ETERNAL is out now!
Image: @shotbydannn.
New Zealand rapper, Rella has dropped his debut album, ETERNAL. To celebrate the release, the musician has shared with MILKY five things he learnt whilst making the body of work.
SELF CONFIDENCE IN VOCAL ABILITY
I think my voice has seen some improvement recording this album, it feels like something has changed and its become easier to hit the things I want to hit, or at least recognise why if I’m not able to. It was hard before and it’s still hard now but for not really being a natural singer, even a little bit of improvement is sick. A lot of the songs on the album were quite difficult for me to record too, and so to be honest I don’t know if I could’ve got them to where they are now even a year ago.
TRUST IN SELF
I think it’s tricky when what you’re trying to do all day is just create songs or think up new songs out of the blue. There were some days recording where I would try all day to get something, beat myself up because it didn’t happen only to then come in the next day and get it in the first 30 minutes. Learning to say “all good, you’ll just get that shit tomorrow man” instead of getting down and stressing out really made a big difference in consistency and emotional stability I think.
THE SONGS AN ARTIST LIKES PERSONALLY AREN’T ALWAYS THE MOST POPULAR WITH FANS
It’s interesting because a lot of the songs on here that I don’t like as much as others are for some people their favourite tracks and vice versa. It’s good I think when there isn’t just one clear favourite from fans on the album, it shows a little versatility and consistency across the tracks. When I was doing the track listing, I’d asked for feedback from friends and what I got back were track lists all wildly different. It was cool to even in the early stages be getting feedback where each person seemed to like different songs for different reasons. Just goes to show that writing songs is one thing, but being able to accurately determine what songs people will like is another thing entirely.
AN ALBUM IS POSSIBLE
Another big thing I learned was that I could actually do an album. You always think you can, and there’s always enough songs there to just slap together into a big collection but actually finishing a cohesive project is never something you know you can do until you actually do it I think. It’s a good feeling to just have a little time capsule out there forever. Something that hopefully will be found for years to come. Singles are cool , but i feel a lot of artists are remembered by the albums they drop so it’s sick to even have that opportunity
EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON
The last thing I’ve learned from this album is that everything happens for a reason. Some of the really hard things that happened this year definitely shaped this project, and so it makes it a little easier to deal with when looking back because of what came out of it. It doesn’t make it all go away but it definitely changes the way you look back on things and helps things make a little more sense. It helps me have a bit more faith in things going forward because even if what happens sucks, I’ll more than likely end up making a song about it and for me that’s okay.
ETERNAL is out now!