BrownTown chops it up with musician and overall creative Rio Mutasim about emotionally-informed music-making, consuming art responsibly, and the vulnerabilities that come with it all.
BrownTown chops it up with musician and overall creative Rio Mutasim about emotionally-informed music-making, consuming art responsibly, and the vulnerabilities that come with it all.
How do we respond to, create, and consume music and other creative art forms? As consumers, we experience and feel only so much of the process and intention. As creators, we can only do so much to see our full vision come to life while battling obstacles of time, money, creative control, compromise in collaboration, trauma, personal life, etc. Rio and BrownTown unpack the emotional responsibility and toll of putting yourself into your work and what that means in terms of our broader socio-political environment. Rio and BrownTown speak to the idea of emotion-informed creativity and how they consume art. Rio tells his journey and process of putting his experiences and raw feelings into his music as a therapeutic method and how that has resonated with others. As past endeavors required Rio and other musicians to “play the game” of adhering to the politics and strategies of a more corporate model, the gang deciphers the limitations artists have while trying to grow professionally and even the very definition of “professionalism” (shoutout Ep. 29 - Code Switching). Where the line is between the artist as the world sees them and the artist as the everyday human, especially when money and survival is involved. The conversation evolves from micro to macro deliberating on Kendrick’s authenticity, Kanye’s music and politics, R. Kelly’s systematic abuse, Rick Ross as a parole officer, Jared Leto playing a transwoman, and more. At the end of the day, Rio and BrownTown settle on the importance of meeting people where they’re at when confronting them about the issues of our day and how to push each other to be better with love, understanding, and education.
GUEST
Rio Mutasim is a writer, filmmaker, musician and overall creative who was apart of the original Chi DNA academic project. Born and raised in Chicago, the 24-year-old creative is now working in his second studio album Butterfly Gemini. Find Rio's music on Spotify, Soundcloud and YouTube. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
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CREDITS: Intro/outro music by Rio Mutasim. Audio engineered by Genta Tamashiro. Episode photo by Jena Snelling.
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