On the 28th of September, 2019, Olaniyi Oloke, also known as YCG, released Homewrecker 2.0, his 4th EP in 3 years. The 21 year old rapper is representative of a generation that has the haziest recollection of a life before the internet, if any at all. As a true online native, YCG has worked tirelessly to learn and develop every aspect of his artistic craft. From the actual rapping and production, to audio engineering, and even graphic design for his artwork, he is self-taught and self-sufficient in a way that allows for the total imposition of his vision on his projects.
Homewrecker 2.0 is not an upgrade in name alone, but in musical quality. YCG’s abilities have grown across the board, and the final product is undeniable. As a producer, his beats are rich and vibrant, layered over punishing drums that rumble like a July thunderstorm. Songs like S3nsational (Remix) and Safe showcase the liveliness of his production as the drum patterns subtly shift and morph, refusing to let listeners catch their balance before the next bar.
As a rapper, YCG approaches each track with the confidence of someone that has harnessed their sound. I Wish I Was a Teriyaki Boy, one of the standouts on H20, contains only about a minute of pure rapping yet he is able to pull off multiple flows over a beat with the chaotic energy of a WorldStar brawl. Lines like “In the cut like Waldo with extensions on the chrome, wow. Hoe been in the bag, how? Beam outside your house like we on Namek, where the rounds now?” are tucked away in odd pockets of the beat, waiting to be discovered like presents on Christmas morning. YCG takes his deep, almost growly voice, an instrument unto itself, and uses new voices and pitches to bring an exciting variety to the proceedings.
Even as an engineer, the growth is clear. His snares are clearer, his drums hit harder, his voice comes through with a newfound clarity, making certain lines stick in your head long after the project has finished. H20 sounds like an artist at comfort within the well defined confines of their sound. Almost one month after the release of H20, YCG dropped Innanet Baby, a brief project he described as an expansion pack to H20. With only 5 songs and clocking in at a brisk 7 minutes, Innanet Baby is a well executed crash course in understanding YCG’s style in 2019. It builds upon the hyperactive energy seen at points during H20, a trap mini-EP that feels like a breathless sprint through a Call of Duty map. YCG’s maturation as an artist felt so holistic, that I knew I had to speak to him in order to understand what led to H20 and Innanet Baby. He was kind enough to hop on the phone with me, and give me insight into his creative process, and his growth as an artist.
SET: Why did you settle upon the name Homewrecker?
YCG: [Laughter] Okay, it’s really weird because I have weird naming conventions. The first group of songs that I ever put out was called ‘Year of the Hoe’. “Hoe” because it was just a name that I got called a lot around the time so I thought okay might as well take it and reclaim it…well not reclaim it but embrace it and be very on the nose, tongue in cheek with it. So the idea of Homewrecker was an advancement of the concept.
SET: So the latest tape is Homewrecker 2.0, which signifies an upgrade. Personally, what does growth mean to you?
YCG: For me it’s always been freedom. Ever since I started making music, I’ve had a very, very tenuous relationship with the idea of collaboration and working with other people. More often than not, especially when you’re just starting out, working with other people means that they can say “no” to something in your creative process. When I was starting out, the first Homewrecker is where I cut my teeth on a lot of the things I’m doing now a lot more comfortably. My first forays into graphic design and audio engineering were on Homewrecker 1. Curating sounds and getting them into a consistent sound and feel was all on Homewrecker 1.
When I was working on it, my friend KD who mixed and did all my stuff at the time, refused to mix some of the songs because he didn’t like them. That upset me so much because I shouldn’t ever have to plead or be at the mercy of somebody to get my work done. It was like “ok, how do I essentially reclaim and own everything that I do?” Now, I’m in a place where Innanet Baby for instance was conceived of and finished in like 8 to 9 days. I was gonna call the merch The Innanet Baby Collection and then I was like “you know what? Make an EP for it”. A week later, Innanet Baby was done. It’s like that, and for me, that’s where I want to be. Wake up one morning and decide I want to do something and a few days or weeks later, it’s done. Growth is being able to say I want something done and that thing gets done, exactly the way I want it to get done.
SET: You’ve always had a serious dedication to handling all aspects of your projects. What appeals to you about the DIY approach?
YCG: So it differs for everyone, but for me, it’s being able to micromanage everything in the process because I’m very particular about what I like in my own music. I’m very specific about what kind of spaces I want my voice to be in, how I want this beat to progress and things like that. When I wasn’t making my own beats, it did kind of annoy me because I would listen to these beats and think “if this thing was just a little bit different, I would love this beat a lot more” and that informs how I record because I’m more comfortable on beats where I trust what’s going on in the beat. In making my own beats, I can fully enter my own bounces because I’m making the drums for myself.
With my own idea of rhythm and flow, I’ve noticed that it’s a deviation from the triplet so instead of 3s it’s more like 7s, 12s, 13s, really odd joinings but it works! It flows in a different way but it still works because that’s kind of how I speak. So I’m making beats that function in that way while still being familiar enough that they have all the makings of your expected trap beats. It’s just a lot more freeform, and I feel that when I do it myself, I can be a lot more freeform and don’t have to fit in as many boxes. There’s nothing wrong with boxes, but I just exist in the boxes that I want, not the boxes that I have to because of how the music is presented to me.
SET: Do you see yourself doing more collabs and features in the future?
YCG: Oh yeah definitely! Now, funny enough, one of my friends Kevin (Yung Kevo From tHa H), we both started rapping in 2016 and he was talking to me about how he was trying to get more people to collaborate with him. I told him that for me it was the exact opposite because I wanted to figure out exactly what I was doing before I ever let anybody else into my space or put myself in anyone’s space. If I’m not fully formed and I step anywhere else then I’m going to get influenced in some way so I wanted it to be a thing where if you hear YCG on a song, he sounds exactly like YCG. It couldn’t be anyone else. If I bring someone else in, I’m not changing what I do to fit them. Now I feel like I’m finally starting to coalesce into whatever it is I’m going to be down the line, and I’m in a position where I’m okay with collaborating with other people. Lagos Summers on H2.0 is the first feature that I’ve had on my own projects since HW1, the first feature on my own projects in three years. That’s just where I’m at now.
SET: You described Innanet Baby as an expansion pack. What do you want people to take away from those songs?
YCG: There was no concept behind Innanet Baby. It honestly was not supposed to exist. I woke up one morning and was like “I have merch I’m putting out”. Originally, what was supposed to happen is that Innanet Baby was supposed to come out as an incentive to buy the merch so if you bought it on Bandcamp, you would maybe get a discount on the merch.
If anything though, it’s range because I’m using voices and flow patterns that I haven’t really ever used but I didn’t put too much thought into what was going on with Innanet Baby because even in the creation process, it was for the merch and also to perform. The pitch and the way I’m vocalizing on these songs is probably the closest thing to how I perform music for myself. So if I’m listening to music I really like, I don’t say full words, and I’m throwing in ad-libs in the actual verses. It’s very loose and disjointed but still high energy so I wanted to make songs to capture that because I’m very technical with words and how I plan songs out. It’s still technical because but it’s nice to step away from having to count how many syllables I’m going to fit into this bar. How am I going to spread that across the song? It’s just jump on the beat, find where you punch in, one take hit, out.
SET: I find it really interesting that you said the way it came together was so spontaneous because for me, when you said expansion pack, I started thinking video game after listening to it, it almost felt like going through the level of an action video game. It felt like an evolution of what you’ve been doing before, but also a more freeform version of you. Even though it was really short, you still showcased a lot and that’s why I wanted to ask because I felt like you did that on purpose but hearing that it all came together really spontaneously to support the merch is mindblowing.
YCG: With me nothing is ever really new and it’s very funny to me when people mention things as being new but to me nothing I do is new because if you find an earlier song, at some point I’ve done this. It may be better now but I don’t feel like I’ve done anything new in music since 2016. Everything has just been, what am I comfortable doing and how can I make this thing that I’m comfortable doing better. So it’s short but it’s only short because one of the things that I blame my love of Earl Sweatshirt for, is that I don’t like making long songs anymore.
SET: I’ve noticed
YCG: Like I can but Innanet Baby is 5 songs, 7 minutes, and when I saw that I thought it could be a problem but at the same time does it sound like it’s missing something? No. So if it’s complete as it is, and if it sounds complete, what’s the point of making a 2 minute song to do something that a 1 minute 30 second song could do just as efficiently, just because you wanted to force a second verse in there.
Because of that reduced timeframe, I can get creative with how I’m arranging the beat because I don’t have to make these tricks last for 2–3 minutes. At most, it’s 58 seconds of verse so I can really go to town with the 808s doing crazy things and having the beat drop out etc; Arrangement wise, I can go crazy which makes the song feel a lot more lived in. I can also get a lot more creative with how I’m actually flowing on the beat because when you’re writing full songs, you have to ration out where you put these tricks, the things that catch people’s ears. If you have a three minute song, you can’t use everything in the first verse. If it’s 58 seconds of verse, I can shove in all the tricks in there so by shrinking the amount of space I have to work with, giving me all this extra room to freak it basically.
SET: What does 2020 look like for YCG?
YCG: Honestly, I don’t know. For all that I look like I have things laid out, I really don’t plan things until I’ve started. I got the idea for H2.0 last October, so really I’m still in the rollout for H2.0 itself. Everything that has come out since has been extra content attached to H2.0. I don’t know how to make singles or to work in any context outside full projects or at the very least EPs. So until I figure out what I want to do for my next EP, I have nothing planned musically. There will be merchandise and content in general, but I can’t guarantee that there will be music.
SET: The landscape of Nigerian music is changing at a rapid pace. Where do you place yourself in this new era of Nigerian rappers?
YCG: Funny enough, I wouldn’t place myself there. The name Innanet Baby didn’t come out of nowhere. I don’t see myself as a Nigerian rapper just because I’m not based there. If for whatever reason I had a show in Nigeria, it would be attended by kids who came home for the holidays and the only reason why they have any connection to my music is because they heard me online.
Innanet Baby is more than a term, it’s really how I see myself so in that regard, I don’t see myself as a Nigerian rapper and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. I just mean that homecourt, ground swell support that guys like Blaqbonez, Santi, and Prettyboy D.O have, I don’t have that. Which I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing, just because with the way the internet is now, if you know what you’re doing and how to push it, you can honestly have a healthy fanbase without having a home state.
SET: But at the same time do you ever feel like you want that home support from Nigeria? Do you see yourself trying to cultivate it?
YCG: I do but at the same time, I don’t think the work I have now would cultivate it which is fine because if I started changing up my work to appeal to whatever audience I thought was the most popular at the time, I would never get anything done. Maybe at some point, the music I make would be appealing to a nice Nigerian audience but I’m not at that point yet. I guess when I get there, I’ll know.
Homewrecker 2.0 and Innanet Baby are available on all streaming platforms now. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
