Background And Early Inspiration

I grew up in South Jersey and then I went to the University of Miami, and then moved to be close to New York.

New York City has inspired me since day one. When I first moved here I had like no money and I would just sit in cafés outside. I would watch people and I would write. Now, I still don't have a lot of money, but I'm still inspired by the city.

When I moved to New York I was fascinated by so many different people, so many different characters, and I would write about them and I would write about New York. The surroundings alone is inspiring enough to do a whole album. When I got into the mix of New York, my life started to get very, very crazy, so instead of writing about the outside looking in, now I'm writing about myself in New York: the good stuff, the bad times and the crazy things it can put you through. If you can survive it, it's a beautiful thing. For all the ups and downs and the changes this place has gone through the last few decades, it's still very, very inspiring.

"Last Night Lost"

"Last Night Lost" was written during the pandemic, like right in the beginning of the pandemic, we're talking sometime mid-2020. The whole Eclectro album was conceived for the most part during the pandemic, and a lot of the songs deal with what we couldn't do anymore, like just going to a restaurant or going outside without a mask.

A lot of these songs deal with how what used to be reality had become fantasy at that time. So that song is about going out and having the perfect date with that perfect person and saying, "You know what? The world could end tomorrow. What are we gonna do tonight?" That was "Last Night Lost."

It was a visualization thing, and it's something I never thought I would have to visualize, considering the circumstances of what we were going through at the time. So I was like, OK, if you could go out with this person now, especially after everything that has happened from March 2020 on, what would the date look like? What would the night look like? What would you want to do?

Influences

Blak Emoji does pull from all these different sources. That's how I grew up. That's my shuffle. It's Robyn, it's Joni Mitchell, it's Miles Davis, it's Slayer, it's Prince, it's Earth Eater, Sly and the Family Stone.

Lyrically, it's interesting. I'd never really think about it that way, but I do pull from a lot of different sources. I was talking about "Last Night Lost" to someone the other day and we were talking about Duran Duran and their song "Save A Prayer." There's a line in "Save A Prayer" where Simon says something like, "Some people call it a one-night stand, but we can call it paradise." In a roundabout way, that's "Last Night Lost." I never really thought of it, but that line is an inspiration. But I'm also inspired by things politically and things that happen in my life or other people's lives. I just love stories, and there's certain people that really know how to tell a great story. It could be Johnny Cash in country, Marvin Gaye with soul music, Bob Dylan, DeAngelo. All that comes out in my music.

It's not something I look for intentionally. It's not like, "I'm going to put on my R&B jacket today." I just take it where it goes and if something hits me sonically and lyrically, I just run with it.

A lot of things don't make the last cut, but it's just a matter of how to take all these different influences and make them sound like an influence and not directly copy an artist lyrically or musically.

Pandemic Madness

With Eclectro, it was pandemic time. I was stripped of everything. We were all stripped of a lot of things, so I just went mad. All I did was make music. I didn't really listen to a lot. I was just creating and creating and creating, because it was the one thing that I could still do. I had my instruments back here, I had my laptop.

I did another album before Ecelctro and it's instrumental for the most part. There's maybe two songs with vocals on it. I couldn't do anything and my studio stuff was cancelled, my gigs were cancelled, and I'd always wanted to do something that's different, and I didn't know what to say at the beginning of the pandemic, so it was fitting to do something that was just instrumental, that sounds like the soundtrack of what's going on right now in my world. I did it in two weeks, and then Eclectro started and I was like, "OK, now I'm ready to talk about some things."

Kelsey Warren vs. Blak Emoji

I can hide behind Blak Emoji. I can't hide behind Kelsey Warren.

It's like if you have an actor who is doing a role that's really close to their personality. It's probably closer to that like an MF Doom thing where I have a mask and no one knows who I really am. There's definitely elements of me in Blak Emoji - I am Blak Emoji - but I also like that it's this mysterious, but not too mysterious with our climate now. And it's a band. Like Sade is Sade's name, but also the name of the band. Nine Inch Nails is Trent Reznor, but it's also a band as well. So it's more like a moniker than a disguise in a way.

Prince And Nine Inch Nails

Prince and Nine Inch Nails have been my pillars, and between those two pillars are a lot of others. There's stuff that I can listen to in a Nine Inch Nails album that's been more instrumental than certain music courses I've taken. What the man does sonically is just mind-blowing to me. And before Trent Reznor, Prince was that guy that who made it cool to have synth stuff, to have acoustic drums mixed with a lot of electronic drums. He did a lot of stuff by himself, but he also did a lot of stuff with the band.

It's really interesting now with the climate of music that so many have embraced electronic music, and before it was a little bit taboo, but Prince made it cool and made it work. He was an R&B guy, but he also played on rock radio with a big rock album that had a lot of synthesizers on it. And Trent Reznor did the same thing with industrial. He brought industrial more to the forefront, and now you listen to pop songs by Taylor Swift, and "Look What You Made Me Do" sounds like an industrial song. So his influence is deep today - very, very deep.

He's working with people like Halsey, all the soundtrack stuff. I take a lot of that from all the ambient sounds that he does. He's like my post-Eno [Brian Eno]. I am probably more inspired by what that man does with production than most earlier electronic producers.

Production Work

I'm more challenging to produce myself. It's like a battle in my head. But it depends on the artist. I always believe the artist should go one way towards the producer, and the producer should go one way towards the artist. There's always going to be elements of that Blak Emoji sound because I have a sound now and that's great, I love it. People will call me for that and they'll say, "I want to work with you because I heard this. I'm more of a singer-songwriter artist, but can you do something that works for me?"

I love doing that. That's why I like doing so many different genres. I'm doing an album right now that's just straight rock and not a lot of the usual sounds that I use, but as a fan of the genre and a fan of the artist, we make it work. So it's like the artist is putting on a comfortable jacket as opposed to a new jacket that doesn't fit her or him.

Kelsey's Favorite Songs On Eclectro

There's two of them, and they're the two last songs on the album because I don't think that they fit the traditional mode of an electronic pop, R&B, dance album, and I put them there for that reason. One is called "Every Mother's Son." There was the whole Black Lives Matter movement that was going on during the pandemic, and I wanted to write something that not just addresses that, but addresses being a mother, especially a mother of a black or brown kid, and what it feels like to have that kid unjustifiably taken away.

So I wanted to write in that way, but I didn't want to do another singer-songwriter, acoustic, No Depression-sounding song. Where are the protest songs that are electronic? You can still write a protest song without it being a Woody Guthrie thing. Trying to accomplish that with that song was a challenge, and I think I did it with that one. It doesn't get the shine as much as "Quiver" or "Last Night Lost" because they're more uptempo party things, but to write a protest song that's predominantly electronic was everything for me.

And the last song ["Faith, Because Of You"] is a song about my daughter, and it's all acoustic. That was something I was dead set on having on the album. It started a little bit electronic for the most part, and then it ended on a totally different note. There's real strings on the last song and it's more acoustic guitar. It's written as an ode to my daughter - she's the heart of my life. I'm proud of those two.

Live Shows

We're going to start doing shows and touring at the end of the summer. Now we are in Brooklyn at a place called Elsewhere - one of my favorite places. We've got our friends Nick Vivid and Control The Sound opening up too, and then I'm going to do some West Coast states. I'm going to be touring with Whitney Tai and Karolina Rose, two amazing artists I totally adore.

At a Blak Emoji show, expect it to be electronic. Expect it to be dance. Expect it to be fun. But expect it to be a loud band. We make mistakes. It's fun, and the energy is just incredible when you have that type of setting. It's organic, it's crazy. Just go to the show.

August 29, 2023

Get tour dates at blakemoji.com

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