using different tools in music to make a song. This is the first project where the majority of the songs are just my production and instrumentation, just my musicianship.

The way I think about it is like this: Please Cry 4 Me is me presenting to you my world in a sense of “Hey, this my first project, and this a world that I’m building.” And there are rough patches, and of course that album isn’t as refined as my next one, but it’s still my world. It’s still my presentation of me to you. With my next project, I’m showing you the first celestial object within the universe that the world resides in. But there is so much more to explore.

With “Past Me,” first known as “Keep My Notes,” it’s a song that’s taken around two months to make. A lot of drafts, a lot of sending back and forth, a lot of rerecording, and a lot of time to feel comfortable with how it was developing. I’m proud of “Past Me.” I couldn’t have that song be the last song on my hard drive, so I had to release it. It started with me just recording piano one day. I got a melody and I wrote some lyrics down. With this single and my upcoming album Lunar Touches, like I said, it’s just me being a musician and not feeling like I have to overstate things. I want to let my music speak for me. I want you to feel every note I play, I want you to feel everything that I do. That’s how “Past Me” came about.

The actual song is about losing someone in your life. They have a part of you, and the song is saying, “You can keep that part of me.” Keep my notes, keep the little things I’ve left around you where I’ve made my impact on you in a way. Like my lyrics say, “You can keep my notes/ I left them there on purpose.” It’s insignificant to me, but you can have them. I’m past you, I’m past this, I’m past whatever that was and I’m moving on. Like I said, I’m leaving the atmosphere of my world. “Past Me” can be about a person, or a thing, or a specific experience, but it’s just that feeling of being past certain things while also understanding that there’s a piece of you still there.

KC: You come back to referencing “your world” and “your universe” to describe the space in which you exist in. My last question for you is this: What is your world and what is it like for you to live in it?

SMALL: My world is Small. It’s like a fly-on-the-wall observation perspective. That’s how I rap. I’m observing it all and telling you what I see. For myself, most importantly, and for others secondly. I feel like I have this ability when I become Small to be very attentive and conscious of my surroundings. It’s like that meme from last fall where everyone else is partying and the dude is in the back sipping juice and thinking “They don’t know…” That’s exactly my world. Here are these things that I’m noticing. Here are these things in my orbit. Here are these musicians, artists, and beautiful people who make up my world. It’s hard for me to very distinctly define my world, but it’s Small. That’s my world. It’s also constantly being built. Things are always added, never taken away.

If you would like to join Small’s orbit, you can find their music on Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify and Soundcloud. “Past Me (Keep My Notes)” is out now across all streaming platforms. You can further keep up with Small via his Instagram @onlysmallworks. His Twitter, another variation of his Notes app, is a treat you’ll just have to find for yourself. Thanks for reading! Make sure to follow us on Instagram to stay up on the hottest new music: