GREATEST: Giveon
Attempting to understand the essence of love with close friend, frequent collaborator and Grammy-nominated producer Sevn Thomas.
During this current time of global uncertainty, music is that undeniable thread that runs the same the world over. It can be argued that music is the saving grace for any troubling time, while also serving as a personal—or social—sensory vacation during the very best of times. While genres help us define the way we categorize music, within each bucket you’ll find unique sounds specific to the artist. This can definitely be said for Giveon, an R&B gem who offers a butter-smooth, baritone voice that cascades over perfectly matched productions with lyrics that are everyday-relatable yet undeniably poetic. It’s a recipe that you may have seen before, but definitely not in this flavor. The main ingredient: the perception of love.
While ‘love’ clearly serves as an axis to Giveon’s body of work, its roots can be traced back to his upbringing by a single mother with three brothers that gifted him with a sense of empathy. Sharing very similar sentiments about the topic and having collaborated on multiple projects, Giveon and close friend Sevn Thomas—the Grammy-nominated Canadian artist who wrote and produced hits for Rihanna, Jay-Z and Travis Scott to name just a few—sat down to digest and discuss all facets of what love means to them. Having just dropped the follow up to his debut TAKE TIME EP with his sophomore, When It’s All Said and Done, the two avoided your typical post-release press agenda, falling into a natural flow as they navigated around the ethos of love and empathy. Their journey went from capturing the essence of relationships to turn into lyrical fuel, to discussing the male stereotype when it comes to vulnerability while questioning if an astute sense of these emotions is in fact a blessing or a curse.
Empathy is as simple as just putting yourself in someone else's shoes and trying to feel what they feel, which could be a gift and a curse at the same time.
Giveon
To start, what is empathy for you? How do you feel empathy?
Empathy is as simple as just putting yourself in someone else's shoes and trying to feel what they feel, which could be a gift and a curse at the same time. I know we're talking about just romance, but when it comes to me striving towards what it is that I want to do, and people who you love and care about not necessarily being in that path yet, I start to feel this sense of guilt and responsibility because of success. Going back to love, I've been in situations where, say, I wasn't in love with the person anymore, but my empathy for their feelings kept me with them.
That's exactly how I feel about certain situations.
If I'm thinking about myself and taking a selfish route, I would have broken something off a long time ago, but it's like, Oh, this person's going to be crying. This person's going to feel like this. So empathy is kind of a curse for me.
So what brought you to this point? As far as emotional awareness and intelligence, what helped you get to that level of emotional understanding?
I think it was my mom and the way I was raised growing up with siblings. I think having siblings play a huge role in empathy because you're not really moving or living for yourself. I feel like if I was an only child, I would have less empathy.
No matter the social status, no matter the level of success or fame or anything, love is what evens the playing field.
Giveon
That's interesting because I come from a family of six, I'm the youngest boy and I was just talking to somebody about that the other day...
About empathy?
About everything in general. As far as just that emotional understanding, and being alone and wanting to share things, you know? It ties into empathy because I enjoy sharing or feeling things with people.
I think, first off, listening is the key to understanding and having people around me that trust me enough to tell me these vulnerable stories. When someone's expressing something, they have their guard down and they feel safe telling me [these things], I get all the details; I get all the vulnerability, and sometimes I've been in those specific situations that they’re talking about. Now I have all this information to where I could write a song about it easily. I could literally write a song just going through a text conversation.
For real. I've seen it with my own two eyes.
Right. They're some of your stories.
I know basically, all of TAKE TIME was based on our conversations and some of the things that we shared, as far as stories and experiences in the studio.
Exactly, and that's the magic of it.
That’s the theme of your entire body of work. Why is love such a powerful theme for you to pull from?
It seems like love is a pain point for a lot of people. When I'm talking to friends and we're just expressing ourselves, I don't necessarily tell them to talk about love. They could be stressed about work, with family, etc., but it always ends up coming back to, ‘Yo, this girl's making me feel this way. This guy is making me feel this way.’ No matter the social status, no matter the level of success or fame or anything, love is what evens the playing field, pretty much. No matter how rich you are, you still get your heartbroken. So anyone can relate to it.
It's safe to say pretty much everyone of a certain age will know what love is. How would you describe love to someone like, let's just say, an alien?
There are different shades of love. Obviously, if there's blue, you can just say blue, but there are different shades of blue, and not one of them is less than the other. There's an intimate level. There's an empathy level. You feel empathy for someone because you love them. It's like me having empathy for someone who’s going through something. I don't know, it's a tricky word. I don't even know if I could define it. They're going to have to Google it or something.
I feel like it's something that is indescribable for sure, so it's hard to articulate exactly what that feeling is. It's a deep emotional connection, even just a physical sensation whenever I think about someone, but other than that, I don't know how to describe it in words.
It's one of those words like ‘art.’
I'll go back and listen to the project and I'll find different songs to connect with each time. The TAKE TIME EP is like a handbook for lovers.
Sevn Thomas
It's subjective. What is it like being this sort of “machine” that takes or feels emotion, turns it into your own words, and then delivers it as almost the same emotion for the listener?
The whole process starts with what we're doing right now. It's obviously a lot more casual, like ‘Bro, guess what she just said,’ but then we get to talking where you can hear the pain points in a conversation. I've gotten to a point where I could, if someone's just talking, be like ‘that part's a song.’
Like when you wrote “Heartbreak Anniversary,” for example.
Yeah, I was just talking to my friend. She just gasped and I was like, ‘What? What happened?’ She said, ‘That brand that this person is wearing, that's my ex-boyfriend's brand. We broke up a year ago today.’ And I was like, ‘So this is like the anniversary of y'all’s break up?’ She was like, ‘Yeah,’ so I went, ‘I'm going to write a song about that. Is that cool?’ I mean, I was going to do it either way, but it's cool that she said it was fine.
Producing that song for you, the chords came from a friend of mine and I just let it run and you got in the booth. When you came out and explained where you got the inspiration from, I was just like, ‘Wow, that's amazing.’
Like all the songs—to tie it back into love—it's for anyone who's in love, going to be in love, or who was in love at some point. If you were never in love with anything ever, you might be a sociopath. Or you haven't run into it yet. Like my little brother, I noticed the other day, he's never said ‘I love you’ to anyone. I was like, ‘Bro, you might be crazy,’ but he's going to be able to [fall in love] soon. That's the approach I take, too. You don't even personally have to relate to it. You probably know someone who's going through this pain point and that's when you start sending it out to other people.
There are different shades of love. Obviously, if there's blue, you can just say blue, but there are different shades of blue, and not one of them is less than the other.
Giveon
You and I can just sit down and have a conversation. We'll be in the studio and just talk about the motions of love and the things that we feel. Why is it so difficult for men to talk about that with each other? I always found that interesting.
I don't know. I think guys are probably just scared of coming off as not masculine or something. That's just me making an assumption because I like to be vulnerable and all that. I think a lot of times we're moving based on what's socially acceptable, even if that's not what we really are. If you look at media and film, males are always traditionally painted as these masculine, cold figures. So I think that plays a big role in it.
I feel like your music is like a soundtrack of your life in that aspect, and you share it in such a raw way. As you said, it's like you confide in yourself and even though you have friends, you use your songwriting process as a form of therapy.
Literally therapeutic. That's the word I would use.
So post the TAKE TIME EP, you're using it as a form of therapy. How would you compare your emotional awareness today as far as the contrast of leading into the album and going in and recording and then coming out of it, reflecting?
I was aware that those stories came from so much of my life. So now I'm aware that in order to make a relatable, therapeutic body of work, I have to go out and live first. I can't just sit in a room with a blank page and try to just make experiences that I write about. So just knowing that every song on TAKE TIME is a true story, I know I had to go out and just let these stories happen. It even changes my approach to bad news and bad things that happen. If I'm having a quarrel with a girl or something, I don't even get as upset anymore. If I do, I'm only upset for like five seconds and then I'll be like, ‘Nevermind, that's a song.’
I think I make a lot of this somber introspective type of music. So sometimes when I'm listening to music, I try to find the opposite. I'll go listen to some hip-hop or some Atlanta rap. But when I’m at that point, I always find my way back to Frank Ocean.
Giveon
Sometimes life imitates art.
That's exactly what happened.
This is a bit of an interesting time because we’re in quarantine. I was in a relationship all of last year and I got out of it going into this year. And it was just an interesting transition for me. I can't really move around and enjoy life the way I wanted to this year. But at the same time, I'll go back and listen to the project and I'll find different songs to connect with each time. The TAKE TIME EP is like a handbook for lovers.
Even this new work that I just dropped, it's the same thing. It's the same thought processes of the motions that people go through after a situation. And I think I'll probably always just take that approach when it comes to just making a body of work. Luckily with the pandemic, the whole world slowed down, but relationships and everything didn't. It's not like when the pandemic hit everybody was like, ‘Let's take a break.’
It's so weird how coded Frank is.
That's the one aspect I'm trying to develop into as an artist because a lot of my lyrics are straightforward. “I love you. Why did you leave? What's your problem?” You know what I mean? But I think as I grow as an artist, I want to say that in a prettier way without losing people's train of thought as well.
Right. So keeping on the topic of love, who are you listening to that you feel also best explains emotional growth?
I think I make a lot of this somber introspective type of music. So sometimes when I'm listening to music, I try to find the opposite. I'll go listen to some hip-hop or some Atlanta rap. But when I’m at that point, I always find my way back to Frank Ocean. Every time. Like I was saying earlier, I try to emulate what people before me are doing, but he's impossible to emulate because of his storytelling. And while I'll try to write from a place of relatability, he'll literally write a whole song that only he'll know what he's talking about. And it'll be so descriptive that the only way I'll know what it's about is if I go through his Genius and just read all the lyrics.