To close 2024, we’re focusing on Mutant Academy, a Richmond rap collective that had a strong calendar year and is looking to push even further after the release of Keep Holly Alive, a November project that the crew views as its first official group album. The nine-man collective features rappers Big Kahuna OG, Henny L.O., and rapper-producer Fly Anakin, as well as fellow producers Ohbliv, Graymatter, Foisey, Sycho Sid, Ewonee, and Unlucky Bastards. They’ve collaborated among one another on dozens of projects since their 2014 formation, but the 18-track project is the first album that extensively features every MC and production from throughout the group. Over Zoom, they tell Rolling Stone that the project is the start of a new era in which they plan to flood the streets with more solo projects and another group album. They also talked about their formative years at Holly, and their collective growth as MCs.
“We definitely started building a new road that’s called Mutant Academy Street, and we just broke the concrete on that bitch,” Big Kahuna says. Though they’ve been working on the project since before Covid quarantine, the guys say they recently experienced urgency to begin fulfilling their recent deal with Roc Nation Distribution, and a contagious creative motivation from being in proximity to one another.
“Niggas was farming music in the group chat,” Henny recalls. “A motherfucker [would] put a beat pack in that shit [and] I’m sending joints back in an hour. We just started working and it was [like], ‘All right, we need to all link up, man.’”
Mutant Academy had an entirely different album ready to go five years ago, but due to changing times, and members they declined to name being excommunicated from the group, they decided to rerecord the project. While they crew in Richmond, members have since branched out to L.A. and Atlanta, where they linked up on a couple occasions to craft what became Keep Holly Alive, a tribute to the one-bedroom apartment they shared for five years.
The project is a blend of charismatic, lyrically driven spitters that display sharp lyricism over warm, traditionalist soundscapes, with songs ranging from “Liberation,” featuring Quelle Chris, to the soulful “Too Accessible,” whose tagline comes from Ewonee leaving his lighter out where it can be stolen. Anakin, who pushed his solo album back to give Keep Holly Alive breathing room, says that while Holly is no longer their physical headquarters, it’s a mindset they all share. “Now, Holly is more so an attitude. It’s a feeling. As long as you got a Max B playlist and about a half [zip] of weed.”
How are y’all feeling about the reception to the project?
Big Kahuna OG: Streets calling it new classic. Streets calling it nostalgic.
Fly Anakin: I think it is been good. It is been some positive stuff. I seen some negative stuff too.
Big Kahuna OG: What you seen that’s negative? Hold on, let’s air it out.
Fly Anakin: This one dude put a little review up and he said he’s heard hip hop like that before. Good nigga.
Henny L.O.: I also seen the nigga say he was a fan of you but he didn’t like the album.
Fly Anakin: I booed that nigga.
That’s a crazy bar for greatness. How often do you hear music that you feel like you’ve never heard before?
Big Kahuna OG: It’s not often.
Henny L.O.: You could tell he listened to it real quick and just wanted to say something.
Fly Anakin: He called us Mutant Gang.
Henny L.O.: You see what I’m saying? Come on bro.
Fly Anakin: He always reviewing people’s stuff. He’s reviewed one of my albums before. He didn’t shit on it. He gave it a 87 and he was like, [mimicking nerd voice] “Just because I gave it a high score doesn’t mean I liked it.” [Laughter]
Henny L.O.: Yo, that was his way of saying that he a hater.
What’s the scope from zero to 87? Something could be a 51, a 63, an 87. What’s the reference point?
Fly Anakin: Everything on here I see is 87. He gave GloRilla a 70. He gave Elucid a 35.
Henny L.O.: Damn.
Fly Anakin: Yeah, I don’t care what he got to say.
Now that you dropped the album, does it feel like a breakthrough, like a new chapter, anything of that sort?
Fly Anakin: It feels like a new start. We just started from point one again.
Big Kahuna OG: Yeah, definitely Ground zero. We breaking new ground. We definitely started building a new road that’s called Mutant Academy Street and we just broke the concrete on that bitch. We just put the sign up. This is some shit we[‘ve been] working on for a minute. So for this shit to finally come out, it feel like it’s a big deal but it feel like, “Damn.” So we just ready to move on to the next step. We ready to put people on to like, “Okay this is the real shit. That was just the door. Y’all just got through the door. So now we about to take y’all on the tour through the whole mansion. Y’all just seen the little lobby with the chandelier. That’s the first album. Now we about to go to the kitchen and we’re going to show you all the different kinds of bathrooms, the half bathrooms, the three quarter bathrooms and we got all that shit.”
Fly Anakin: I want to clean up one more thing because this nigga said it took us mad long. Technically it did take us mad long but to be factual, this album took probably three months of actual work maybe.
Big Kahuna OG: It took three months of hard focused work where everybody punching the clock at the same time on those same days.
Ewonee: But we also have to touch on the fact that there was a whole ‘nother album that was recorded and done and never came out.
Fly Anakin: Yeah, we made two albums before this album.
Henny L.O.: From my perspective, the best way I can say it is the album just getting recreated because we all went to our separate corners and was working on other shit and just came back that much, bro. It was a lot of conversations of like, “Yo bro, you got crazy here recently.” They’ll send a batch of songs and it’ll be like, “Yo, you be getting crazy lately, bro. We got to go start working on this again.” It just was that a lot of time.
So you said there was a whole previous album. What made y’all decide not to run with that one?
Fly Anakin: Shit was old.
Big Kahuna OG: Man, age.
What did quarantine do for y’all creatively?
Fly Anakin: FlySiifu happened during quarantine. That saved my life, number one. I think that shit fucked me up on the internet because I don’t know how to internet no more.
How so?
Fly Anakin: I’m not comfortable just being on my story. If I’m not doing something, I feel like I can’t be on the internet. If I’m just chilling, I can’t even show myself.
Big Kahuna OG: You got to keep it to yourself. You don’t have to, but this is what I feel like happened. Even when covid first hit, we was still like, “Oh yeah, we all around each other so we going to be posting on social media.” But everybody got tired of doing the same thing, posting up on the same block for so long that we had to stop broadcasting to the public. We didn’t want to overexpose the shit. And now niggas is just too much in that realm where we’re like, “Yeah, we don’t want to overexpose shit.” So even when we link up now, make an album, we being secretive about that shit because in that mode. So now we gotta reboot because I was like, “Damn, we can’t be secretive when we just dropped the album and knowing that we about to flood this shit.”
Hopefully we having conversations like this five, six, seven times next year when [we’re] dropping consistently. So we going to have to learn how to get back in that same grind that we was in pre-covid when we was like, “Damn, this shit about to blow.” We got to literally zap ourselves back in that mindset. It’s harder because all of us even more separated now. During covid, we was more so all together in Richmond. Now, this nigga Henny in Richmond, this nigga Fly Anakin in Atlanta, I’m in fuckin’ LA and all the producers even more spread out than we used to be too. So definitely, it’s a new challenge. Definitely crazy new challenge.
Fly Anakin: But this is the most pure version of Mutant Academy. This is the version of Mutant Academy that’s going to take it all way.
Big Kahuna OG: Yeah, this is no filler. All killer, no filler Mutant Academy now. I don’t think niggas going to make any other changes unless a nigga get fat and move to Miami. For real. This is it.
You said it was a three-month period that y’all really locked in and I’m guessing recorded. What spurred y’all to collectively be like, “Let’s really get to it and lock in and put this shit together?”
Big Kahuna OG: Man, if you want to know the real deal, no frills. This why: We signed the deal, been in the deal for almost a year and ain’t dropped no shit yet. We like, “Nigga!”
Fly Anakin: We’d been spending all this money.
Big Kahuna OG: Hell, yeah. How we have a deal for this long and our favorite rapper is Curren$y and we ain’t dropped shit in the whole year? We disrespecting our legacy and everything that we grew up on. We respect our own inspiration. We need to get on this shit, nigga. Why we being lazy now?
Fly Anakin: That’s why we got so many big flies. We’re trying to match that Max B.
Big Kahuna OG: Yeah, that’s definitely why niggas was like, “Okay, hold on. Let’s just do this shit right the fuck now. It’s the fuck all the way in, nigga. I don’t want to be in a deal for a year and not drop shit.” So that’s why I round probably.
Fly Anakin: I had to push the rush on some too because my album getting ready to come out. It was supposed to come out around now next month. But I wanted to push that shit back so the gang can start releasing their albums at the top of next year and shit like that. So it was really a power play and we’ve been talking about doing it for so long but nobody ever was just like, “Yo, we doing it right now.” I was like, “We’re going to do this shit, ASAP.”
Big Kahuna OG: That’s something we need to figure out more. I mean we got it figured out more, but that’s something that we can figure out, who going to be the ones to push the button and then everybody be like, “Yeah, let’s push it?”
So before that first link up when was the last time y’all had all been together before that?
Ewonee: 2019. That nigga [Big Kahuna OG] had that spot. Nigga was all chilling in [Kahuna’s] spot, smoking, making a lot of music.
Big Kahuna OG: We made “Scheme Sunday” there. “Scheme Sunday” is the main joint that we have on the album from them sessions.
Ewonee: Some of them verses just got recycled. Some of them verses got recycled this year.
What was the vibe like linking back together, being in that same creative space?
Ewonee: At first, that shit was lit.
Fly Anakin: It was natural though. I feel like it took [us] talking. Niggas just link up, laugh a little bit, talk about something, start making songs back to back on some bored shit. And then we just pick what we fuck with the most out of it. But that’s usually where the songs come from, just kicking it, because we got studios and shit now.
Henny L.O.: We was talking prior to that too, so it wasn’t like we just decided to link and we wasn’t talking. We really brothers.
How did y’all all connect with each other just initially? I’m assuming y’all grew up with each other.
Fly Anakin: I met this nigga Henny L.O., when I was 13 in middle school. He was rapping already. This nigga was passing out mixtapes on the last day of school. He was trying to run off. Yeah, nigga made a mix tape. Over the summer, I was listening to that bitch and I was just like, “How the fuck did [he] do this shit?” So it ended up being a thing where I got a PlayStation 3 and that was the only way I had access to the internet because I didn’t have a computer until 2009. And I hit that nigga up on Bebo and we kicked it in person and we made music from then on. That was 2008.
Henny L.O.: Yeah, no funny shit. The skit off good kid, m.A.A.d city. Nigga was like, “I got a pack of Blacks and a beat CD.” He really pulled up with the beats.
Fly Anakin: I really did. You were ripping J Armz [instrumental CDs]. First beat I rapped on. I met [Henny] in ’08 and then, I got to throw [Ewonee] in because E was the third member. He just wasn’t official until 2015. But this nigga E was the first nigga we worked with as far as people that’s in the group right now. Because me and Henny dropped the first Mutant Academy album in 2014, 2013. And he was on that joint. We played him on SoundCloud. That was the first nigga and the only nigga I ever paid for a beat.
Ewonee: Shit. Y’all were some of the first people that bought beats from me, for sure. If not probably the first.
Henny L.O.: Me, E and my two older brothers made an album back then that niggas lost. That’s how much bread I spent with this nigga. Damn, this one joint that I think about every now and again. It’s just like, bro, if I could just have that fuckin’ beat.
Ewonee: But that’s SoundCloud times.
Fly Anakin: Yeah, there’s of shit niggas lost. I lost so much shit.
Ewonee: Who was inducted into the group after me?
Henny L.O.: I feel like that was [ULB Worldwide] and [Kahuna].
Fly Anakin: E joined the group officially. So we picked niggas or whatever. The reason why [ULB Worldwide] is here is because of a person that is no longer around, the reason why Sycho Sid is in the group is because of Henny. And the reason why Foisey is around because of me. We all picked one producer apiece and then I told E about it. E was like, “Yo, why the fuck y’all not going to pick me, nigga? I’ve been around this whole time.” So I was like, “Damn.”
Henny L.O.: We became friends, dog. It was just making music with the homies bro.
Fly Anakin: Since Unlucky Bastards was in the group, Graymatter was always around and we worked with Graymatter. I worked with low key Graymatter before I worked with Unlucky and we was at Unlucky’s homie crib shooting our very first video or my very first video I ever shot in my life. And this nigga played a Graymatter beat. And I was like, “Damn, this shit hard.” We ended up recording over that and then we shot a video to that song a week later and then that shit ended up on The Source and Graymatter’s been around since then. So we put him in the group but at the same time Big Kahuna OG had just moved back to Richmond from Buffalo and this nigga was always with recording. He always with us and shit. Him and Graymatter making albums and shit. I’m like, “These niggas is a package deal.” So we brought them in and Ohbliv was just like a no-brainer because we all love him. You know what I mean?
So for the MCs, would you say your formative chapters as lyricists was building with each other?
Fly Anakin: Definitely because niggas just sharpened each other off the strength.
Big Kahuna OG: Yeah, but niggas had they own. [Anakin and Henny] was doing their thing when I was doing that shit by myself on my own time in Richmond and in Buffalo, but didn’t even know them. So by the time I linked with these niggas, all of us had already put in somewhere between six and 10 years of making music on our own. So by the time we linked up, niggas was already like, “Okay, you got your own swag, you got your own swag, I got my own swag. We all get on the song, this shit going crazy just off the strength.” And we all like similar beats so shit is mad easy. And then just like these niggas said, they always had producers all around. So we all just used to make music no matter what. Whether you got a great day going, bad day going, whether you got school that day, whether you fuckin’ off school, whether you got a new game or not, you probably going to think about making music throughout the day. That was niggas’ plan A without knowing we had plans. At least for me.
Fly Anakin: Yeah, I’ve been neglecting all my other plans this whole time. I ain’t going to lie. My brother thought I was an idiot for years.
Pursuing your rap career?
Fly Anakin: Yeah, because to the naked eye it looks like I’m not doing shit at all times. It don’t take much for me to be in my phone writing or even on the computer making a beat. So that nigga would come and pull up on me once or twice a week and he would see me just in my chair just on the computer. He’d be like, “You need to drive trucks, nigga.” But I’m like, “Nah, I’m good. I’m going to figure this shit out.” And now the conversation different because he’s proud of a nigga and he know that my way working. But I’m just like, “Yeah, I never believed in my plan B because I’m like, ‘If that shit is a thing then my plan A probably ain’t even that serious to me.’ I kept neglecting everything else to do this shit and I guess it worked out. But nigga, yeah. Nobody wanted me to do this. My family wanted me to get a real job.
Henny L.O.: Like dead ass, bro. That shit crazy, bro. I really watch this man be like, “Yeah, nah, bro. Fuck all that.” He be like, “I feel you. Go ahead and get your little cushion. I’m about to go fuck the game up. I’m about to go put on for the city real.”
Fly Anakin: Bro, we got our first jobs at the same time. I worked at Best Buy, this nigga was working at HS Grant and that’s when I realized there ain’t no faith in being a company man. Because that’s when I realized they got to sell shit just to get hours. If you not selling, you not getting on the schedule. That fucked my mind up. I’m like, “Nigga, hell no.” And I done had countless jobs. I done held jobs for years and shit. But they got to the point where I’m just like, “Nigga, there’s no way in hell I’m going to do this and this at the same time when I’m putting all this energy because I don’t have energy to do both of those. So it’s got to be one.”
Henny L.O.: And me, I just conditioned myself to do it. It is like, “Yo, until the rap shit can replace not just the bread but the lifestyle, then I’m a just do what I do.” I said, “Fuck school,” though.
Fly Anakin: I used to be at work feeling like a fuckin’ idiot. And then I started working at this hospital and niggas really started noticing who I was. I was a transporter. I used to have to work with some real interesting patients sometime. I was in the ICU, I don’t even want to go too far into detail, but [someone] had a tube coming in his neck and it was pumping out the poo, bro. And while I’m trying to get this nigga back to his room, a nigga stopped me like, “Yo, you Fly Anakin?” And that shit pissed me the fuck off. I should have felt good about it but I’m like, “Nigga, one, I’m not in my element. I got on the fuckin’ work uniform right now.” Shit like that do something to your mind. It’ll just make you feel like you’re not doing enough.
What would y’all say about the Richmond music scene, specifically the Richmond hip hop scene? What was it like when y’all first started rapping and what is it like now?
Henny L.O.: Man that was non-existent damn near.
Fly Anakin: People would clown you if you said you was a rapper.
Big Kahuna OG: Yo, facts.
Henny L.O.: If you weren’t a motherfucker in the club doing shit like Three 6 or the Snap era, if you weren’t a dope boy making shit like Jeezy, niggas considered your shit garbage. We with a lot of niggas that’s out here now. Niggas is cool, niggas is good, some of them niggas is actually friends. But I feel like we made niggas be like, “Hold on, niggas is kicking.”
Big Kahuna OG: It’s cool to say you rap. It’s cool to come out here and be a rapper.
Henny L.O.: Not only that but niggas was trying to be lyrical again. And I’m not even on some purist lyrical shit but the niggas that was rapping and came from that [lyrical cloth] even started conforming all of a sudden [like], “We going to write radio joints.” And there was a select few of them that was still with it but they wasn’t on Front Street. I feel like we brought niggas outside, we helped build a renaissance. It is different now. Niggas be looking for us now type shit.
Big Kahuna OG: When I was in Richmond before 2015, it was like everybody was just more hating on each other and putting each other down. But then when I came back — I left in 2012 or some shit — I remember seeing it start to shift over. I’m like, “Oh, okay.” You go out here and do a little show and it’s going to be some people that fuck with you or you could post on the internet and people from your city will try to tap in a little bit. Come back in 2015 and it’s like, “Oh, niggas is looking for local hip hop and shit. Easy.”
Fly Anakin: The crazy shit is before the shift is you couldn’t get a show if it wasn’t in a venue. And then once the shift started happening, niggas started throwing shows in their living rooms. That’s when we really started going crazy.
Big Kahuna OG: I ain’t had no show in Richmond until I got this wack ass manager and then he put us on the show with 70 other niggas and we did not get to perform and we were standing out that bitch outside. It was like 12 of us. We had like five girls with us. We all like, “Yeah, we about to perform for the first time in Richmond and about to go down. Hell, nigga.” Shit gets to one in the morning. We like, “Yo, nigga. What the fuck? They say they about to close.” It was the day before my birthday too. Niggas was so hot. After that I was like, “I’m never paying for a manager, never doing nothing about no manager. Fuck a manager, nigga.”
Fly Anakin: Management in Richmond is not even real.
Big Kahuna OG: Yeah, all the managers of Richmond just pro finessers, nigga. You hear Richmond, you don’t know that it can go down like any place else in America.
Henny L.O.: It’s a reason why artists will skip us and go to the [757 region] or just skip Virginia, period.
Big Kahuna OG: They would definitely skip Richmond. Before they skip Virginia, they’re going to be like, “Oh yeah, we not going to Richmond.”
So can y’all break down Holly for me? That’s a spot y’all used to be it?
Big Kahuna OG: Holly was a one bedroom apartment. And at one time we was all living down bad. Me, Fly Anakin, the redacted members that we not going to talk about. Henny, Graymatter, Unlucky. Everybody else in Richmond used to live out of Holly and used to share shit. Sometime niggas down bad. Fly Anakin might have lost his hospital jobs. Nigga, fuck it. You got me, we good, nigga.
Fly Anakin: Every time I quit my job, I was over there every day. I was trying to escape my pops.
Henny L.O.: When I was trying to move back home, I stayed at Holly. When I moved, I stayed at Holly. [Fly Ankain] was up with me seven in the morning, up busy ass I-95, came back to Holly.
Fly Anakin: I was working overnight. I would leave work, go straight to Holly, we would go to the gym and then come back, smoke weed.
Ewonee: The first time I came to Holly, that might’ve been 2019. That shit had me jealous how y’all niggas was living all close to each other. I was like, “Yo, this is tight. I’m kind of mad I’m not here with niggas. Even though niggas are struggling.” I was outside looking in like, “Damn, this shit kind of fire.”
Fly Anakin: Door was always unlocked.
Big Kahuna OG: If you know the code, you can get in. If you know the code, you literally got access to the whole shit.
How long did you have that space?
Big Kahuna OG: Man, from June 2015 to December 2020. And every year the rent kept going up. I was paying $750 [the] first couple years I got in there. By the time I left I was paying like $1300 for the same apartment. Ain’t nothing changed about the apartment at all. Nigga just up that bitch $600, $700 for no reason. And then as soon as I moved out, the landlord sold it to a whole another person. And the nigga did not charge anymore. He damn near was charging less. He knocked the price down to $1200 a joint. I’m like, “Yo, fuck. I just had to move.”
Y’all were recording in there?
Fly Anakin: We recorded everything [there] for a long amount of time.
Big Kahuna OG: Just the mic in the living room, man. Everything in the living room.
Fly Anakin: That’s kind of why the album is called Keep Holly Alive, because we was keeping that bitch alive from a distance. Now, Holly is moreso an attitude. It’s a feeling. As long as you got a Max B playlist and about a half [zip] of weed…and we’d smoke all day.
So in those sessions when y’all were together, how did y’all end up aligning on themes from song-to-song?
Fly Anakin: I’m going to just say this, we have never said, “This is what the song going to be about.”
Big Kahuna OG: Niggas just light the weed and just start being quiet. I swear to God.
Fly Anakin: I don’t know why y’all do it, but this is why I do that. And this is why I ain’t never asked niggas what the song going to be about. I always felt like if my friends are my friends, no matter what, when we hear that beat that we fuck with we should probably write good ass verses to it all together. And this is me trusting niggas that have been making music since we’ve been in middle school. So I don’t feel like I should ask niggas what this song going to be about. We should just kind of know and niggas should be able to just kick that shit and just go crazy and be in their own chamber and still be on the same song.
Henny L.O.: Like “Scheme Sunday” lined up the way it did on straight accident. Me and him talked about that. I was like, “Yo, bro.”
Fly Anakin: This nigga thought I dissed him.
Henny L.O.: I didn’t think you dissed me. And if I said that, that’s not what I meant. I just thought he wa responding off something. “The problem is that Richmond shit came in, conquered the six.” And I’m like, “Oh, that’s fire. That’s perspective.” And it could be opposing. I think that’s the other thing too. We do that a lot. I don’t know if it’s subconsciously or what, sometimes a nigga say the same word. It’s like, “Damn, I thought I had one.” Because niggas got OD vernacular. So when a nigga say the same word as you, it’s like, “Hold up.”
Ewonee: Nah, Fly Anakin, we had talked about that shit the other day too. A lot of them songs came about, at least the first line or even the theme of the song came about because of some shit that happened in the day. Niggas talked about some or somebody lighter got stolen or whatever. All of that shit is based off what happened throughout niggas linking up. Watching that come together like that is cool too.
Henny L.O.: I get inspired off of a conversation. I’ll just remember something somebody said. You know what I mean? When we made “Computer Blue,” the chorus that I came up with, my chorus for the joint started off because of what my barber said to me. I was like, “Yeah, bro. This is one of the best cuts you ever gave me.” He was like, “I be trying to tell niggas the cut match every fit.” And I’m like, “I’m going to say that.” [Laughs] And I just wrote my verse when we leave. “The cut match every fit” because it’s a fact, a clean cut go with everything.
Ewonee: Me and Fly Anakin was just talking about how when niggas wrote “Too Accessible,” niggas had stole my lighter. This nigga [Kahuna] was talking about, “That shit way too accessible.” [Laughter] You stole my lighter two or three times.
Henny L.O.: And bro, I ain’t never say this. I was listening to that and I was like, “Bro, why the fuck?” My verse was fire. I feel like y’all would’ve told me if it wasn’t. [But] I went way left with that verse. I was talking about literally being an accessible person. I was not talking about the lighters.
Ewonee: That’s the beauty of it though.
What’s the beat selection process like?
Henny L.O.: Literally when everybody get quiet, somebody spark up. And I don’t smoke. So when we spark up and everybody get quiet.
Fly Anakin: Look around, be like, “Oh, all right.”
Henny L.O.: Yeah, and not for nothing. I’m like the wild obnoxious one. So I’m normally saying some dumb shit in the background, just hooting and hollering and then when everything get quiet it’s like, “Oh, all right. Bet.” Literally niggas will park up and just get to it.
Fly Anakin: You might hear one nigga be like, “No, this the one..” And if you don’t hear that, you’re going to be lost.
I was reading the interview y’all did with Cabbages and y’all were talking about how when you collaborate, it’s not a competitive thing. When do you feel like you elevated from the point of rapping to be the most lyrical versus trying to really craft a song?
Fly Anakin: Holly, being at this man crew, when we was in between listening, playing, recording or whatever, but this niggas would just play Max B all the time. And this was before I was a Max B fan. It was probably like 2018, 2019. And t got to the point where I started remembering the nigga hooks. And I’m like, “I need to start doing hooks more.” And once I realized I need to start doing hooks more, I realized how crazy this nigga [Kahuna] was. And I was like, “All right, I’m going to just keep listening to Max B.”
After that, I started making the songs that ended up being on Fly Anakin and then I really stopped giving about being competitive. Then it was like, “All right, I’m trying to make money.” It’s like before then it was like I was just doing it because I felt like I had to, but then it was like, “No, I’m at work.” From 2019 since I quit that last job, and this, I’ve been at work, for real.
Big Kahuna OG: Man, that’s a fuckin’ fact. Niggas don’t be having no time to play.
Henny L.O.: Yeah. And I don’t see no reason to compete with my brothers. Why compete with a nigga that make me better? You know what I’m saying? He just really make great music and I have an opportunity to be a part of it. You know what I’m saying?
Big Kahuna OG: I think personally, I was always just like, I used to rap. When I first started rapping with my friends and my brother and shit, it was in middle school and high school, I used to be big huge fans of just them because I used to feel they was nicer than me. Even though objectively, who knows who was nicer, but I’m like, “Damn, you nice as shit and you just being yourself on the track. That shit crazy. So I’m going to try to see what you do. What do you do that make me like you?”
And then I’ll just keep analyzing shit. And that would just make me be like, “Okay, I’m not really making music for myself. I’m trying to make music so these niggas feel the same way about me.” Only reason I ever got nice at doing hooks because my Deuce used to be just automatic with hooks. I’m like, “Damn, my hooks be sounding like I’m still rapping a verse. His joints, nigga, they catchy. On a low one, he don’t even rap the verse is catchy.” I’m like, “How you doing that?” So I’m like, “Hold on. I’m about to sit down and figure this shit out. Yeah, I don’t want to be the weak link.” So Deuce [is] the first one that made me step my hook game up.
Henny L.O.: That’s crazy that that happened because I already was doing hooks and shit like that, but you made me step my shit up. Honestly, I think that’s why “Stoolie Bop” happened the way it did because normally I’ll do a hook and I’ll be like, “Nah, your shit better.” But when you kept mine, I was proud. I ain’t never say that.
Big Kahuna OG: Yeah, no, that shit was heat.
Fly Anakin: For a long time I used to go out my way to not do hooks because I thought it was edgy. I’m like, “I don’t give a fuck. I’m just do some left field shit.” And then after while I’m like, “I want to do hooks too.” It comes in handy sometimes. I would do them on and off, [Kahuna] definitely inspired that shit. Him and Max B. It was like, I got to start making that shit that make me want to dance.
Word. And so you referenced earlier, that there’ll be a lot more msic coming. Can you break that down without giving it away? When you say flooding, is there going to be another collective album or just more solo or duo? What’s the vibe going to be?
Fly Anakin: We on some No Limit shit. It’s going to be solo albums and compilation albums and then we going to finish it up with another group album. So that’s why we pushed my shit back. Make sure this came out this year. So we would have all next year to drop. And we wanted to make sure that there was basically like a landmark for people that want Mutant Academy shit, because we’ve been here this whole time, never dropped an official album as Mutant Academy. Chapel Drive could have been dropped as Mutant Academy, but we decided to go through with redacted person. So basically what I’m saying is we needed somewhere where we could have motherfuckers to go back to and have a reference point to say, “All right, this Mutant Academy,” because we have not had that this whole time.
You could say it was Chapel Drive, you could say it was Holly Water, it was neither one of those though. That was just where we practiced what we doing right now. Them shits was practice albums I feel like, and collaborative things underneath a different branch of the gang practicing to get to this final thing. Just making it make sense why these collaborations should even matter to these people, on paper. We went to Def Jam with and didn’t get anything happening because I felt like Def Jam wanted to finesse us. They wanted me and redacted to go and do some goofy with them. But we brought everybody, them niggas was overwhelmed. That shit was weird.
It’s funny how often I’ll read stories about groups or whatever, or even the other way around. It’ll be like a solo artist and they’ll be like, “Yeah, I went to the label with my group and then they just chose me.”
Fly Anakin: Yeah. I just know how they contacted us. It was like, “Yo, what’s cool with you?” And I’m like, “Shit, we a part of a group.” Brought everybody, I don’t even think I told them we was going to do that, but we brought nine, 10 of us in that motherfucker. And we pulled up and it was like, “Damn, y’all already got everything.”
Ewonee: A good summer day. It was like hot, niggas definitely pulled up. Eager, thirsty, was like, “What do you want to know? We’ll tell.”
Fly Anakin: You know what I mean? Niggas grew up playing Def Jam: Fight for New York and. I’m like, “What?” I’m honestly very glad it didn’t happen though because I feel like that was the worst thing that could have happened for us. Maybe it could have worked, but I don’t know.
Ewonee: Nah, doesn’t work. Never works. Maybe over there. Not over here.
Have y’all thought about the grand scheme vision for Mutant Academy? Do y’all want to have a label that houses all of y’all? Do y’all want to do the Wu-Tang thing where y’all are spread out but then also a collective?
Henny L.O.: It is a little bit of everything. For real, for real. We definitely function like a label already. And we got a situation right now where we got a good partnership going. But even that structure is unique. We ain’t got to get into all the details of it or whatever have you. But as more things start to materialize, that’s when it’ll make sense. You’ll be like, “Oh, shit. They fucked the game up.” We win every time. Simple as that. We win every time.
No Filler is an indie-rap column by Andre Gee running monthly on RollingStone.com. Here are some dope songs to check out, which we’ve added to the No Filler playlist.
89TheBrainchild, “Deez Evils”
Dreebo feat. Ian Kelly, “Timeless”
Larussell, “Hammer Time”
Nakama feat. Rap Man Gavin & Kiluhmanjaro, “Flip Cup”
Quadry, “Can You Blame Me?”
