Q&A: Kansas City Duo The Black Creatures Raise the Bar for Themselves With Genre-Bending New Single “CRIMINAL”

Q&AMusic

Jul 12

☆ BY CHARLOTTE ISIDORE ☆

GENRES ARE INHERENTLY RESTRICTIVE — but how do you market something that is limitless? A constant battle of The Black Creatures, this duo tries to not narrow themselves when they write and produce music while honing on clear themes. Hailing from Kansas City, MO, The Black Creatures, made up of Jade Green and Xavier, are a dynamic musical duo challenging the way people define artists.

Often blending contemporary styles of pop, hip-hop, dance, R&B, EDM, and soul with cinematic and storytelling sci-fi/fantasy elements and themes, The Black Creatures have an ever-evolving sound that grows with them. They intertwine personal experiences with more heavy topics in order to tell the lesser-explored perspectives of the world. With courage and creativity, the duo tackles topics such as fascism, police brutality, and the deep-rooted effects of slavery in a rhythmic fashion. Their latest single, “CRIMINAL,” has a somber, sobering melody, breathtaking vocals, and hard-hitting lyrics, showcasing the complexity of their production.

The Black Creatures are set to release their new album, BY THY HAND, on Aug. 12 and have shows planned all around the country to perform their new music. Keep an eye out for the “CRIMINAL” music video coming out July 22.

Luna sat down with Xavier to talk about “CRIMINAL,” the themes the band explores, and the Kansas City music scene. Read below to hear more about this magical duo and their new song, “CRIMINAL.”

LUNA: Congratulations on the release of the new single, “CRIMINAL.” What was going through your head when you came up with the idea for this song originally?

XAVIER: We were actually in the middle of writing the entire album, BY THY HAND, and there were songs that I had instrumentals for that I would send to Jade and have them write, and [there] were lyrics that Jade had for me that I was having to write instrumentals for, and there was some stuff that we had half of both things.

With “CRIMINAL” specifically, we initially had just the first 30 seconds because we were in the middle of getting a bunch of stuff done, trying to do everything simultaneously, and I didn't know what we wanted the song to be about. I had been racking my brain on it for a really long time while writing other stuff. Then I remembered that I had just finished this anime called Akudama Drive — “akudama” means criminal, and “drive” means motivational drive — so I imagined the intention of the mangaka or the original creator of the manga and the story person for the anime. I think she intended it to be like a criminal element. So in that anime, people who are criminals go by what specific crimes they commit regularly — there was a guy named Courier because he carried things from one place to another, there was a person named Murderer, and so on and so forth.

I realized the feeling of the instrumental that I had at the beginning was pretty somber. So I thought that it would be cool for us to take on that theme, of taking on the name and persona of what is given to you by society, what is given to you by authority, and just owning that — owning that in such a way that it kind of highlights the fact that if anybody can call you this at any time, and declare you a bad person or a criminal, then that can happen to anyone at any time. And that's something we should acknowledge.

When I pitched it to Jade, they really liked it. So we workshopped a bunch of lyrics, we finally landed on some stuff that we liked, and now we have “CRIMINAL.”

LUNA: That's amazing. It's really cool to see how it's all collaged together. Y’all have lots of old ideas coming out and brewing with new ideas.

XAVIER: Right? I was nervous about rehashing old ideas in this new way. I don't want to say that I was directly inspired by this anime because I knew about this concept and people talked about it — I read literature and experienced it before this anime. But the thing that specifically spoke to me in that anime was using your crime as your name rather than your [actual] name, since they're gonna do it anyway. So I was like, “That's really cool — let's make that the theme but talk about the stuff that we've read about and we see on the daily.”

LUNA: So, basically contextualizing it into your own lives?

XAVIER: Yeah, exactly.

LUNA: That's super cool. Collaboration is obviously key to your project. What do you think makes y'all such a great duo? And separately, how do you work through creative conflict together, if you ever have any?

XAVIER: We often do. But because of the way that we work together, we see it (creative conflict) as a necessary element sometimes because it forces us to be creative, to solve the problem of having contention at all. And that oftentimes fuels a better idea — Jade pitches an idea and I pitch an idea that's basically counter to that, and we're both like, “Well, I want to do mine,” “Well, I want to do mine.” So we both need to come up with something better. If we both equally think that our position is better then we individually need to come back and say, “Okay, what's better than both of those ideas?”

We have a lot of ideas that are ambitious. And I think what is really good for us, as far as a partnership goes, is that Jade will have these ideas and I will have these ideas and it's up to our partner — me or Jade — to help facilitate that thing in support of it. This is a really hard thing to do, so how are we going to do it? And because we're so different, it challenges us a lot to become better at what we do.

Before I met Jade, if I continued making music I don't think that I would have become as good of a producer as I am today, or writer, even. I wasn't writing lyrics before. Jade was writing all the lyrics for a while and then I had some ideas here and there and that blew up into both of us co-writing a lot of the songs, and then me even writing whole songs. So yeah, it's like it's a lot of back and forth. We have a lot of different tools for different types of songs that we even come up with. It's cool to have that dynamic.

LUNA: Yeah, that sounds like a really beautiful partnership that is especially rare in the music industry. It sounds like y'all have this very genuine relationship that is not just uplifting each other as people but also as artists, pushing each other in the right ways. Would you agree?

XAVIER: Oh, yes. Jade has definitely gotten back to me with some notes on an instrument and said, “Hey, can you change this about this? Because I don't think this conveys the criteria that we talked about a week ago.” And they would bring some lyrics to me sometimes and I’d be like, “Hey, I know you can write better. I’ve seen it.” And they're like, “You’re right.”

LUNA: You need those people!

XAVIER: Absolutely! It's easy to be an artist who is told, “Oh, this is dope,” because a lot of people see art and think, “I can't see myself doing that.” So they'll hype up everybody all the time because they don't really think about how they would really care about this thing. They're not very invested. I think that it is not just good because someone's pursuing it. There's the why, the how, the what — that is just as important. Honestly, I would prefer to be told my shit stinks rather than it's all good in here.

LUNA: Totally — constructive criticism is key and often lacking. Your community in Kansas City seems to be a really important part of your artistry. How would you describe the music scene there, to anyone who might not be familiar?

XAVIER: I think it's really cool because it's very unlike how I understand New York and LA to be. Everybody goes to New York and LA to get their time to shine, and when they get there, everybody who's already there has been trying to do the same thing. And so it is a very competitive place to be, to try to be an artist or literally anything else.

Kansas City is a big city but we act like it's a small town in such a way that the art community here is entirely uplifting. There is not even a shred of competition. Like, I don't think diss tracks happen here. It's all family over here, and that's really cool. Despite the fact that there are so many different genres of artistry — I've gone to house shows where there's a punk show and a rapper and a noise band and they're all just dabbing it up high fiving and giving hugs. Like, that’s just what they planned to do. So I really welcome anybody who either is here or who's coming here — if they're an artist — to get into the scene because there's a whole lot of love and a whole lot of opportunities to not only collaborate but just to uplift each other.

LUNA: That’s so amazing, and so rare. More on community care, how do you take care of one another as a duo in a fast-paced, often apathetic and exploitative environment like the music industry?

XAVIER: We definitely try to watch out for each other in terms of how we take up space or how we will be received in a space because we're two queer black people. But even then in those similarities, there are some differences in the way not only how we have to just handle our own selves but how other people perceive and interact with us. So we definitely try to watch out for each other in that way, just because as queer black people living in the city, sometimes shit hits the fan. Fortunately, never when we're around, but whenever we hear about it, we're like, “Oh, let's not let that happen to us.” And that's just us being like, yes, we're out working to perform at a venue and the like; we're still just patrons, for the service staff and stuff — and that stuff still happens.

As far as specifically in the music industry, when we first got our first opportunity for a contract, I read all of the details from back to front. I asked some colleagues who were in law school and a lawyer friend to read it for us just in case as well. And like, reading it front to back, I was like, “There are no problems, Jade, we don't have to worry about anything".

Similarly, Jade did all of the paperwork for our Charlotte Street Grant because I suck at doing competitive grant writing. And so they wrote all of our stuff and did all the paperwork for that because I don't talk about my art in that way. And lo and behold, we ended up getting the Charlotte Street Grant.

So we try to take up the strength that the other person might not have for a certain behavior or thing to fulfill that thing. And I think that that was easy for us. Because when this started, Jade was the sole singer and I was the sole producer. We knew our role, and we just expanded from there and it extended to our other avenues. Other things we had to face.

LUNA: Yeah, that's really beautiful. Another example of that yin-yang partnership working out. What themes do you enjoy exploring most in your music?

XAVIER: This is how you get me to ramble! (laughs)

LUNA: Ramble on. I love it!

XAVIER: In the beginning, we really tried to narrow down the ways that we wanted to talk about things in our music because we didn't want to limit ourselves to a finite range of experiences and ideas. But at the same time, how do you market something that is limitless as far as our artistic perception? “Oh, this can be anything?” That is just looking at a block of clay that is unmolded. So we try to tie ourselves to motifs and then from those larger motifs, like small themes that are attached to those.

The main motif was social justice — we just want to talk about social justice, and that's a large thing already so we can get to a lot of places from that. And then we want to allow room for our own personal experiences, and that fits into social justice and the next thing — we like to tell stories. All three of those things are quite vague enough, and they give us a lot of room to make other themes branch off of those. So as we talk about social justice, we talk about power imbalances or relationships to authority [and] black people's experiences with all of those other things. And then when we talk about ourselves — I have a song about my dad, Jade has a song about an ex — we kind of allow parts of our own personal experiences to blend into our political songs and our storytelling songs. In our storytelling songs, we talk about space — we have a whole song that's just relating the experience of knowing cosmic stuff to romance. We try to talk about all kinds of stuff because it's fun.

What's interesting is that when we're writing something, I know that I start from this point of being like, “What do I want to say?” and that's my restriction because if you could do anything, you will do anything. And that's nothing to eat, that's nothing for anybody. So I do give myself a restriction when I'm writing or producing. Interestingly enough, it weirdly complements Jade and the openness of how they write and sing and how they have these ideas. I guess we just kind of fit musically and artistically like a puzzle piece.

LUNA: That is once again so lovely. What influences your music most? It could be artists, people, places, things?

XAVIER: From a production standpoint, I'm influenced by movie scores, video game soundtracks, and pop music. I love pop music that's fun. While I don't want to pigeonhole the experience of Jade — I know that it's way bigger and more abstract than I could possibly put into words — I would say that for them, it is stories that can only be told by people who have experienced quite a lot. That is the stuff that motivates them and inspires them. We both really love sci-fi fantasy movies and books. So I can say that for sure. Jade reads a lot, so I would say books in general — fiction and nonfiction.

LUNA: Looking into the future, do you have any projects or songs or even things outside of music that you're looking at that you're excited about?

XAVIER: I'm super excited about the “CRIMINAL” music video coming out. I'm super excited for us to go out of town on tour. We have shows coming up soon in Oklahoma, Colorado, and other places. We're trying to go out of town just to get some new ears onto our stuff. We want to go see some new places. And I'm excited about this release because I think that the idea is to always just be more of The Black Creatures. So, lots ahead in terms of music videos, tours, and releases.

CONNECT WITH THE BLACK CREATURES

INSTAGRAM

SPOTIFY

Listen

INSTAGRAM

We couldn’t be more stoked to have Suriel Hess as our new headliner for our upcoming LA show 🤩 🫶 Not gonna lie, us & Notorious Noise kinda went OFF with this line up & you’re not gonna wanna miss it - ticket link in bio 🎫