There’s no single method behind the work of Young Meepa. Songs begin wherever they have to — emotion, sound, frustration, or memory — and are finished when they feel complete enough to survive. In this interview, they unpack that process and the contradictions that shape it.
When you look back at a project like MXTPE #1: birth, can you walk us through how a track usually begins for you? Is it a lyric, a feeling, a sound, or something more practical, and how does that raw starting point turn into a finished song?
Honestly, sorry if this sounds a bit all over the place, I still haven’t found a single format or method that really works for me. I kind of just let things happen as they happen.
I actually went back and listened to a few tracks from MXTPE #1: birth recently, and even though it’s only been out since around October 20th, it already feels really old to me. Most of it, at least. The exceptions are “BCA (Bug Chasers Anonymous)” and some of the black metal and country/trap pieces.
“Lil blue bag$,” especially, feels different. That track is tied to six or seven years of my life — moving between cities, living in squats, losing laptops that had versions of it on them, then randomly finding older files again. At a certain point, I was so afraid of losing it that the last five versions were literally just one .wav file that I kept recording new sounds over. Eventually, I realized I needed to release something with permanence, just so it could finally exist outside of me.
So to answer your question, tracks really start in different ways. Some songs are easy — I’ll start with a beat, or I’ll be pissed off about the cops or the system, do one freestyle, and that’s it. Bam, song done.
Tracks, like “Lil blue bag$,” are way more symbolic for me. I don’t know if that makes total sense, but that’s honestly how it works for me.
Do titles help you organize your thoughts while making a project, or do they arrive after the chaos has already been sorted out?
Definitely both, I don’t know how to answer that with what I just said above.
Because you write, produce, engineer, and perform everything yourself, how do you know when a song is “done”? What tells you it’s reached its final form?
I honestly just know, lol, or I’m just afraid I’m going to lose whatever laptop I currently have FL Studio on. And yes, I use FL Studio (hint hint… sponsor me?).
What do you think about sound and texture in your work? Are there moments where the sound itself carries meaning before the lyrics even arrive?
Yeah, definitely. Sound and texture matter a lot to me. I’ve been really influenced by the production style you hear in a lot of Pop Smoke tracks, like “Dior” or “Welcome to the Party.” I think the producer behind a lot of that sound was British — 808Melo.
What really pulls me in isn’t necessarily what’s being said lyrically in those songs — lines like “I’m a thot, get me lit, gun on my hip.” Don’t get me wrong, it’s dope, but for me, the real impact comes from the mood and the texture of the sound itself.
Do you have any rituals or habits that help you enter a focused creative state, or is it more reactive to what’s happening in your life at the moment?
It’s more of a reaction or like a semi/demi permanent state, lol, like being a drug addict I have ups and downs and sometimes more ups and alotta the time more downs.
Your music carries a lot of anger, but it also insists on empathy. How do those two things coexist for you without canceling each other out?
It is very difficult. Um I think everyone deserves a chance to be heard (unless you’re a hater ass fascist/racist), however when I see like homies and myself going through abject poverty and I can’t help but feel very angry about the people that make money off of us living in those conditions and also feel bad and understanding about what me and my friends are going through.
At what point did misanthropy stop being a feeling and start becoming the framework for the entire project? Was there a moment where the album “named itself”?
Oh for sure, I always knew I was going to call some major project misanthropy, but it seemed like such a natural and f—ing brutal progression from birth to literally hating the entire human race, while at the same time, not gonna lie, I feel bad, and I always tell my boo, one thing can be two or three things all at once and be multifaceted.
Total independence gives you complete narrative control, but it can also be isolating. What do you gain by working alone, and what does it cost you?
It’s incredibly isolating like I have no one to hold me accountable except for other people depending on securing the bag too lol. But I’m kinda a control freak especially when my narrative is involved . Because I’ve been manipulated/gaslit, totally had my entire experience changed by someone who was profiting in some way off of my experience being their interpretation.
How do you view current trends in underground rap and punk-adjacent music? Are they meaningful shifts, or just new aesthetics attached to old structures?
Tbh I’ve only really been exposed lately to sh–t me and my friends/boo listen to, cause I’m usually wrapped up in my own music rabbit hole. And that’s like a mixture lately of like 80s anarcho UK punk (think like Crass Records and Mortarhate Records), R&B (cause Chicago ya know?) and basic ass current pop music, and some leftover crack.
You’ve described MXTPE #3: dystopia as deeply intentional in its structure and symbolism. Without giving too much away, what questions were you trying to ask yourself while making it?
To paint a picture of exactly what we are living in and under and around right f—ing now, it’s super dope and very dark. Life sucks. Peace.
What remains clear is an approach built around independence and intention. By working alone and resisting fixed structures, Young Meepa maintains control over both sound and narrative.
