Your cart is currently empty!
Interview by Kindred
Kindred: What makes you come alive?
Reveir: Shit. Not being dead cuz. Art makes me come alive. That’s my day to day endeavor, for real. I really don’t think too much about anything, aside from my family but making records and painting. That’s my grind.
Kindred: So you’re from Kansas City?
Reveir: I’m from kc. Twomp side. Twenty eighth and Indiana, bro. Currently living in Templeton, Texas.
Kindred: What brought about the move?
Reveir: Shit, cuz. It was stifling being up in my hometown. I just wanted something different. Came to see what Texas had to offer. See what the hype was about.
Kindred: What High School did you go to?
Reveir: I went to two different high schools. Center Senior High School and Lee Summit North. Moved out to the suburban regions when I got older. Moved out to the white folk area. After my sisters graduated college, my parents started making big moves then. I was hood to hood, suburb to suburb after a while.
Kindred: When did your awareness of sound, music, and art start coming together?
Reveir: Well I’ve been singing since I was five. I’ve been engulfed in making music since before I could do anything. My grandma always says that I’ve been singing since I was three. That’s the story she tells. She says that I was singing before I was actually speaking. So, production wise, I can see what environments I wanted to see based on the melodies I was hearing. I could see records coming alive and I could see how I wanted to do that shit too. It’s been forever, pretty much.
Kindred: What kind of music was being played around you growing up?
Reveir: My Dad is a musician. He played bass. He was heavily influenced by Cameo, Parliament Funkadelic, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, etc.
When I was able to access tapes and CDs as a kid or if my sisters were bumping some shit, it was some corny ass shit like Smash Mouth, Sixpence None The Richer, mixed in with a lot of soul like Q-Tip’s records, J-Dilla, NERD, punk feels, Dizzee Rascal, some UK stuff I was on. This dude who was bullying me gave me some of his music. He went from bullying me to recommending music to me. I guess he was a softy.
Kindred: What was the first record you bought?
Reveir: I didn’t really buy much. I was sheltered from first to seventh grade. One Christmas, my sister was acting like she was taking a shit in the living room, and fake doo-doo’d out a CD. It was the N E R D Fly or Die. I was like, “Damn, bro. She is the best sister in the world”.
She had that spunk and was the most influential, musically, at the time.
Kindred: Who have you worked with over the years?
Reveir: I started out doing solos and musicals at the church. Later on in life, I sang less and focused on spit’n which led to forming a group with my brother, RATS, called The Soul Androids. In the early 2000s we made two projects. That time helped get a feel for making records.
After that, my brother and I attended college out in Chicago. My big bro, Pay Me With Beauty, who at the time was called Hood Fu, took me under his wing and showed me the game as far as music programs go. From fruity loops to logic… just getting a feel for making music through those. I’ve been doing this longer than I realize.
I left Chicago and moved back to KC. Started working with a band called Childish Adults with my bro, Throwbakc aka Dominick Johnson. Initially, I was just doing production for my bro. But I figured joining the band would be an easier way to break bread.
In 2017, we put on a weekly event called Music Mondays. Music Mondays was an open mic we did at a chicken spot named Wings Cafe that I think closed down. I would play drums, do vocals, or play keys for the live sets we did during those events.
As time went on, things changed and my bro wanted to focus primarily on his comedy. I then went on to start a group with Nik Douglas. We’re working on music right now.
Many thanks to Reveir Inferno for closing out the Before the Storm series. Music catalog for all the artists can be found on all major music platforms.
Kindred, Featured Writer for the Before the Storm series.
Get tickets to our first live music event, Rhythmic Clash, at The Folly Theater: TICKETS