BREAKING POINT 2 | Emilio Rojas
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK | EMILIO ROJAS
INTERVIEW KB TINDAL PHOTOGRAPH @KVISIONARY
Validated: Emilio Rojas is a proud Latino MC that hails from Rochester NY. He is forward thinking, and always pushing the envelope when it comes to the art form and culture of Hip Hop. He could care less about how many mounds of money, women, guns, cars and jewelry you have. He’s the kind of MC that raps about topics that other rappers are scared to touch. He is always on a quest to uplift his people and delivers an authentic and unapologetic voice for the Latino community. He's literally got about two decades in the game and he shows no signs of slowing down. Right now, he has two projects out that he released this year. Los IV and the long awaited follow up to his classic 1st installment of Breaking Point, Breaking Point 2. So sit back, relax, catch the vibe and enjoy the ride with a pure uncompromising artist when it comes to his contribution to hip hop.
Emilio Rojas: What up man? Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
Validated: Thank you for tapping in with me. Let's jump right into it. I want to go back to your early days. Were you born in Rochester, New York, or you just grew up in Rochester?
Emilio Rojas: Yeah, I was born in Rochester.
Validated: What kind of memories do you have of growing up in Rochester?
Emilio Rojas: Rochester's a place where there's a lot of talent and there wasn't a lot of community to nurture it. So you got cats like me, you got cast like Eto, 38 Spesh, Green Lantern, my boy Hassan Mackey, my boy Nickel Fields, my boy V. Ciannii, we were all coming up in the city and we had our little things cracking, but it kind of just would only bubble so much and it would just stop. So as far as memories, it was just a constant grind trying to get people to pay attention to us, trying to get that to translate into something a little bit bigger.
Validated: So you attended The Harley School and that's a college preparatory school right?
Emilio Rojas: Yeah. I was there on an academic scholarship.
Validated: Academic scholarship. Nice.
Emilio Rojas: You're the first person who's ever asked me about that.
Validated: Alright. How did that shape your young mind, what was some of the curriculum and things that you did back then and how did that shape you?
Emilio Rojas: It was an advanced academic program. I was in a lot of AP and honors courses. It was weird. Looking back, I don't really think in hindsight I took full advantage of the access that that institution gave me to anything really. When you're a kid, you're kind of resentful. You're not with your friends, you're with a bunch of people that maybe you didn't really have a lot in common with. I was growing up in a single parent household and a good majority of the students there were pretty wealthy and we weren't. So it was hard. Not to say I was an outcast. I mean, people fucked with me and I fucked with people. But I was a little bit more angry at the situation at the time than I was able to really step outside and be like, yo, this is going to gimme access to this, this, and this, and I'm on an accelerated academic program that's going to put me into an advantageous situation. It didn't really dawn on me until later in life that that was a program that could have been very, very helpful that I didn't quite take advantage of. And I regret it. I wish I did, in hindsight.
Validated: Got you. When you graduated from there, what was the goal? Were you already knee deep in Hip Hop and already thinking about, I want to be an artist, or was there something else that you wanted to do, another dream?
Emilio Rojas: So we had this thing in Rochester called Full Circle Sundays. It was like a freestyle thing. A DJ crew in Rochester used to host a DJ crew by the name of Disco Lobos. They used to host with Hasan Mackey. And I came up kind of watching people battle. It started as a break-dancing battle. There was this thing called the Ultimate Breakdown in Rochester where all the break dancers from New York and the Tri-state area would come once a year, and it was a big break dance battle that had an MC component. So I remember I saw Hassan battle one year, I saw my boy Spesh battle one year. And that was when I was writing a lot. So then when I took notice of the Full Circle Sundays, I started to involve myself in the scene. And that was like the end of high school so I don't know if there were any plans to try to turn music into a career at that point. Actually, I don't know if there were really any plans to try to turn music into a career. It just kind of happened. But watching it and just participating in it, it felt like I had to do it, like I really wanted to do it. I wanted to be a part of it because I always loved Hip Hop music since I was a kid, So when I saw an opportunity for me to get up there with other people who shared the love for the culture like Hassan and there was cats like Mo and my homeboy Luda, people that used to frequent that open mic, I just started going every week and it just became a part of it.
Validated: Got you. What was your earliest memory of Hip Hop? When did you first hear a song or see something and you were like, damn, I really need to be a part of this in some way.
Emilio Rojas: So it was either Ahmad back in the day. Remember that, back in the day when I was young? That shit or my older sister had a boyfriend who bought the Geto Boys tape with "Mind Playing Tricks on Me". That shows you how old I am.
Validated: Classic. Me too bro.
Emilio Rojas: Yeah. He had the tape for the Geto Boys with "Minds Playing Tricks on Me," and also that same year, he got that Cypress Hill album with the Tree. Was it Black Sunday? Was that Black Sunday?
Validated: I think it might have been Black Sunday, yeah.
Emilio Rojas: Yeah. So my exposure to Hip Hop was through those two things.
Validated: No doubt. So you've been doing this rap for a while, man. The research says that you started off with the name Racks 1 in Myspace.
Emilio Rojas: Oh God.
Validated: In Myspace of all places, right?
Emilio Rojas: The Myspace days, yeah.
Validated: Back in 2004, you became a part of a group called Focus. You started touring early. How did like that come about? Because I know as an artist now and even back then, to actually tour overseas when you weren't really that known or known at all for the most part, how did that happen for you and did that kind of open up your mind to what the possibilities could be?
Emilio Rojas: So I linked with my boy DJ EZ. Big shouts to Angelo, DJ EZ. I think he's a Red Bull champ. He's one of the best turntablist in the world, DJ EZ. And he was already running around. He was running around with Afu-Ra. Remember Afu-Ra from the Gang Starr Foundation?
Validated: Absolutely.
Emilio Rojas: Yep. So he had already been to Europe once and he was like, yo, we got to go to Europe, you got to come to Germany. So we booked our own shows and we went. And that was a time where the internet hadn't really started to hit yet, and just by having New York on a flyer somewhere, you would get like 50 to a 100 Hip Hop heads that would show up. So we went over to Germany. We went to Stuttgart, Germany, we went to Berlin, we went to Hamburg, a bunch of different places overseas. And really, we grounded it out and booked our own shows, and through the connections that he had from being on the road with Afu, we were able to book some shows over there. And then I linked up with my boy Max Robbin and we went on tour afterwards. Max works has been a tour manager now. He's grown into a pop and tour manager. He's managed for Freddie Gibbs and Chance the Rapper and Usher and all those guys. But I think I was his first tour overseas as well. And then we ended up in Australia with Wu Tang. It was a lot of DIY, a lot of just us saying, yo, we want to be in these places, how do we get to this place, and we just made it happen, you know?
Validated: Yeah. Sometimes that's the best way, man. You just got to put your best foot forward and throw it on the wall and see what sticks.
Emilio Rojas: Yep, exactly. And it was fun. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of stress because we didn't speak the language, we didn't have anybody advocating for us over there, but we went and did what we had to do. It was fun.
Validated: Definitely. So around 2005 or so, you come to New York, the city of New York, you start taking things a lot more seriously in your career. What was that transition like for you? Was there family to support you, somebody that held you down? I think I read that you stayed in an apartment that was illegally set up with a bunch of people.
Emilio Rojas: Oh yeah. We definitely had the shitty illegal apartment. So again, this is Angelo, DJ EZ. He hit me, he was like, yo my roommate just moved out, you want to move to New York? I was like, bet, let's go.
Validated: There you go.
Emilio Rojas: So I just left the next day. Literally, I just left. I sold all my shit which wasn't much. I think I had a keyboard like an Ensoniq EPS-16+ because I was trying to make beats. I sold that and then I sold my entire CD collection, a bunch of sneakers, and I just left.
Validated: You invested in the dream early.
Emilio Rojas: I mean, I didn't have much to invest. I had no money, I had no job, I got down to New York, I had a couple hundred dollars, I gave him rent for the month and I was just grinding it out.
Validated: Yeah. That's what I'm saying. You invested early with nothing. You took the last of what you had and you bet on yourself. Absolutely. So now we get to 2008, going into 2010s. You link up with nobody, none other than Green Lantern. You start putting out these mixtapes, "Natural," "Recession Proof," "Life Without Shame." That's where I actually first heard of you on the song, "Close to Me," which was my joint when that came out back in the days.
Emilio Rojas: Oh, crazy. Yeah.
Validated: Yeah. That was my shit. I had you on one of my mixed CDs with that song and everything. Yeah, definitely.
Emilio Rojas: That's funny.
Validated: Then you put out Phaze One with M-Phazes, "Breaking Point," "No shame, no regrets," and of course "No fucks given" in around 2013, I believe.
Emilio Rojas: Yeah, that was with Camillo, right?
Validated: I believe so. So what was it like at you for that point in the industry? You were on the come up, you're churning out these mixtapes, you're trying to get on, you're doing these shows here and there, kind of sustaining yourself. What was it like for you at that time and what kind of jewels did you learn from the mixtape grind itself that you still carry with you today?
Emilio Rojas: Well, I think I'm still learning this the hard way, right? The biggest thing that I learned, looking back, is to not stop. Because we would get into these situations where we would generate tons of momentum and then I would have the conversation. Like Wendy Goldstein would call from fucking Interscope or somebody would call my phone, and they'd be like, yo, we want to offer you a deal, da da da da da, and then we just stop. And then the conversation would end because you lose all your momentum as soon as you take your foot off the gas. So looking back, I think that had I not waited for certain situations to materialize and just kept going regardless of what was going on in the background or behind the scenes, things probably would be a lot bigger. I think that's my one thing looking back as an artist, that me and my team at the time really just messed up. Every time that we had a major opportunity, whether it was an MMG reach out or anything like that, it was always followed by us stopping and not wanting to do anything or sitting on all the records that we had or whatever the case was, waiting for the situation to materialize. And like I learned now, it just doesn't make sense to hold on to things, it doesn't make sense to stop working regardless of what else is going on because you're always going to create more opportunities if you continue to put out music. So that's what it was. And it was like the energy in New York was crazy at the time. Again, it was a lot of that do-it-yourself energy. Angelo and I, we started throwing events at Galapagos in Brooklyn. I don't know what it's called now. It's called something else now, but it's a big venue, and I think we were one of the first people to host Hip Hop events at the space. And then I linked with Pumpkin Head, rest in peace, and a lot of the Brooklyn Academy folks like the Brooklyn underground, Marco Polo, all those people, you know.
Validated: Then you in the trenches, man.
Emilio Rojas: Yeah, we were grinding it out. They say certain artists, they tell the come-up story like, yo, so-and-so was grinding in New York. And I was in New York and nobody ever saw that motherfucker.
Validated: Like I ain't never seen you, yeah.
Emilio Rojas: Yeah. So it's like we were working. We put a lot of work in.
Validated: Absolutely.
Emilio Rojas: Yeah, we built a lot. We built a lot just because we wanted to and we were excited about it and we were just really passionate about what we did and it telegraphed. And I think our own excitement about what we were doing made other people gravitate towards it.
Validated: Right. Now, I know you were influenced, of course, by Big Pun, Fat Joe. They were two of the most prevalent Latino emcees in the game early on, and you kind of showed that love on Creep with me when you reiterated one of Pun's lines on your "Breaking Point 2" project. Who else inspired you as an emcee growing up? Who did you look at and say, damn, that gave you the scrunch face when you heard their bars and you was like, oh, I got to get to that level.
Emilio Rojas: I think Pharoahe Monch, one of my favorites of all time, from the Organized Confusion days all the way up until now. The Lox, heavy on the Lox, heavy on Styles and Jada. And Sheek, I don't want to leave out Sheek. Everybody leaves out Sheek, but Sheek's nice. Black Thought, Scarface, I like Scarface a lot. I like 50 a lot. I think Get Rich or Die Tryin', that might be my favorite Hip Hop album of all time. Get Rich or Die Tryin'.
Validated: Yeah. I talk about this to a lot of different people and the mania that was surrounded around that project was just...
Emilio Rojas: That's all you heard in the city.
Validated: Yeah, that's all you heard in New York at the time. I don't think I've seen that happen again since 50.
Emilio Rojas: It was weird. I was on Twitter today and I saw somebody post. They were like, yo, let's keep it real, 50 only had two to three years of pop and people act like he's a superstar. I was like, you were not fucking outside if that's all you're saying. Yo, that's all you heard in the whole city was 50 Cent for like an entire summer.
Validated: Insane bro. Insane man. He was just knocking them out left and right all the time. I worked at a record store at the time when that came out and all I could remember was these little white kids. They were coming in by the droves to get this Get Rich or Die Tryin' project. And then when I was coming back to New York, like that's all you heard. Every car, every truck, every Jeep, everybody was knocking 50. So that kind of mania hasn't been seen since then. Absolutely not.
Emilio Rojas: No, it's crazy. Not only were they knocking the 50, they were wearing the G Unit tank tops for a year, them ugly ass fucking things. It was a whole thing. He influenced. That might be my favorite era of beats, like all the Jake One beats, the High Tech beats, the Kaleo beats, the Dre beats. That was the illest era of production. Yeah, that was hard.
Validated: You've worked with a slew of artists. N.O.R.E., Joell Ortiz, Joe Budden, Kxng Crooked, Davies, Nems, Demrick, Reverie, Green Lantern, Illmind, the list can go on and on and on. But the question is, who is the artist or the producer or a person in general that makes you step up your pen game the most when you're actually in the studio with them?
Emilio Rojas: I was just thinking about this. You know who really raps and it's annoying? It's Mickey Factz. When you do a record with Mickey, you've got to rap.
Validated: Yeah.
Emilio Rojas: Yeah, you've got to rap with Mickey. I did a record with Grafh. I had to fucking rap. We did a freestyle over Kendrick's "HiiiPoWeR." I had to rap on that. I did a record that Spesh hopped on afterwards and I was just so mad because I kind of phoned it in and then Spesh just you know. I'm just like, damn bro. I just be feeling like fuck, I didn't get the chance to come after you the way I should have because I didn't know.
Validated: Have you ever changed a verse for somebody or as an emcee you're like, nah, I just got to let what I wrote run.
Emilio Rojas: I just let it rock. I mean, at the end of the day, my fans are going to fuck with what I do. And my mentality is hopefully I'll get him on the next one. Because I'm a little competitive, but not to...I still remember the beef with Canibus and LL. Didn't they start beefing because LL rewrote his verse?
Validated: They said L rewrote his verse and it came from the microphone on his arm. And Canibus was like, I want to get a mic like that on my arm, but L was like, nah, you got to get your own tattoo. So it was a combination of those kind of things that started that way.
Emilio Rojas: I just never got over that. I'm like, man, that's just bad rapper etiquette. You put your verse down, it is what it is, you've got to wait.
Validated: Absolutely. Wait to catch him on the next one. Yeah, definitely.
Emilio Rojas: Yep. Exactly.
Validated Definitely. In 2011, a journalist, Sarah Armagon, from the New York Daily News did a very small, but in my opinion, was a relevant piece on you. She talked about politically charged lyrics. At the time, you had a single out called "Right to Say" about a Mexican immigrant who was abused at every level, sexually, physically, verbally, by an immigrant agent. Now, I love the fact that you touch on topics like that. It kind of reminds me of classics like "Public Enemy" that always talked about shit that nobody else wanted to even touch. What made you start tackling topics like that that people don't want to acknowledge in your music, and how has that played a part in your career?
Emilio Rojas: I mean, it's something I personally care about. It was never a conscious decision like, all right, I'm going to go tackle these topics. I see somebody get mistreated on a human level, I just find a lot of problems with that. Even now, if you look at my bookshelf back there or wherever, it's full of political science and current events books. I have a lot of contempt for the establishment and the way that minority groups, whether it's a racial or ethnic minority or somebody who's been marginalized because of their economic status, I have a lot of anger for the way that people are treated when they're mistreated. And it's something that I'm just very passionate about personally. I don't fuck with the billionaires, I don't worship the wealthy. I can't get behind a lot of the things that culturally we look past because we want to protect the status quo or have like this little bit of creature comfort that we have. It's hard for me to reconcile myself with those things when they're happening in the world. And I remember when that "Right to Stay" record was written, it was at a time where there was a lot of stuff in the news cycle about immigration and laws being changed. And being a Latino also, it's like nobody really tells our story. I think the type of Latin artists that we have in the Hip Hop space and in the music space in general, they tend to be hypersexualized or super gangster and that's it. And it's like you either got to shake ass, talk about shaking ass, talk about selling drugs or talk about being a kingpin. And I felt like there's a lot more to our culture than that actually, and the fact that we are only talking about selling drugs or being a kingpin, that's like a direct result of the US's war on drugs anyways. Like we were forced into those positions, right? So I wanted to talk about it. And you have these people that are basically mass migrating as refugees from South America, largely because our foreign policy destabilized the entire continent to the point where their countries were unlivable in the first place. So it's like, of course I'm going to talk about that shit. Nobody else is talking about it and it's not sexy. It's not like that's something that's going to make Drake fucking retweet, oh, this shit is crazy. But that shit is real. The shit about "Right to Stay," when I wrote "Right to Stay," I researched it first. It's like an amalgamation of things that I read about that actually happened and I just condensed them all into one story. And I was very deliberate to not make a political statement overtly. I just wanted to tell a story and have people hear the record and arrive at their own conclusion about what was going on and what was happening in the world. Because the reality is there are people that come to this country who are treated like that every day by people who abuse their power, and I just felt compelled to talk about it, and I still feel compelled to talk about those things.
Validated: Absolutely. I think that inspires people on a different level. I think it hits a deeper core than bowing down to the wealthy and all that other shit that's out there. So that's definitely a way to reach people and impact their heart and allow them to see that there's a lot of other things out there that need to be talked about, a lot of things that need to be changed. Absolutely.
Emilio Rojas: I agree, yeah.
Validated: Absolutely. When we talked earlier, you toured a lot overseas. Paris, Madrid, Venezuela, Granada, Switzerland, Australia, just to name a few. Do you prefer touring out of the country or in the US?
Emilio Rojas: I like the US.
Validated: Why the US?
Emilio Rojas: I speak English really well.
Validated: Say that again?
Emilio Rojas: I speak English really well. It makes me feel a little more comfortable. Plus people that I know are only a flight away, like a shorter flight. And a lot of times, again, when we were overseas, it was before social media, before the internet really had taken off. I mean, Napster was a thing but there was no streaming platforms. Like, I'm old, I'm aging myself right now. But it was different, man. It was just fucking different. And it was stressful. My overseas touring experiences were so early in my career that I wasn't stable. And the thing is you're in another country. You're in Paris, for example, or you're in Madrid, Spain, and you don't really have the time to go explore and experience the culture because you're kind of just in and out of a place for a day. And those are places where I get serious FOMO. Like damn, I'm in fucking Paris, I can't go see the catacombs today? Like what you mean I got to get on the road? So those are things, those are experiences that I felt like I missed out on. And we were fucking very hand to mouth with the tour budget because we weren't that established in our finances or in our careers at the time. We were just making shit happen.
Validated: Right.
Emilio Rojas: So it makes it stressful. That financial stress makes traveling with somebody very stressful.
Validated: I can imagine that. Absolutely. So started off in Brooklyn, ended up in Washington Heights, now you're in Cali. You're sort of a transplant like myself. I'm originally from Queens. I came out to Cali in 2015 and just decided to stay, man. I loved it and I was like, this is where the switch is. What made you come out west?
Emilio Rojas: It was weird. So I was traveling out west because there was some writing opportunities.
Validated: Okay.
Emilio Rojas: And when I was on the flight, this is 2016, I think. When I was on the flight, I got a blood clot in my calf.
Validated: Ooh.
Emilio Rojas: That shit could kill you, right? So I couldn't travel for three months. I had to crash at my boy's house in LA for three months. Big shouts at Nickel Fields for holding me down because that was fucking love. So he let me crash his spot for three months because I couldn't get back on a plane because the air pressure could have caused an embolism. Like the fucking blood clot could have moved and exploded in my brain or some shit and killed me. So by the end of that three-month period, I had just had so many things going on here, it just made sense to just up and leave. Because New York, there's valleys and peaks with different places. And I was in a bad management situation at the time, like a real dysfunctional management situation. So it just made a lot of sense for me to just start fresh with people that I cared about instead of feeling like I was being neglected and abused by my team back home.
Validated: I got you.
Emilio Rojas: So I was like, all right, I'm out.
Validated: Definitely. Alright, so you got two projects out this year. Is it Los Cuatro or Los IV?
Emilio Rojas: Los Cuatro, yeah.
Validated: Okay. With Doeman, Coyote. "Rumors" off of that joint is my shit. That's a fire track, absolutely. And then you also got "Breaking Point 2" out right now. Tell me a little bit about the creative process and the thought behind both of those projects.
Emilio Rojas: So "Breaking Point 2," whenever I would talk to my fans or my audience, a record they always brought up as being one of the records that made them really fuck with me was Breaking Point. And it was like that record happened at a time in my life where I was just pretty frustrated. And in the middle of Covid, I started to feel frustrated again because you had tour opportunities getting taken off the table because travel bans and just a lot of different things were just happening where it was just like, man, this shit is out of my control, I'm pretty stressed out. So it felt appropriate to revisit that and seeing that my fans really fuck with it, I was like, man, why didn't I really lean into that more from a branding perspective? Like this is something that's authentic to me, being frustrated and kind of being stressed out, because I'm a high stress individual. And maybe I shouldn't admit that, but I have a lot of anxiety about everything. So I was just at a point where I was just like, man, what the fuck? So I just decided to channel it and kind of add in the process of that. I was like, well, maybe I could build this into something that could be like a recurring theme throughout my...what's the word? I'm blanking on the word.
Validated: I'm blanking on it too. Recurring theme.
Emilio Rojas: It's going to come on me as soon as we hang up. Fuck. But regardless, I'm like, man, a lot of artists, they do the part ones, the part twos, the part threes. It's like, I never had that in my career and I have like a pretty extensive catalog of music. I should have done that.
Validated: A series.
Emilio Rojas: Yeah, a series. Exactly. So I was like, man, I should turn this into a series. So that's what I did. And then Los Cuatro, like Doeman and the Coyotes and myself, those are the homies and we make some dope records when we work together. So we're just like, let's just fucking put the records together and just put it out just to keep the music coming out, even if we're like in between label deals or tours or whatever. Let's just give people something to be a part of. Like, oh, these people fuck with each other. And I think it's cool that we're all Latinos from different areas too. I'm from the East Coast, Doeman's from Texas and Coyotes are from out here in LA. I think it's cool that we all just kind of formed up.
Validated: Yeah. Absolutely. Now I know in some cases, you're not a huge fan of the label and distributions in some of the industry. There was a time when you had some things going on with Violator, rest in peace, Chris Lighty, Empire, I know we talked about a little bit earlier, Roze from MMG had reached out at one point. Why do you feel those situations didn't pop, and what is your current status as an artist? Do you have an independent label home? Are you just fully independent on your own? What's going on in that area?
Emilio Rojas: So I'm fully independent, self-funded too. I'm making everything work on my own. As far as those situations not popping, I think ultimately the responsibility is mine. We didn't...I. I'm going to stop saying we. I was not. I think it's a combination of me not being emotionally ready for things and kind of the universe knowing that. And then I also just didn't have my shit together. So when Ross reached out, I just didn't have my shit together. I should have made it a point to make sure I was around him and turning in records and getting records done. And it was one of those things where I was like, well, he reached out, let's wait for this to pan out, instead of me just activating. And that's something I learned in hindsight. And same with any of those situations. You really have to know how to maneuver in those systems. And I think if you don't understand how the systems work, then you have to be prolific enough with your delivery of music and content to eventually learn the system the right way. So if you don't understand, you've got to have enough shit ready to go where eventually you're going to understand. And I just think I didn't. I wasn't meeting my potential creatively, I wasn't creating as much as I could have. From a brand perspective, I didn't have my branding together. I didn't have the right team around me. I didn't have proper people on my team. I was leaving a lot of the business to people who maybe had their own best interests in mind instead of my best interest in mind, and instead of me being hand-on and realizing that early on, I just kind of was like hands off and just super trusting, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in any business, you need to take ownership. And I didn't take enough ownership of what was going on in my life at the time. And then my personal life, between the stuff with Chris and just other situations in my life, I just wasn't equipped to do what I needed to do and I just didn't execute the way I should have. I mean, I'll take the full blame. That shit was all on me.
Validated: How do you feel about the space that you're in today?
Emilio Rojas: I feel like creatively, I'm in a good space. One thing that I did cave a little bit to while I was in like the various distribution or label situations was trying to play the industry game a little bit, where I was altering the type of content that I was delivering. And while it might've sounded good, I don't feel like it was authentic to me on a human level. Like what we talked about earlier. I feel much more passionate about making statements with my music than just making dance records or making somebody feel good when they're getting ready to go out. That's not an affront to them. That has a place and there's value for that as well. Making people feel good is valuable, but I just don't think that's one of my strengths. I think one of my strengths is making people think and I shied away from that. I tried to play in a league that maybe wasn't really for me instead of just doing me. And now that I'm free, I rediscovered, I rekindled my passion for the creative. I'm telling stories in my music. For example, I skateboarded my whole life and I never made that a part of my branding because I thought, oh, it was corny. But I skate good, you know? So now, I'm just like, man, fuck it. I'm in LA, I'm skating with all the homies every day anyways, I might as well share that every once in a while and incorporate that into what I'm doing because it's authentic. So now there's much more of an emphasis on me doing things that are just a hundred percent authentically Emilio instead of me trying to please people or deliver what I think the label will open a budget for.
Validated: Absolutely. I definitely put you on that. I actually heard you on Bootleg Kevin. You were talking about skating and how it helps your anxiety because it helps you focus and block out everything that's going on around you. Because you definitely don't want to bust your ass when you when you...
Emilio Rojas: Exactly. You stop paying attention, you die.
Validated: Yeah, absolutely. So your Monday motivation series is pretty dope and we know you drink your coffee black because you're not a bitch. What inspired you to want to do that? I mean, I know you always like to make people think, but what made you say let me do a Monday motivation, let me try to inspire people every week?
Emilio Rojas: Because I needed to hold myself accountable. Like I said, one of the things that has been my Achilles heel throughout my career is me, right? So I figured if I put myself in a situation where I had to hold myself accountable publicly, that's not something that I could easily back out of, you know?
Validated: Definitely.
Emilio Rojas: So a lot of times, not even a lot of times, every single time that I do one of those things, it's literally something that I was thinking about in regard to applying it to my own life. And then I'm like, well, maybe I should share this.
Validated: Right. So it's kind of putting yourself on blast in reverse. Like I'm talking about this so I got to live it.
Emilio Rojas: Yep, exactly.
Validated: Absolutely. So what's next for Emilio Rojas? What's on the horizon? What are you working on? Merch, anything that you got popping that you want people to know about?
Emilio Rojas: So I got tons of merch on emiliorojas.com. And like I said, this is fully self-funded, fully independent, so go grab some shit, whoever's watching this. Also, more importantly, I got a bunch of new music. I'm working on a project with my producer, homies out of Miami Playback. It's super fucking dope. We're about 60% to 70% done with a project that's kind of like rage against the machine. So it's me, my homie Ricky, he's in a band called Ice Nine Kills, my homie Ronnie, who's in a band called Mammoth, and then my boy Chris, who's like a super dope drummer. He was the drummer for good Charlotte Jameson, all those people back in the day. And then my boy Alec, who's an incredible producer and DJ. We've been working on this kind of rap rock project, but it's not like Machine Gun Kelly Emo. I'm going to just be a hundred percent honest. I love Rage Against the Machine. So I'm just like, man, I want to do exactly what Rage did. I don't even want to make it sound different. I'm just like, Rage hasn't dropped in 20 years and there's a lot of new that's happened in the world so let's just do what Rage would've done now. And that's what we did. And it's actually probably the music I'm most excited for because I really got to talk my shit, which I'm excited about. And the records, the energy of like the rock element just makes it feel like...I don't know, I feel like it adds extra emphasis to the political message, if that makes sense.
Validated: Right, that does make sense.
Emilio Rojas: Yeah, it reinforces the angst. So those are what we got cracking now and I'm just really excited. I'm really excited.
Validated: Beautiful. Yo Emilio, man, thank you so much for taking your time out and joining me on The Essence. This is also going to be on Validated Magazine. It's actually going to be transcribed for the mag so I'll definitely hit you up when that drops. But yeah man, keep making people think, bro. I think we're kind of missing that in Hip Hop. Everything is so microwave nowadays and nobody's thinking.
Emilio Rojas: I couldn't agree more. Even the lyrical cats, and this is no shot man, but everybody just kind of sticks in their lane and nobody's doing any thought-provoking shit. If you're rapping for girls, you're rapping for girls, if you're rapping about drugs, it's cocaine every run. It's just like this music is important and it's always been important and I think we lost sight of it because we got so focused on the metrics.
Validated: Yeah. Crazy man. This is the 50th year of Hip Hop man. And it's funny because the establishment now wants to be a part of it. And I'm a first-generation Hip Hop baby, born in the Bronx, moved out to Queens, so I remember a lot of shit from back in the day when nobody even wanted to touch this culture. And now everybody wants to be a part of it. And I think that artists and fans and just people in general need to realize that they're only a part of it because they feel like they're getting something out of it. And we need to constantly keep that in our mind and we need to talk about it. I mean, it is what it is. Not trying to stop anybody's bag or anything, but we need people that are going to say something that needs to be said and I appreciate you for that, bro.
Emilio Rojas: Well, thank you, man. Thank you for recognizing it. It means a lot for real.