Carib Voxx sat down with Trinidadian born and Brooklyn raised singer/songwriter Crystal Tais to discuss her newest project, Hoopla Vol2. The musical project is 8 songs long with its concept and music being heavily influenced almost accidentally by the popular HBO series, Game of Thrones. Tais explained “…my production partner Abe kept telling me I needed to see the show Game of Thrones…So every day we would watch 2, 3 episodes and I was in love with the music on there…We were secretly inspired and didn’t even know it until after”.
Hoopla Vol2 begins strong and defiant with Good Evils speaking directly to her detractors. When asked about the message between the lines Tais spoke to the crab in barrel mentality many artists are forced to endure in the music industry.
“The [music] industry is all smoke and mirrors, and it makes you not know who to trust anymore. A lot of lying and deception, a lot of um, people trying to stop you from progressing.” She lamented on having to work twice as hard as a singer/songwriter as a woman and the hard to obtain ‘industry standard’ numbers that bodies of work have to earn before being deemed worth the listen by the general public, all as struggles to draw on when writing ‘Good Evils’.
The tension and emotion within the third track ‘I Hope’ were felt and could be interpreted as a dismissive message to an ex-lover. Tais explained that the relationship serving as the inspiration to the music started platonically.
“We were damn near inseparable…But of course, when you cross the friendship boundary, feelings start to get involved and wires start to get crossed.”
The big question of the moment was if the person had heard the track and what they thought about it.
“As of last year October, we have each other blocked on social media but we have a lot of mutual friends, so maybe…I’m still in a weird place but, as the song says ‘I hope the grass is greener on the other side’ ”
We had to ask about the Hip Hop/Trap feel of ‘Finally Free’ and if it was an intentional artistic decision. Crystal explained that after listening to music by American musician Dababy, she immediately told her producer she needed “a record with bounce”. She knew immediately that the beat presented to her by her producer was the one. Tais explains the cadence of ‘Finally Free’ comes from her love of fusing rapping and singing together and then adding melodies.
Accidental records are seemingly a running theme in this body of work and ‘Come Thru’ is no different. Crystal explains that’s the record was originally intended by her producer Abe as a demo outro track for a male artist. She boasted that the lead vocals were all recorded in one take with the finishing being added after. The process behind ‘Come Thru’ differed greatly from the making of the tropical and up-tempo ‘FUN 2X’.
“[Abe and I] worked on a few demos with producer Stadic (Olatunji’s “Jiggle It”, Mr. Killa’s “Run Wid It”, Demarco and Machel Montano’s “Fire” etc.) and his partner Jonny Blaze (Sexting Riddim – Hey Choppi, Mya, Konshens, etc)”
After choosing a beat by Stadic, humming it over and over eventually turned into the lyrics of the chorus “Fun fun..mi nuh catch no feelings” and the rest of the track skyrocketed from there.
Crystal Tais ends the album in fanfare with ‘Arya Stark’. “Man, this joint right here is one of my favs, it’s special to me because it was recorded a few days before drill rapper Pop Smoke was murdered…[As] Trinidadian born, Brooklyn raised, I HAD to do one of these records for the culture. I had to make it my business, to show that women can do drill records too and body it, but in their own way”.
She was happy with the way the track came out even joking that Pop Smoke would’ve been proud of the result. ‘Arya Stark’ is a song aptly named as it evoked the same defiance and belligerence as the fictional Game of Thrones character it’s named after. When asked if there were any similarities between her and Stark she had to say: “…we are the underdogs, the highly underestimated. Her character possesses strength and resilience that reminds me of myself. I have this thing that I do, if I’m ever wronged by a person, I make a mental list and I never forget. That’s exactly what Arya did. She made a list, and in the end, those same people paid for the things they’ve done to her. She won.”
Hoopla Vol2 is available for streaming right now on Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, and Deezer. Listen Below!
