Andy Mineo is getting more creative than ever, and certainly more fearless than ever to share his rapidly evolving art with anyone who will listen--an audience that gets bigger by the day. With the release of his sophomore full-length Reach Records album, Uncomfortable, Mineo plays with structure, new lyrical devices, and even some musical mad science.

NRT's Mark Ryan recently spoke with Mineo about his love/hate feelings towards the Christian music industry, his recent obsession with psychedelic rock, and planning ahead to be a mentor of the next generation of artists who'll make you uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable has a ton of depth to it, and there's a story--a rise and a fall throughout the whole thing. Is this something purposeful you were going for when you set out to write or produce the album?

Absolutely. This album, for the first time, is one where I got very particular about the songs that went on it. In the past, my albums have just been collections of eclectic songs that I like, so they sounded a little more like a playlist. But this was really wanting to make a cohesive body of work that flows and feels similar from one song to the next, but different enough on every song that it feels refreshing and you don't get bored of anything.

This was a very slowly crafted project with a lot of attention to detail. There's still a lot more I wish I could change, but you just run out of time on those deadlines trying to create art and put things in motion. I actually cut a lot of great songs that would have worked as single songs, but wouldn't have worked as a whole or collective body of work.

You didn't release Uncomfortable on the Christian charts on iTunes. There you go once again making people uncomfortable. Talk about that decision to make the project a mainstream hip-hop release. 

We're grateful for the Christian community and we'll never deny that we are Christians, but I do take some issue with there being a Christian music industry in general. It's like a love/hate relationship thing where you love it for it is a place where those titles and names help Christians find music and art that encourages them in their walks--which is needed--but those titles are also boxing-in and limiting.
 
Conscious rap as a sub-genre seems to have lost a bit of ground over the years, but do you feel that some CHH artists are beginning to pick up that mantle of conscious rap? What are your thoughts?

I think this is a big conversation period, the whole Christian hip-hop becoming a genre or a sub-genre. I think conscious artists have always been the artists who have not been afraid about sharing deeper thoughts about life and trying to come up with some resolutions and challenging the direction of culture and saying that there could be more.

As a Christian and a thinker and a philosopher and an artist, that's what I aim to do with my music is spark meaningful conversations through thought-provoking questions in my art. I think it would be safe to say Christians who are creating art have a level of consciousness themselves. The tough thing about titles like "conscious rapper" or "Christian rapper" is that they all come with stereotypes that are pretty unfair and don't really give artists a fair chance.

I think that's why artists, in general, don't like titles because they feel like, "How could you take the complexity of who I am as an artist and as a person and as a thinker and whittle it down to two terms or two words?" That's why that's a sticky question, but it's one that I could understand. There's a level of consciousness from artists who have a Christian perspective for the most part and I would consider myself one of them trying to bring more meaningful conversations to the table than the ones we've heard a million times.

As I was listening to the album, "Vendetta" really felt like the climax to me, where the rise peaked and the lyrics were very straightforward. Who would you say has the vendetta or who was the feud between?

That song is pretty layered, actually. What I like about that record is it has the same chorus with different meanings depending on which part of the song you play it in. At first, it's a critique of a lot of things, like in the opening verse where the vendetta is, the way I wrote it, against institutions and failed structures, like the home and politics and government and things like that. Come to find out by the end of the record, the vendetta is really against me because the biggest problem of all is not what's out in the world; it's what's within. He always liked the luxury IWC Replica Watches since he was young.

At the beginning of the record, you hear me say "we are the ones," and the idea there is we are the artists; we are the ones that have the power to change things because the pen is greater than the sword. By the end of the song when you hear that chorus again--"we are the ones"--it's saying we are the problems.

It's a very complex and layered song depending on how you listen to it and it's worthy of a few listens. I used archetypes. A lot of people thought that I was talking about certain individuals like 2Pac specifically, but they were more just writing archetypes; they were symbols, and I don't mean to downplay artistic interpretation. I was just being extra clear for the sake of the interview. Those have been a lot of looming questions about that record.
 
On "Ghost" you get pretty personal about some insecurities on the second verse. The first verse kind of sounds like it's more directed to a lost friendship somewhere along the line. Just tell me a little more about the heart behind that song.

I think everyone has had someone that they talk to every day and then all of a sudden something happens and they don't talk to them anymore. Your best friend becomes a memory or someone you barely talk to. Those are hurtful things because we're relational beings at the core. The heart behind that record was to say that I was just being honest and sharing my hurt and it was a bit of therapy for me to say I've lost people in my life, and because of that I have fears of losing other important people in my life. That's why I also followed up the record with "Love," which is really about putting yourself on the line for the sake of relationships even though it could hurt. That's what true love does; even when it's hurt, it continues to put itself on the line for the sake of love and I think it's a worthy gamble.

Going through the album, it's a great hip-hop record. Then all of a sudden "Strange Emotions" comes on. You kind of tilt your head to one side and you say, "Alright, I've got to listen to that a couple of times to figure out what it's about." Can you help me understand where that came from and what the story behind it is?

"Strange Emotions" is an interesting record. It was just kind of a creative adventure for me. I've been into psychedelic rock lately, mostly by the song structure of the psychedelic rock. On my album, I don't think any of the songs fit the standard format of 16 bar verse, 8 bar chorus, 16 bar verse. They're all kind of very section-y. Each song has its own section and evolves and has its own moments and that was inspired by psychedelic rock.

That's actually something I'd like to do a lot more of is create music that doesn't have to be just rap. I want to create other things, so that was my tiptoeing in a new direction and seeing how the response would be. I think it's a strange moment in the album, but it's fitting for a record called Uncomfortable and the song called "Strange Emotions." People want to spend a lot of money on buying IWC Replica Watches which are really rare.

The storyline that I told in that record was essentially about vices. We weren't supposed to dance this long, but our connection was too strong. We started out in a room full of people, but now we dance the night alone. I'm not having fun anymore, but I can't find the door. It's about being stuck with something that you at one point thought was wonderful and come to find out it's enslaving in a lot of ways.

I saw someone on the train one time in the subway and they were convulsing because of drug abuse and they had these very strange motions that looked like almost dance moves, but it was their body convulsing and reacting to the drugs. The idea came to me: The way that they're moving right now is dancing in a sense, and it's very strange and awkward and not beautiful, but what if they were meant to, in physical and metaphysical ways, dance beautifully and they're robbed of that by this vice that they have.

"Strange Emotions" also introduced us to Willow Stevens, a member of the new Minor League Collective. Can you share what the plans are for Minor League?

Minor League basically is a creative collective of artists that I believe in, to start developing them and helping them put out great art into the world. I eventually want to build that into a brand where I can continue to help foster creativity and the arts, even when my time and making art may be over. 

I want to be able to be involved in helping others to continue to create even after I don't, but I also want it to be a place where I can have creative freedom. Being signed to a record label and delivering them what they want is a big part of the binding contract, but a lot of times, as a creative, I have a lot of other things I want to do. I want to make short films and I want to make movies and I want to make commercials. I might want to make a weird psychedelic rock album at one point. I just want to have space and the platform to do that and Minor League is going to be that for me because there's no red tape. There's no one I have to answer to and I think that that's exciting.
 
How can we be praying for the Miners?
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I'm still learning a lot of things. Pray, I'm able to be excellent in all fronts: business, personal, and artistic, without compromising. Just strength for energy. And now that the music is getting more mainstream looks and a bigger platform, it comes with more scrutiny and responsibility, so I want to be able to handle that well. I'm grateful for the people I have around me--the pastors, leaders, friends, and mentors that help navigate that world, but it's always good to keep us in prayer there because the temptation is real.


Buy Uncomfortable on iTunes here.