On a glistening morning, I got to speak to with the Virginia-to-Illinois based rapper/poet McKinley Dixon through Zoom. We spoke about his career, his upcoming project Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (released by the time this interview is posted), and his love for anime. Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? is the latest and greatest project from Dixon and is a standout amongst the rapper's already impressive discography. Having heard of him through the free mixtape days of hip-hop, he has only gotten better and better throughout the years.

Transcribed interview shortened for conciseness but watch the whole YouTube interview above to see more!

Earworm Digital: How you doing today? Doing good?

McKinley Dixon: Doing pretty good. Yeah, I'm doing pretty good. It's a little holiday today, so I'm just waking up. I went to the gym, knocked that out. I'm just watching television while I draw a little bit.

ED: Nice. What were you watching?

MD: Jujutsu Kaisen!

ED: I love that.

MD: Crazy, right? It's so sick reading the manga and watching the show before season two comes out. Yeah, I'm so excited.

ED: What do you prefer more? Do you prefer watching the anime or reading the manga?

MD: It really depends. I feel like with anime, since I'm an animator myself, anime allows me to get ideas more so than manga. But there's just something about a good manga, especially with Jujutsu Kaisen, because there's a lot of newer ones that are not really as good, but the ones that are new and good, like Chainsaw Man, Kaisen, sort of even Demon Slayer's most recent arc. I've been really enjoying that.

ED: I think I read somewhere in an interview that you were just talking about some of the recent anime. I think you did mention Black Clover and you were like, “Man that shit is ass, dude.”

MD: Honestly, it sucks because I'm watching it as background stuff because I'm going to eventually get to the cool scenes. But to get to those scenes, I'm on episode, like 70 now. And I'm like, “GOD DAMN. Man, I got to do more. I got to get like 30 more episodes!?”

ED: I've been listening to your music and I noticed that you've been making music for quite a while now. Trying to tie this into anime and manga. Do you ever view all the mixtapes and all the projects that you've had, do you ever view them separately? Like, oh, this was like my "The Self Importance arc" or something like that?

MD: Yeah, definitely. I definitely do. Especially because a lot of my stuff relies on time. So I've had different hairstyles for different recording processes. I've been watching different things, different eras of my life. So I think every single one, because they also come out so separately, could definitely be seen as like a small arc.

ED: Okay, and then how do you feel about. It’s so funny, just to say out loud. How does it feel to be your upcoming arc for the album you’re releasing in a few months? Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? and I already listened to two of the songs and they're pretty good. “Run, Run, Run” is cool because I'm just a sucker for a good song with just great horns.

MD: Feels great. I feel really confident in these songs. Everything was sort of a training arc up until now in a way, because these are the first songs I released with a label in that sense. The first songs I released made in a studio where I sort of had a deadline. So a lot of individual things came together to make this sort of one big arc.

ED: I heard for your last album, For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her, I think you said you did that album in the span of a few years. And I could tell, too. Obviously, you put a lot of work into it. You collabed with a lot of people as well but I think you said that one felt more like all over the place. It wasn't concise as the album you're about to drop soon. Is that right?

MD: Definitely. I think because I recorded in so many places and had so many people from all over sort of be a part of it, that's okay. I didn't really find a way to make everything cohesive besides the fact that it was done with a bunch of people. There's a lot of other things I could have done sort of on the back end during production, during writing that would have made it more cohesive in a sonic sense. But it really just sounds like it does because of so many people. And that made up for it in a lot of ways. But this one, we had a budget, we had a bunch of people, we had time allotted to it and we were ready to sort of go and record it within the time that we had.

ED: Believe it or not, I didn't notice until recently, but I didn't know that you were the same rapper that made the song “We Lovin’ That Jazz” back long time ago. I remember listening that to one of those hip-hop blogs like Hip Hop DX or like Hot New Hip Hop or something.

MD: Yes! That's so funny. That was like, 2015. It's funny that you mentioned that because nowadays people don't even mention that song unless they were really deep in that community. Especially when it came to Tumblr and stuff because that song came out and it was like, third page of Reddit when I first released it. It's such a long way since then. Seven years or so. Eight years now, yeah. That's so funny. We lovin’ that jazz.

ED: You've actually performed always with a live band, which I think is really cool and it's really unique because I know a lot of people are on that wave now. But you've been doing it since day dot. What inspired you to do that, though because I know it's as great as it is as a set. However, it is a little bit long and draining just to coordinate everything and just to get it ready.

MD: It comes with the respect in hip hop. It’s really interesting when you have a fly band, but honestly, it was inspired by the fact that I was telling these stories and I was like, what would make these stories sort of pop a little bit more? What if my voice cracked at this part? And what would be better if my voice cracked? It's like, oh, if the horn cracked as well. There was a sort of moment where I'm like, stuttering. What if I just had the drummer stutter instead of trying to do that with production, which is possible, but it was a lot more human when I sort of did it and had a band react to what I was doing because I would do vocals and then I would have people come in and sort of play what they heard. And if I was like then the whole band would sort of be like especially with “Chain Sooo Heavy” and things like that.

ED: Another thing that I've noticed that you've done is, I guess you are in the minority on this one for just like in the hip hop scene in general, in your music and just outside of it too. You talk a lot about how you’re vocal about trans rights. I think for the hip hop community, just in general, they're getting there with LGBT+ rights and everything, but even back then, you listen to the lyrics and they were pretty anti. They're coming a little bit more around to it now. What made you not afraid just to talk about it early on?

MD: My friends and the people that raised me. I couldn't make any of my music without black queer, black trans folks. Obviously I want to talk about these people because, obviously these people sort of are affected more so than me in ways I think a lot of people within the rap community sort of view themselves as the perfect target, when, in actuality, there are so many more identities that exist, especially within the black community, that are perfect targets.

ED: Just talking more about Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? Is there anything else you could tell me and just anyone else just more about it.

MD: The cover art is done by Ladon Alex. A really great, incredible artist that sort of created this anime inspired picture based off the lyrics. The rest of it is made for me. But it has you in mind? That's pretty much it.

Listen to Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? here.