Home / Self-Published Work / Sonemic / Listencorp / Not Just a Phase / Niner Times / About
Interview w/ The Sidepeices
By Nick Caceres
Published 02/04/2026
Long awaited in what felt like blink of an eye, “Darklight” represents the most serious attempt at molding Southern Rap with Progressive Electronic and IDM from the rascals themselves, The Sidepeices. As with the sudden ascension of their sophomore powerhouse, the future sprawl of black expression across the American South might lie in the hands of these two young men.
By mere chance, The Sidepieces would come together through a pile up of Discord interactions, with personalities clashing followed by a truce into a creative frontier of recontextualizing sensual R&B ballads. It was perfection at first attempt, with Heavensouls managing to mix his Sound Collage techniques with practically every genre that he holds dear and Stickerbush with his intricacies of cunning edge Glitch, pinning his direct inspirations to Satanicpornocultshop and Daniel Lopatin
At first glance, Sidepeices feels like a satirical hodgepodge. However, when looking into the detail and reading between the lines, it becomes apparent that these albums showcase a bridged gap between historically white-dominated Experimental Electronic and the Black culture and slang of municipalities, in the case being Houston and Charlotte, something you’d be shocked to find at an exceedingly rare form this deep into the 21st century.
The following interview took place on a Google Meets call on the 13th of January. We discussed the original Sidepeices trio, starting with the finale, “Darklight,” as well as preferences towards what both Heavensouls and Stickerbush would like to see re-orient in their sector.
Photo of heavensouls (left) and Stickerbush (right).
Photo courtesy of heavensouls
Nick: Before we start, I want to give you both the floor to introduce yourselves. Who wants to go first?
Stickerbush: It’s your boy, “Big Stick.”
Heavensouls: I’m the other nigga of the Sidepeices. What's popping?
Nick: What music have you guys been bumping as of late?
Stickerbush: Good question. I've been listening to a lot of Michael Jackson, that OPN album that you got on your shit (note: I was using the “Tranquilizer” album art as the background during the call). I've been listening to "Tranquillizer" a lot and “Age Of” too. I've been listening to Mars Volta a lot. I've been bumping Marsh crane lately too.
Heavensouls: For me, I haven't been bumping a lot of shit recently because I've been working on a lot of shit, but I've been listening to Tegan and Sara, they’re hard. Johnny Foreigner is hard. I was bumping some Stevie Wonder demo that I found online that I thought was hard that I was listening to on repeat.
Nick: Cool. It's best we switch over to your own music and stare right into the glare of “Darklight.” So far, this is one of my favorite albums of this year and that seems to be the consensus with a lot of people I know who just happen to have Rate Your Music accounts. I think some of them would like to know why the naming scheme you guys had going on was disrupted with the third interval of The Sidepeices?
Stickerbush: I mean, we could name it like “Hispanic Niggas with Hispanic Problems.” It was only two niggas, it was a light-skinned nigga and a dark-skinned nigga. So we were just like, “let's just combine it,” you know what I mean? I'm not gonna lie, I don't think there's like some really thought out purpose for why we do like the names and the covers and shit like that. We just two niggas who only really care about the music. So when it comes to the names, we just be doing shit.
Heavensouls: He kind of hit it on the head with that one. Keep in mind, this whole “Lightskin Niggas with Darkskin Problems” shit started because we were making an R&B album where we were just like making fun of like a lot of those raunchy R. Kelly type, overly sexual, overly primal ass R&B songs where you got niggas crawling to the girls and shit. It was just like, “oh yeah, I'm a light-skinned nigga with a dark-skinned problem” or whatever. But then we just kind of flip-flopped it with the next album because we wanted to do something different, but we also just enjoyed making music with each other. I also think the reason why we cut the skin with problem shit on “Darklight” is also because yeah it's jokey, but we didn't make irony the leading part of our album. “Darklight” feels like there's more of a point to the irony than that's just what the album is, you know?
Stickerbush: We knew we wanted to be a little bit more serious with “Darklight.” You could probably hear it, the second half is a lot more Ambient and personal. So I guess if we did have a meaning, the “Darklight” shit was more so we didn't want to cut back on the silliness of the name because the album was the final one of the trilogy. We love all the shit from Sidepeices, but for that one, we wanted it to just sound more personal.
Nick: I'd agree. When looking at the album as a whole, there seems to be a much clearer dichotomy between these serene passages of Progressive Electronic, Jazz, and maybe even some Chamber Music in there, And what I describe as like mangled Southern Rap stitched back together in this Epic Collage structure. With the experience of working together on two previous albums, is that an intentional balance you were trying to maintain with “Darklight?” If so, for what reason? I think you already covered part of this.
Stickerbush: Oh yeah, for sure. We were basically making the album and like we did a lot of the first half and we were like, “okay, we're having a lot of fun with this shit and we still proceeded to have fun. But for the second half we knew we wanted to close it out with a bang. Plus I feel like the whole dark-light thing came intrinsically to where the first half was of super bombastic ironic Experimental Hip Hop shit. Then the second half was more like we were just making a bunch of Ambient shit and we were like, “okay, let's do that on the second half,” you know what I mean?
Nick: I think something else too that we should bring up about this album, and I believe this applies to those earlier albums too, but something that keeps reappearing throughout “Darklight” is the reference to FL Studio, which seems to be neutral, going both ways. Is this sort of a way to air some type of love and hate relationship with the software and the people that use it?
Stickerbush: No, we hate FL Studio. Anything that we do, if we ever say FL Studio, is ironic and we're picking on it, we could get on a beat and be like, “yo, I love FL Studio.” We trolling every single time.
Heavensouls: No–let me–okay, so the whole FL Studio shit started as an inside joke because one time we saw a nigga that was streaming his beat and he was like, “yo, this is the craziest experimental beat ever!” He was deadass too. He was just like, “yo, I'm finna push boundaries with this shit” and then he put gross beat on the master. So after that we were just like, “nah, these FL Studio niggas need to get on somewhere.” I'm not gonna lie, we don't have beef with FL Studio niggas. FL Studio is just like a funny ass DAW to make fun of.
Stickerbush: Bor and the reason that FL Studio is funny to me is because niggas who rep FL Studio don't even like it. Like Busy Works Beats be going online and he'll be like, “oh yeah, this new FL Studio update was garbage.” You have like three videos back to back on the exact premise, like y'all don't even like this shit.
Heavensouls: And bro I seen Busy Works be explaining like, “why FL Studio is better than Ableton” and the only reason he says it's better is because of the piano roll because it got curse. The piano roll is really good though. If I'm gonna give anything to FL, it's the piano role. That's it though. Everything else is trash.
Nick: Something else that you guys did on “Darklight” in the first half was embrace the whimsy, specifically on “Everyday Fishing.” How does a track like that tie into the themes we've been talking about?
Heavensouls: I'm not gonna lie, I'm gonna say, 'cause I made that beat, whenever we started “Darklight” or whenever I started “Darklight,” I was actually making my own solo album. I wanted to make something a lot more playful because there was an album that I made before it that was a lot more angry and a lot more, I guess, venty. So I just wanted this one to be a lot more playful and just melancholic. I sent a lot of those demos to this nigga and he was just like, “yo, I love this playful shit. We might as well just make ‘Darklight.” So we just did it and we tied it in with our themes. The Sidepeices has always been playful and ironic and a lot more just like…I guess unserious at times. But I feel like we just wanted to recontextualize a lot of the irony. Like the playfulness in another light, you know? A bunch of the stuff we did on “Darklight” was just like the complete recontextualization of our whole mission statement and our whole sound, to be honest.
Nick: Would you say that everyday fishing was the official start of “Darklight?”
Stickerbush: I think it was.
Heavensouls: Yeah, low-key it was. I think it was “Everyday fishing" and then it was “Run Up Freestyle.” Those were like the first songs.
Stickerbush: I was working at this machine operation plant and I was working like a long ass shift. I was waiting to get off and he had sent me that shit while I was on break or something or while the machine was down. When he sent me that shit, I had the same reaction a lot of young niggas had. I was like, “yo, what the fuck? Yeah let's just make the album” because we were gonna wait until we moved in together to make “Darklight,” but then he sent me that shit and the spontaneous came out of my body real quick.
Nick: Do you feel like it gave you the confidence to be like, “you know, we may not have moved in yet, but I think we have a shot at ending on a good note regardless?” Was that the realization?
Heavensouls: I think pretty much to be honest. The whole thing about us moving in was also we wanted a different workflow because our workflow that we have whenever we're not together in real life is a lot more lackadaisical. Like he'll send me some shit to flip, I'll send him some shit that he can flip, he'll send me a beat that I'll fuck around with, I'll send a beat that I'll fuck around. It's a lot more relaxed and just we're working together but we're also kind of not, you know? I feel like with “Darklight,” it's a lot more unified even though we're not together. But it's also something that we were going to do even whenever we met up IRL because we wanted to make an album where we were just a hundred percent in cooperation, you know?
Nick: Yeah, definitely, There's another track that I think might be one of the catchiest in your discography, “Listen.” How'd you come up with that hook?
Heavensouls: Oh shit! That was my solo shit I made. There was a flip that I made. Low-key, I think it's been like a whole year ago. I had a friend that sent audio of him busting out pots and pans and shit. I just put it through modular effects and shit. I wanted to make just a really atmospheric but electroacoustic sounding pop song. I'm really proud of that beat, I'm really proud of that song. But yeah, bits and pieces of that song were just mad scrapped up. Like that melody was the longest. I was in college when I made that melody low key because I sent it to Stickers whenever I was just doing some college work. But yeah, that shit was a whole year in the making technically.
Nick: I really enjoyed it. The minute I heard it, that melody kept playing through my head all day after I listened to it initially on the day the album came out. I remember thinking, “this is the next chapter for R&B.”
Stickerbush: It's funny because I feel like that's what we wanted to do from the start. I remember we used to rant about that shit all the time, how there's Experimental scenes for a lot of things, but R&B just doesn't have enough. I think that's why a lot of the reason we wanted to do a lot of the shit on “Lightskins” too.
Nick: Some of the aspects of The Weeknd are Experimental, but I don't even know if he's even R&B at this point.
Stickerbush: The Weeknd's hard though. The fact that he got OPN to produce like half an album for him was insane to me. What's that shit? The newest one that he made, what's it called?
Nick: “Hurry Up Tomorrow.”
Stickerbush: Yeah yeah yeah. That album's hard. There's some really hard shit on there.
Nick: Yeah definitely. Going back to “Darklight,” what is some scrapped material from the archival section of the Heavensouls site that you wish you included on “Darklight?
Heavensouls: If I'm remembering, there was this drafted song that we did called “Can't Keep Running Away” and it was the first version of it that I put on the vault. Whenever we were doing the track listing, it was either like, “okay, we put in ‘Mish’ or we put in ‘Can't Keep Running Away,” but we just settled with “Mish.” But I genuinely still think that “Can't Keep Running Away” was a good song. That was all Stickerbush.
Stickerbush: Yeah, I had made that track
Heavensouls: I remember near the end of the track list, we were doing this thing where we were gonna have our own like solo big songs. For me it was “Run Up Freestyle” and for Stickers it was gonna be either “Mish” or "Can't Keep Running Away.”
Stickerbush: But yeah, I think we had scrapped it just 'cause like–I don't know why we scrapped it. I think I just didn't really like it that much to be honest. I wasn't really feeling it.
Nick: Finally we arrive at the final track that I would like to discuss off of “Darklight” and I can't leave this one out of the conversation. A bit of a backstory behind “Run Up Freestyle,” there's a show that I follow that used to be Good Enough Podcast, but they rebranded to Punching Sideways. It’s three guys about my age and they all have their own little YouTube channels. One of the guys is the one that made that infamous Post Rap video that people hated on Twitter.
Heavensouls: Are you talking about that…
Nick: A Bucket of Jake?
Heavensouls: Yeah I know that nigga!
Nick: Yeah so on their Patreon they do this thing called Bitrate, where their Patrons–like myself–-can send them a track and they can review live on the bonus episode…and the first one was “Run Up Freestyle.” They genuinely didn't know what the fuck they were listening to. They literally had to name the episode “completely dumbfounded" because they were like, “I can't even rate this. What am I supposed to do?”
Heavensouls: I'm not gonna lie, I kind of do wanna see that 'cause I've seen those niggas before. I am curious to see what they said about “Run Up Freestyle.” That's insane that they were bumping my shit though.
Nick: Yeah, but to my actual question about the track, how did you guys channel that rhythmically tight cinematic essence in “Run Up Freestyle?”
Heavensouls: So during that time, whenever I was making “Run Up Freestyle,” I was listening to a lot of old Tronica. The whole reason I wanted to make a solo album before I made “Darklight” was I wanted to incorporate a lot of Folktronica and fluky guitarist kind of sound, but just do it in a Sound Collage context. One artist I was really inspired by whenever I was making “Run Up Freestyle” was this girl named Mira Calix. She was one of the wives from Autechre. She made a lot of this glitchy Sound Collage Electronica music that I genuinely thought was insane. She died though, like rest in peace to her. Her last album, it was called like “Absent Origin,” really fucking insane album, I love that shit. I wanted to do my own spin on it because a lot of her shit was just like straight up instrumental. I wanted to blackify it a bit. you see what I'm saying? So I was just trying to do some R&B and just make my own concept or song structure of a beat that's completely deconstructed, but picking up and forming back together as the song goes to the point where it's unified again. I rock with that shit a lot.
Nick: I think that was something that they mentioned in the episode. They were like, “this doesn't feel like a complete beat, but it feels complete at the same time.” Was By Storm, in tangent with that final Injury Reserve album, ever in inspiration for that track or any of the singles off of “Darklight?”
Heavensouls: Me and this nigga fuck with Injury Reserve and Bye Storm. We think that “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” was a crazy album. I would say that I was way more inspired by a lot of like ambient music than like a lot of Hip Hop during that time.
Stickerbush: We’re definitely influenced. I think that there's songs on “Phoenix” that we're like, “oh, that's a crazy song.” I feel like when it comes to our inspirations, they're much tighter in the Electronic scene. I feel like some of our biggest influences; for him, he is a huge Autechre fan, and mine is OPN. We like a lot of AOKI Takamasa, like of glitchy, microsound music and shit like that rather than—I think that we are obviously inspired by Experimental Hip Hop, but I feel like when it comes to the electronics of our music, I don't think it's an influence, I don't think it's something that's at the forefront. When you make music, I feel like there's influences that you have subconsciously, but then there's things that you're like, “okay, I want my shit to be kind of like this” and I don't really think that By Storm was as much like that for us. Plus I feel like we listen to “Phoenix” more than we listen to really anything by them as much. But I don't know, that could be different for you.
heavensouls x stickerbush aka sidepeices - "darklight" (2026) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: I mentioned the website before in regards to the archival material that you guys have on there, But one of the most interesting pieces from the Heavensouls site is this interactive fiction that always ends in the first person being healed regardless of what circumstance they found themselves in. How did the idea to create this game for you guys materialize?
Stickerbush: That’s all him because when he made that shit I was like, “bro, what are you doing?” (Laughs)
Heavensouls: (Laughs) Look…I was bored one day. I made this whole “Ifuckingnhatethis.site” shit because I was making a lot of beats and a lot of music that I just wanted to put out 'cause one thing about me and my discography and just my music philosophy is I love the concept of just having a public archive. That's why I won't really delete any of my old music because I want to have that shit out so everybody can just listen to it. It's not really something that I wanna hide. If you wanna listen to it, it's there, you know? But I wanted to troll. I always wanted to make an interactive game 'cause I thought that shit would be fun. I wanted to find a way to make that shit mad vague and pretentious, but also mad black. So I genuinely thought it would be funny if in the first person you were just chilling one day and a prostitute pulls up with a whole rifle and says, “where's my money?!” and you're just like, “yo, what the fuck? What the fuck?!” So you run away from her. You end up at Stickerbush’s house and Stickerbush has to save you. I genuinely thought that shit was hilarious to me.
Nick: I was cracking up because I was listening to “Darklight” while I was exploring that interactive game. I feel like that's the best way to do it. Are you guys willing to share any hidden intricacies or is that something you want to just continue keeping enclosed, letting people just find it themselves?
Heavensouls: I'm not gonna lie, I still plan on updating the game. I made some other dialogue options on my notes that I'm gonna update one day. But yeah I genuinely wanna make a whole storyline. I wanna make this shit like a whole parasocial arc, like you have to rely on Stickerbush to save the day. That shit is hilarious to me because if you met this nigga IRL, this nigga isn't gonna save you from shit!
Stickerbush: I think when we played the game I was like, “you know, damn well I'm not saving nobody from shit.”
Nick: Now that's awesome. Let's reel it back to the start of The Sidepeices. How did you guys start making music and building your respective styles before meeting?
Stickerbush: I started around when I was 16. I got my first laptop 'cause I couldn't buy one. I finally got one of those like teenager jobs or whatever, like McDonald's and shit like that. The funny thing is I had started using FL Studio; I started by using it. So that's why when niggas be like, “oh yeah, you don't even know what FL Studio got to offer.” Bro…I do…I graduated from this shit because that's where I started. Anybody in any creative space will tell you that it takes years to be able to develop a style and it comes intrinsically. The more you do something, the more you start to make it your own. The first stages are learning the actual shit and how to make things and then from there comes learning to try not to be derivative and just copy everything you hear, you know what I mean? So after a while, I just learned to appreciate music for what it was and filter it out through me and make my own thing from it.
Heavensouls: For me it was really weird because I technically started really making music at around 2021. I made this album called “Pykeworld!” It was on some Sound Collage shit, but I didn't recognize it as Sound Collage 'cause I didn't really know what that was. I was just making shit just like normally and I thought that shit was just hard. I literally just kept making shit and then one day I made “Debut” and my style clicked. I really fucked with that Microsound shit. “Debut” was such a weird album to me 'cause whereas niggas slowly gained a certain style, that shit just clicked whenever I made that album, you know? I kind of just built from that
Authks - "Pykworld!" (2021) album cover
Image Courtesy of Rate Your Music
heavensouls - "Debut" (2023) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: What's the funny story behind you guys meeting and when was that?
Stickerbush: Yo the fact that you know it's a funny story is so funny. So when I moved out, my mom had moved to Vegas, so I had to hurry up and find somewhere to live. So I had met this girl on Tinder, but we just became friends off of Tinder, we weren't actually like together or anything. Then she had found a boyfriend right after we met on Tinder and I guess the nigga was homeless so we all moved in together 'cause we all needed a place to stay. I think her mom had kicked her out or something like that. Me and the boyfriend ended up becoming mad cool, like we're still cool today. He would be on call on his server with this nigga or something like that. They would just casually hang out and talk about music and shit. So then I joined the server one day and I went in and I was like producing in the VC and he had never seen the DAW I had used. He just came in there like mad crawling. He was like, “oh yeah, send me this shit. I'm gonna have everybody shake ass.” I'm not gonna lie, I figured that he was trying to steal it and do some shit with it. So I just kept ignoring him 'cause he was already pissing me off and I think I already had a bad day at work or something like that. He just kept doing it every time we would talk; he would troll. Then he sent a topster of his favorite music and I was like, “oh, it's actually some heat in here.” So I started talking to him about music and shit like that. Then from there we just ended up becoming mad tight.
Heavensouls: also Stockholm Syndrome shit for real. For real. But I think there was a period where this nigga sent me a beat and I made some shit on it or, like I hopped on some shit for him, and then we just didn't talk for a few months. We were just just following each other. Then our friend group started merging together. I think that's when we just started talking a lot more. When “Jambalyah” came out, this nigga was tweaking.
Stickerbush: Yeah, because I'm not gonna lie, when you're in like the Experimental scene and a lot of the shit that you see is very derivative to a point where it just gets boring. So when I heard the shit that he was making, I was like, “okay, he's actually making some different shit” and he liked the shit that I was making too. So then we were just like, “okay, let's make this little duo where we make shit together.” Our immediate friend group liked it a lot. I'm not gonna lie, at first we were really making shit for ourselves and we still do, but I think we were also making shit for our friends. We'd be like, “oh yeah, we about to surprise y'all with this next one.” We wanted to keep making crazy shit for our friends to hear and then people outside of our friend group started to hear it and then here we are.
heavensouls - "Jambalyah" (2024) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: So by derivative, do you mean like you'll hear something and you can clearly tell that they're trying to be Tim Hecker without putting in the work?
Stickerbush: Yeah, but not even as far as Tim Hecker, even these Experimental Rap niggas in the underground scene don't know anything about Tim Hecker. They'd be biting JPEGMAFIA and MF DOOM and like Death Grips and shit like that. So you just hear a bunch of really shitty derivative Death grips type beats and shit like that, you know what I mean? That's all I was used to hearing. Then I met him and I was like–not even some glazing shit. To me, Experimental is like really just some shit that you haven't heard before. So in my opinion, he was making shit that was actually experimental. I was like, “okay, I want to make something with this nigga 'cause he gonna get us out the hood.” (laughs)
Nick: Speaking of people who are in Experimental Rap but don't create outside of the box. There was one guy that I remember who started to blow up around 2021. Looking back, I think it's a cool album, but you could clearly tell that he was trying to be JPEGMAFIA. Do you know about that guy?
Stickerbush: Bro, Me and Pyky, we get as much influence from hating shit as we do liking shit. If we don't like something, we want to be better than that or point it out bro. So this is actually crazy actually 'cause we didn't bring this part up, but when we met, we had shared a consolidated hate for Ghais Guevara because nobody saw the fact that this nigga was just straight biting. Like the whole shit with the ID picture that JPEGMAFIA was doing. That shit was pissing me off 'cause it was like, “okay, clearly the Experimental scene is just starting to turn into this ‘experimental artist isn't dropping, so let me drop something that they drop while they're not dropping.” We just didn't want to do that. We wanted to do our own shit in the scene. And it was like…bro…because he used the FL Studio and like a lot of artists have made some crazy shit on FL Studio, but clearly a lot of the Experimental Rap scene has just become like, “okay, let me make this garbage ass like FL Studio beat that's not that interesting. Let me sample Spongebob or sample an Anthony Fantano clip.” Like we just wanted to make art that was good for the sake of the art being good, rather than how much shock we just threw out there. We'd be hating a lot.
Heavnesouls: Let me add somethin’ on top of that. Not only was gay as Guevera setting such a fucking annoying precedent for Experimental Hip Hop where you have to talk about the same shit, like you have to talk about Socialism, you have to talk about Karl Marx, you have to diss on Saudi Arabians and shit, it was the fact that he was also inspiring a bunch of niggas in that scene to do the same. There was this nigga that I knew who was Ghais Guevara’s biggest dick rider. He was making music just like him and shit. Then he asked for a feature from Ghais Guevara, keep in mind this nigga was making this type of music for like two years; Ghais Guevera scammed this nigga and laughed at his face. That's when I was just like, “yo, like I'm not gonna lie, scene is goofy as fuck bro.”
Stickerbush: I don't got no problem with that nigga or nothing. I don't know him, I don't have any issues with him, but I just was tired of seeing this whole pipeline of “if you're black you have to make weird beats and talk about shit that white people want to hear.” Like that shit is just so lame to me bro. There needs to be a space for experimental music for black people where it's not like “you have to talk about what Trump did this time.” If I talk about it, I'll talk about it in an interview, I'll talk about it on my IG story. I come to art as a release from shit in my life. I don't come in here to get fucking brownie points from Neoliberals.
Stickerbush: That's the thing, we're not saying that political rap shit is a problem. It's a problem when you're doing it for performative purposes. It kind of feels like niggas are just hopping on a bandwagon of, “let me make semi weird shit” 'cause his, his beats aren't good. His mixing his ass, the music's not that good to me. Before we're artists, we're listeners. We love music. We'd be on all these sites and shit, trying to find music just like everybody else. So it's like we hear this shit on the top of the charts and we'd be sitting there like, in the least egotistical way possible, “how is this shit where it's at bro? What are we doing?” We used to sit down on call and be like, “damn, do we need to talk about Fidel Castro or something to get up? Like is that what we gotta do?” And we was just like, “nah, we not doing that” like that shit is just boring. It's also you don't wanna force that either in your music because it's gonna sound inauthentic, deadass.
Heavensouls: I Just don't feel like everybody in the scene should be Billy Woods, you feel me?
Nick: No, not everyone is Billy Woods. I feel like Armand Hammer, that's a very like special type of duo that you can't really replicate. I feel like you're not trying to make the next “Doves.”
Heavensouls: Deadass that's the thing. I feel like niggas hear shit that's new and they feel like they gotta try to replicate or whatever. It's cool to take influence, but I feel like our philosophy is that we should experiment. I don't think niggas realize that. When it came to the Epic Collage shit with “Darkskin Niggas,” that shit came from just us being like, “okay, Elysia Crampon, she's using her heritage as a tapestry. Weed420, they're using their experiences in Venezuela and their experiences in venezuela and heritage as a tapestry–shoutout Weed420, they fuck with us–we just wanted to do that in our own way. Like we're not protesting, we're not like trying to put a sort of message out, we're just being niggas, but expressing it in our own way. I genuinely think that's like fire, you know?
Stickerbush: Bro and don't get me wrong, a lot of these causes that niggas be like talking about performatively we fuck with, we agree with. It's more so just the fact that we were looking at a lot of the Sound Collage scene and seeing that it was mostly Hispanic or white people doing it and shit like that and usually they were putting their own culture into the Sound Collage, whether it was like Jalen Tuna or Elysia Crampton or whatever. It was usually them putting their culture into music in a way that was weird and eclectic and just moved a lot. We looked around and we really couldn't find shit like that for niggas. Even just in the electronic scene period, you got like in the IDM scene, a lot of that shit is from Europe. You got the Flying Lotuses. There's no shade to Flying Lotus or anything, but even with Flying Lotus, it was more so just Jazz incorporated into IDM. Like we wanted to put actual black culture into Sound Collage and into IDM, you know what I mean?
Heavensouls: That's what I also feel with “Debut,” because I've been hearing like all this Microsound Glitch shit, and there's none of that shit incorporates niggas. So I think a lot of our philosophy is just like we wanted to take a lot of these Electronic genres that we love dearly, but just flip it to niggas. We were doing Sexyy Red flips, like we were just listening to just a bunch of Dirty South beats and shit. Like I was listening to like a bunch of 8Ball and MJG and shit.
Nick: Dude, the Memphis Rap stuff is insane. I've been getting into that more. It's like, dude…how did they make this stuff in the early 90s? I feel like they were in a similar spot to you guys where they were wanting to make something completely new and fully embody the world that they were living in, being Memphis, and they succeeded in every way.
Stickerbush: But that's a lot of the problem bro. We're definitely influenced by a lot of these experimental acts, but I feel like a lot of these people who listen to the shit that we do are–for example, we'll make some shit that has a Brandy sample or some shit like that in it, and then it'll be a bunch of niggas who are like, “oh, JPEGMAFIA also sampled Brandy, oh Injury Reserve also sampled Brandy or like used this R&B chop rhythmically!” Like bro, did you never think about the fact that maybe we just actually grew up listening to this shit and just incorporated it in a weird way. Don't get me wrong, we do have those Experimental influences as well, but you could tell that certain shit is a disconnect as in you don't know growing up in the south and just like listening to this shit like naturally.
Nick: I was actually listening to “Edits” yesterday, I felt like I could relate a little bit to where Crampton was coming from because I don't know if you guys know this, she lives in Nashville now. I could tell she's really embracing the culture there along with her own heritage. This album is really special to me because of that reason. I grew up on those exact Country samples that she was using.
Stickerbush: That’s what I'm saying bro. Imagine Weed420 put out a new album and they sampled some shit from Venezuela that speaks Spanish in the album and a bunch of niggas were like, “oh yeah, you're clearly citing Elysia Crampton because she also sampled shit that has Spanish words in it.” It just doesn't make any sense bro.
Nick: Also Weed420 is completely different from Elysia Crampton.
Stickerbush: That's what I'm saying. That's the shit that niggas be pulling. It'd be like, “since you also sample like R&B records or Sexyy Red or whatever, you gotta be copying this person.”
Heavensouls: And you wanna know what would be pissing me off? There was a reviewer that I saw that basically like called “Darkskin Niggas” YouTube poop music because we were sampling Sexyy Red or just artists that a majority of people don't love or just critically just aren't doing good, I guess.
Stickerbush: That shit is low key racist to me. Just because you don't take black art seriously, doesn't mean that we don't love these artists like Sexyy Red and Glorilla. We sample them out of a place of respect, not trolling or picking on shit. The niggas that we be picking on be niggas in the Experimental scene and niggas who use FL Studio. We're very clear about the demographics that we pick on. If you see a sample Sexyy Red, it's not meant to be like a joke. It's just something that we wanted to do because it sounded good.
Nick: Definitely. I think it's best we jump into the “Lightskin” album. What were both of your initial expectations when you began recording tracks together and how'd you first go about it? I think you already sort of explained this.
Stickerbush: The first time that we ever made anything was on that “By the Minute” song on “Stickers.” I don't know if you've heard that. Then we realized from there that we worked really well together. It was just really easy for us to work. We would just be looking through old school R&B, to be honest and thought a lot of it was funny. So we wanted to recreate that in “Lightskin” because we love music like that. A lot of the shit they were doing is just hilarious. It would just be niggas like on their knees begging, like “please girl. I need you back!” So we was like, “let's just make an album doing that.” We just wanted to recreate that but make it weird, I guess.
Stickerbush - "Stickers!" (2024) mixtape cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: I'm amazed how big some of those R&B singles got 'cause some of them are way more sexual than I remember them being.
Stickerbush: It's because they're. That's the thing, niggas will like anything that you do if it’s hard.
Heavensouls: Or if you're just a good singer. I genuinely think that's why R. Kelly got away with all of the shit he did.
Stickerbush: You could get like millions of plays by saying the wildest shit possible. It is also a product of the times, like the early 2000s were different than now. You can't really get away with shit like that now. I even saw some people who were saying that “Lightskins” was just way too sexual. Like yeah bro…that was the point. That's what we were like copying, that's what we were picking on.
Nick: Something else that I'm sure people probably thought was a genuine mistake was…how did you first come up with the intentionally misspelled name for the collaborative project?
Stickerbush: (laughs) Cuz this nigga stupid. That's exactly why. (laughs) It was a mistake.
Havensouls: Look nigga look…that's how you know how we didn't really take this shit seriously. When I put that shit on Bandcamp, I didn't realize that I misspelled it until we blew up. I'm not gonna lie, I just stuck with it. I kind of pulled the cope pill. It was just like, “yo, this is like to signify like the surrealism or whatever the fuck.” I don't know. I was just trying to find some type of scapegoat for it. But yeah, a nigga just did a typo.
Nick: So there were a shit ton of tracks off this album that I would like to talk about, but for time's sake, I'll narrow it down to two, the first being “Newport Hoes.” I adored how you guys figured out how to mix like Justin Bieber with this bass primary R&B and those raunchy bars. Could you guys break down how you put that one together?
Heavensouls: I think I just did it and forced this nigga to do a a verse for it, low-key.
Stickerbush: Yeah, I remember you came to me with a beat and I was like, “what is this?” Then I just made the silliest verse on the planet, to be honest.
Heavensouls: No cuz that's the thing bro. I heard that beat and I flipped it a little bit and I genuinely thought that was the most hilarious shit ever. So I was just like bullshitting on it. I love that song a lot.
Stuckerbush: I think that record is really good. I think all of the records that we've made are, but I think that record is like a really good reflection of our friendship.
Nick: So why are the hoes from Newport?
Heavensouls: It's not even that. We were just making fun of a woman that'd be smoking Newport to be honest. It was like, “why are we smoking Newport?” It's the same thing that we'd be doing whenever we'd be making fun of niggas that'd be smoking Black & Milds.
Nick: Another track that I really liked was The female-centered plot twist on “Bitches Ain't Shit.” Who was the girl you had on the mic? How did the idea to end the first album on that note come about?
Stickerbush: Okay so the “Bitches Ain't Shit” one was my track. Basically I was with a girl at the time. We lived together so she had heard the whole album and she was like, “damn, y'all doing a lot of tracks about how bitches ain't shit. Y'all need to do a track about how niggas ain't shit.” She was like, “this low-key misogynistic.” I was like, “okay, that's a good idea,” so I let her do a whole rant about niggas on the track, but I still called it “Bitches Ain't Shit” just to like piss her off.
Nick: (laughs) Imagine if that song topped the Billboard!
Stickerbush: That shit would be so funny. I think “Lightskin” is like the funniest shit that we did bro. That shit is so hilarious,
Heavensouls: Yeah the autotune all off key and shit.
Stickerbusb Yeah but I just let her do a whole ass monologue on that song just rant 'cause it was like, “okay, let me give you an opportunity to go off about the niggas on this album.”
Nick: How do you think she did?
Stickerbush: I think she did great. I'm not gonna lie, that song is mad funny to me 'cause she was going off so hard. Mind you, we were together. I was like, “hold on, you going a little bit too hard on this…Am I like a bad boyfriend or something?”
heavensouls x stickerbush aka the sidepeices - "lightskin niggas with darkskin problems" (2024) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: You never know, but going into the 2025 follow-up, why are you guys shifting into Albert Einstein and Michelle Obama animorph style?
Heavensouls: I can explain that. So there's this app that I found that basically shows you your celebrity lookalike. I did one of me which turned me into Albert Einstein, and this nigga, it turned into Michelle Obama. I sent the Michelle Obama one to him and he and this nigga deadass blocked me because he was mad.
Nick: He's like, “dude, I look like I'm trying to ruin school lunch. Come on!”
Heavensouls: (laughs) Deadass.
Stickerbush: It was more so just like, “what is he doing bro?” Half of the work that we do on this shit is really just one of us will do some shit and the other one will just be like, “bro, what are you doing?” Then we'll be like, “fuck, let's just do it.”
Nick: What did you guys hope to improve upon or execute differently this time around? Was it to maximize everything?
Stickerbush: We talked about this before, but “Darkskins” is a “look what I can do” album. Like I said, we were making shit for our friends at the time, so we wanted to just make the most bombastic crazy shit that still had the same themes of “Lightskins.” That's what we knew we wanted to do a bit differently
Heavensouls: I'm a low-key fan on this shit and I'm gonna sound pretentious about this shit, but I don't really give a fuck. This nigga can tell you, there was this whole philosophy that I feel like right now, niggas love bombastic maximalist music. So we were playing on that as a joke. So we were like, “okay, what if we do the Sound Collage shit but make our most maximalist album or whatever while still being, you know, The Sidepeices, you see what I'm saying? So it's poking fun at the cost of the maximalist, all over the place loud ass production. I don't knock maximalism. I just think that I was poking fun at the concept of in order to get big, you have to make maximalist music. It's funny because we got big out of this album, just a “fuck me.”
Nick: Something else with this maximalist approach, was the intention to have these songs swell to these vast combinations of ideas rather than just like a standard track?
Heavensouls: I feel like I got more say in this shit because I was the one responsible for that shit. A bunch of “Darkskin Niggas” were these individual beats or tracks or whatever that we collaged together. I wanted every song to sound like a radio station. I wanted every song to have its own little flow. So I wanted “Southern Style Lemon Peppers” to be straight up the craziest rhythmically maximalist song, I wanted something like “Taxpayer Money” or whatever the fuck. I wanted it to be much more toned down while also rhythmically dense. I guess I wanted shit to flow while also including a bunch of those sessions or songs that were made individually.
Nick: You’re already bringing this song up, but out of everything you guys delivered on this sophomore album, the one track that made people absolutely lose their minds over was the one and only “Southern Style Lemon Rappers.” What I personally liked about this track were the transitions, especially whenever that Chopped and Screwed beat randomly gets interjected by the frantic Epic Collage loop that then leads into that cool fade out without the beat. I love that. Maybe my favorite part in the whole album, just saying. All that being said, how much trial and error went into building these transitions on that track?
Heavensouls: So “Southern Style Lemon Peppers” is kind of a compilation. He made one of the beats for the sections, but like the rest were just a bunch of beats and shit that were already made that taped together. But yeah, that whole song was me hate flipping low-key. I had a friend that–I don't know if you know them, but their name is Bappy–I literally sample flipped their shit out of just hate. It was the moment with the loud, like “du dododododo,” it was that shit. But yeah, a lot of Southern Style Lemon Peppers” was me doing Flashcore Ghettotech shit. That was the whole point. Even with the IDM section and others, it was literally my take on Ghettotech music to be honest. I love that shit. Ghetto sound music is genuinely genius to me.
Nick: Do you know who Bitch Ass Darius is?
Heavensouls: Yeah, that nigga is one of my top influences. That nigga like made two really crazy DJ mixes and then stopped to become like a computer science teacher, which is insane to me. That nigga probably has like the craziest more to tell their child. Like imagine you were a child and finding out your dad is bitch ass fucking Darius. (laughs) You see what I'm saying?
Nick: A lot of Memphis rappers are like that too. There's a lot of guys that just never blew up and stopped making music when they hit 20
Stickerbush: And they shit blows up later on in life.
Heavensouls: Yeah, that might be funny because if we ever have kids, niggas are gonna like awaken on this earth and find out that The Sidepeices-
Nick: -Is their old man!
Bitch Ass Darius - "Follow the Sound" (2001) DJ mix cover
Image Courtesy of Rate Your Music
Nick: Another standout moment for me was Heavensoul’s bars on those crashout beats on “Fuck a Stimulus I Need My Shit in Blood.” I feel like a descriptor for the beats on here live up to my previous description of what you guys do, which I called “mangled Southern Rap,” but in regards to bars, there's one I wanted to hone in on, they really perplexed me. I'll read them out:
48 states with my girl Libertina.
soaring through the sky, baby please don't cut my wings off.
Communist bitch tryna go and fuck the team up.
Birds all on her phone, baby go ahead and dream up.
So with how you guys tend to infuse some of your own experiences in these albums, is this one of them?
Heavensouls: This was low-key the first time I actually sat down and wrote a song 'cause that was a song I made because there was this girl I knew. She was this Pan-African woman that I was dating at the time and all she wanted to do was talk about Franz Ferdinand and Carl Marx and shit. That was her main thing. So I made a whole song about the concept of like, “I'm trying so hard to be with this girl, but all she wanted to do was just watch HasanAbi and shit.” Like all she wanted to do was just read that “Capital: Volume One” every single fucking day.
Stickerbush: The funniest thing is bro, when I made that shit, I made it on some old ass laptop on a girl's couch. Then I sent it to him, not knowing what he was gonna do. He sent me back this shit about how he can stand this dumb girl who likes reading socialist manifestos and shit. I was like, “what are we doing?”
Heavensouls: That shit genuinely do be piss me off bro. Like you just trying to connect with a nigga and she's telling you about all sort of CNN articles she be reading and shit. She be giving me Berkeley and Cambridge studies and shit about black socialism and all that shit. It just be pissing me off.
Nick: With us previously discussing run-up freestyle of all of its majesty, I feel like that equivalent on “Darkskin has to be, “I am not your savior.” Where did you know Kelly Garlick from and how was this track coordinated with them?
Heavensouls: Funny story. She hit me up whenever I made–I believe it was like either “North Side Trap” or “Central Station Bootleg 3.” It was one of those albums during that era of my life, like, whenever I was like crossing over from like the Microsound to a lot more smoother sound collagey shit. She hit me up, basically sending me this whole long ass paragraph being like, “oh my God, I'm so happy that there's Nigerian niggas in this Epic Collage scene.” It threw me off 'cause I didn't even know she knew I was Nigerian. I didn't put that on my shit. But I saw that she made music. She put me in shows and setlists with like Christtt and other niggas. So I was just like, “fuck it, do you wanna sing on this song that I made?” She said, “yeah, send me that verse” like three months later and then boom.
Nick: It’s an emotional track with her vocals on it.
Heavensouls: I'm genuinely glad niggas like that song. I genuinely think that's like the most traditional R&B song that I made.
authks - "i am not your savior" (2025) single cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
heavensouls - "northside trapped" (2024) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
heavensouls - "central station bootleg 3" (2024) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: When did it occur to you guys how massive this album got online through the Rate Your Music Charts among other platforms and publications? It felt like overnight. I remember there was a guy I knew that was showing me it in June I believe. Then suddenly out of nowhere, it was sitting at number 13 on Rate Your Music, somehow. It was like…WHAT?
Stickerbush: We had the same level of surprise, to be honest. There's a dude that I knew like in like sophomore year of high school. I'm like 23 now, I had to be like 16 or something. I don't even go to that same high school in the same state anymore because it was in Colorado. He hit me up and he was like, “bro, you're going crazy on Rate Your Music!” That's when it hit me 'cause a real life person that I used to know just hit me up about this shit. So that's when it dawned on me that this is bigger than I thought it was.
Heavensouls: I think for me something similar happened. I think it really dawned on me whenever I was in the VC because there's this group that I know called The Sleep Dealers. They did a DJ set with me. Weed420 hopped on VC with them and then djALVARO gave me this long ass dissection basically saying “Darkskin Niggas,” whenever he heard it, it blew his mind. Then literally right after like that whole conversation, it was just him saying like, “Darkskin Niggas’ gave me hope.” That was when (undisclosed artist) hit me up low-key. Low-key the reception that I got with “Darklight” made the whole thing hit harder for me. Whenever we released “Darklight,” we genuinely thought that shit was gonna flop 'cause we thought that niggas only fucked with us whenever we did the hype shit. I don't know if it did good or not on Rate Your Music or Album of the Year, we just stopped checking. But we got a lot more outside recognition, like labels started fucking with us and artists that me and this nigga were listening to on VC that we casually found, started fucking with us randomly. Like we're probably doing something right.
Stickerbush: I'm not gonna lie, I don't know if he feels like this too, but I know “Darkskins” is a good album, but like when it first got the traction from like Rate Your Music and shit, I felt like people probably won’t actually like this. It wasn't until later when niggas were telling me like, “yo, this album helped me through my day” or “I'm going through a lot and this album helped me a lot” that it like really hit me like, “okay, niggas actually do like really love this shit.” That's when it started to pop for me, like it started to click, you know what I mean?
Nick: Do you think a lot of it is people who came from the same areas you're from who are also black who finally felt like there was music that represented them through a medium they never expected?
Stickerbush: Yeah, we get stuff like that a lot. There's like a big part of it that's people from Japan and all over the world who were like, “oh, this is so crazy,” which they're valid too. But yeah, there were a lot of black people who would hit us up from the south, specifically me. I don't know if they hit Pyky up or not, but they would hit me up and be like, “I didn't know that you could do this as a black person in this scene. I didn't know that there was a pocket for shit like this.” And that's what we wanted to do bro, we just wanted to implement black culture in the scene. It was really nice that it actually landed like that and a lot of black people were hitting us up and it was really reassuring.
Nick: So it wasn’t like you were just getting white people who liked it because it was experimental. Like you were attracting people that finally felt like they were given permission to be experimental now and hopefully it happens more.
Stickerbush: Yeah and it was even niggas who were consumers who were like, “I've always wanted to see this Sound Collage thing, but like infused with black culture.” Like I said, we joke around, a lot of these albums are us playing around, but we do have like a very clear mission statement of what we wanted to do and the fact that there were a lot of black people who were actually hitting us up with, it felt almost like it was almost a camaraderie or like an inside joke of like, “I know what you're doing! I'm glad that you implemented this Sexyy Red sample or some random ass skit from Martin” or some shit like that we put in there randomly. It just always feels good because it does feel like there's like a level of understanding towards what we're doing and we're not gonna keep getting the everything that we do is satire, you know what I mean? Because some of this shit is genuinely shit that we love from our childhoods and stuff like that, because we have very similar upbringings.
Nick: Similar to what you're saying, I grew up near Charlotte. There's some aspects in that album that I pick up where it feels like I'm chatting with people I came up with.
Stickerbush: Yeah, you can tell what type of nigga that I am, because I'm the one from Charlotte. I'm pretty sure it happens with Pyky too. We used to listen to Billy Woods and shit like Armand Hammer. You can tell what type of niggas these are just from listening, like growing up in like a black family or just growing up black. And it's like sometimes niggas would hit us up and be like, “oh yeah, I can kind of tell what type of nigga you are from the shit that you're doing or just the shit that you talking about or how you talk and stuff like that.” I feel like that was like another important thing for us 'cause the south is sleeping on and the south is always gonna be slept on 'cause that's the stigma, which honestly it should have the stigma if I'm being real. We wanted the albums to sound like the south 'cause there's not a lot of southern display in experimental music. A lot of that shit comes outta New York and Los Angeles. So we wanted our shit to sound crazy, but also southern. Usually when people hit me up from Charlotte or like from the south, we click. So we really wanted to put the south on display. There's more crazy shit that comes outta Texas, but There’s nothing that comes outta North Carolina. We got like Dababy and like John Coltrane and that's really it.
Nick: I mean, we have Mavi.
Stickerbush: Mavi’s hard, don't get me wrong, but there's not really big shit coming outta Charlotte, like really big acts. It's usually Atlanta
Nick: Or its surrounding towns of Charlotte like Asheville or Chapel Hill.
Stickerbush: You would think how much Charlotte's expanding and the culture that's growing there, there would be more of a bigger music scene, but there's really not. It just feels kind of empty, especially with what we're doing. There's no IDM scene in Charlotte, that's just not a thing.
Nick: When looking at other scenes in the south, do you often feel jealous? Like, “man…why can't we be like Memphis in the 90s?”
Stickerbush: Absolutely bro, absolutely. I'd be looking at, especially when I first started, at Atlanta, Texas, all these places that have these solidified scenes. I was like, “damn, I wish Charlotte had something like that.” A big part of music is validation. You want to be around people who do the same thing as you or people who like the thing that you do. I worked with a lot of niggas in Charlotte, they mostly just trying to be like Drake or trying to do something that Lil Baby doing, and it's just boring. Charlotte's already on the map, but not for music. It's a working man's city. Every big city, in my opinion, has a good art scene, because there's a lot of people who love art, but it's like when there's no scene to discourage a lot of people from making music, you know what I mean? Music is a beautiful thing, you need it for community. I just feel like Charlotte outsources a lot of talent. I know a lot of the people in the Charlotte scene, usually if they wanna make something, they'll go to Atlanta to push it. We should have a place here where we can push it here.
Nick: Atlanta has enough. You don't need to give them anymore. I think out of everything in the south, Atlanta was the most successful, in my opinion. Playboy Carti is from Atlanta. Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane had to go to Atlanta to get famous.
Stickerbush: It feels like everybody in Charlotte is kind of scared to not do shit that people from Atlanta are doing because it's like, “oh, we're not getting big if we're doing the shit that we're doing here.” It makes it to where there's no scene here, so you just gotta copy off other scenes and shit like that. I love North Carolina, I love the south. It clearly has its problems politically, but at the same time, that's home for me. That's where I was raised. I love Charlotte, so it's like I want to see young kids be able to come out and do the thing that they want to do and rep their place rather than having to hide it, you know what I mean?
Nick: Or having to be a transplant to somewhere else.
Stickerbush: Exactly because like I said, that shit's lame to me.
heavensouls x stickerbush - "darkskin niggas with lightskin problems" (2025) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: So stepping off of “Darklight,” where do you think this strain you guys established with expressing the culture you guys rep through an Epic Collage lens will morph into the latter half of this decade? Where do you think yourselves or other artists will take that?
Stickerbush: For me personally, I feel like the southern shit is always gonna be a part of my songs. It's always gonna be there. I feel like it'll evolve into something else because that's just who I am. A big part of music is just putting yourself and who you are into the music, so I feel like it'll always be there. But me though, I want to dive more into the electronic scene. My biggest influence and favorite artist is OPN. So I want to, over time, do movie scores and shit like that and be a solidified electronic artist. To me, a lot of artists over time start to detach from culture. You know, once niggas moved to LA like, “I'm an LA nigga now.” For me, I wanna always have that culture be synonymous with the shit that I made, no matter how far it goes. So I think, maybe intrinsically, it'll get dimmed down or maybe it'll get bigger, I don't know. I'm gonna just make the shit that I make and learn more regardless. So if I find ways to implement it more, that's what I'll do. But if it gets implemented less, but certain things in terms of rhythm and cadence and shit like that; that's always still gonna be there.
Nick: Are you also hoping, let's say in five years, we look back at this interview and there's presently a whole Experimental Southern Rap movement where everyone is putting this stuff into IDM and Sound Collage music. Are you hoping that happens more?
Stickerbush: Absolutely I would love that. That shit would really warm me up 'cause like I said, if not for the South, we wouldn't be what we are. We're the people that we are and we make the shit that we make because of the south. I'm always gonna have love for the South. I would love to see us pioneer a scene. Like I said, New York don't need no more, they good. I love that stuff keeps coming out of those scenes but I would love to be one of the pioneers for things like this to get bigger, you know what I mean? For music to evolve in that scene and people to look up to us for what they try to do in these like these southern places, 'cause the south is already like overlooked, but especially places that like niggas don't really know, like Charlotte and shit like that. I would love for somebody to come outta like Fayetteville and be like, “oh yeah, Coin Locker Kid, The Sidepeices, those are artists that I really look up to because they made it outta here.” That would really do it for me personally.
Nick: Yeah like what's going on with Elysia Crampon helping pretty much reshape Latin Electronic for the future generations. Now you have Weed420 pushing that sound even more and it's completely recontextualizing what people think Latin music is.
Stickerbush: Yeah I want people to have a home base. A lot of people in the south, they gotta look at other artists from other places and that's great 'cause that's how I felt like we came up. I was looking at all these people who aren't from the places that I'm from because a big part of music is influence sonically, but you also gotta have influence. It's a role model; you gotta look up to somebody like, “how did they get here?” You look at a lot of artists we love, you look at their Wikipedia pages, they're not from where I'm from. So I want people to be able to, over time, see my page and be like, “oh, he made it outta this place. I can do that.” So yeah, that would be a beautiful thing to me if that was to happen.
Nick: I mean, Elysia Crampton was doing this exact thing in 2012 and is now the standard of boundary pushing Latin Electronic. So hopefully it's the same for you guys in 13 years time…we'll see. With “Darklight” signifying the end of The Sidepeices, what's next for you guys? Are you planning on getting The Sidepeices “back in action,” returning with a set number of releases, or returning to solo only with occasional collaborations or something in between?
Stickerbush: Pyky got some shit that he doing. I think he told you he was doing some shit with that label. I think that we're always gonna work together. It doesn't matter how much time goes by, we're always gonna work together and Sidepeices is never gonna end. But I think that trilogy, we're kind of just done with it. Like the whole satirical trilogy, for us, is done, but we're still gonna make shit. It's just gonna be under different trilogies and different names and shit like that.
Heavensouls: I'm just gonna say like, I don't think Sidepeices is ever really gonna end because we are having way too much fun with it and niggas are fucking with our vision. I think for me, I know Stickers is working on his album. Along with the shit I'm doing with (undisclosed artist), I'm making my own album. I'm bringing back the New York Fall band because we're making a whole funk album. I did a single called “Heyjah Obialo,” which is literally a brief snippet of the album. I wanted to try something different 'cause I didn't want to put out a straight up single because there's not gonna be a lot of songs, but there's gonna be a lot of material in the album. I just want to give a little snippet, just like in a creative way. I wanted to express Nigerian music specifically because I think we made waves in the south, but I said this before. Before I made music, even whenever I was younger, me and my dad had this little project where we wanted to bring music from Nigeria that wasn't able to make it in Western audiences and archive it so niggas can listen to it. Anytime there's Nigerian music that is like put out, it’s either completely exploited by white niggas or just labels done like completely dirty or just completely lost. And I just wanted to push that shit out, give Nigerian musicians a voice, but also show the beauty in Nigeria's music. I think it's because I'm from Nigeria and I've been there, but there were like scenes in Nigeria, there were different genres. It's the same as America, but niggas don't know that because all niggas know about Nigerian music is Fela Kuti. That shit is just kind of annoying. He is fire, but it's just sucks that there's a specific amount of niggas in Nigeria that made it to western audiences, especially back then. So I want to stick up for Nigerian music, but just do it in my own little weird way. So I rounded up like a bunch of the New York Fall, who are a majority Nigerian, and we’re gonna make some straight up Afrobeat, Jazz Funk shit and just go from there, adding a little Epic Collage flavor to it. That's what I've been working on.
Nick: When I heard “New York fall, 1977” earlier today, I was like, “dude, I hope this guy keeps doing this. I hope this isn't like a one-time thing because I think there's a lot he can build on with this.” I'm glad that's what you're doing.
Heavensouls: Oh yeah, I'm gonna keep working with the niggas. We have–same with Stickers–we have way too much fun making this shit.
heavensouls - "Heyjah Obialo" (2025) single cover
Image Courtesy of Spotify
heavensouls - "New York Fall, 1977" (2025) album cover
Image Courtesy of Rate Your Music
Stickerbush: I feel like we're always changing and our individual shit is very different from what we do together. But in terms of The Sidepeices, I feel like we're always gonna be making shit because like before, despite all the music shit, at the end of the day we're best friends and we're always gonna be best friends. We just like working together. We just know when it's time to wrap some shit up. So we wanna work together and learn more and work with other people and shit like. The next time we bring some shit to the table; this is the new us, this is what we're doing now. So for me, the next record I make is gonna be a R&B focused album. He's doing like the Nigerian focused album, the Afrobeat focused album. So yeah, for the next one we kinda wanna come into it with a completely different flavor 'cause we're always changing as people. We're both still young, so we're changing every year. We wanna implement that into, not only our solo shit, but also like our duo.
Nick: Definitely. So with that, outside of upcoming albums, are there any upcoming shows you wanna alert the people to?
Stickerbush: We wanna get to that. We're trying to move in together. I feel like the shit that's going on right now is like the tip of the iceberg. We wanna do shows, we wanna do music videos, we have ideas for the “Roaches” song that we want to do a video for. We wanna really push this shit harder and take it to the edge, but we kind of gotta get in the same place to be able to do that. We wanna start performing and like getting that, that real, because we don't just wanna be like inter like niggas who like make music on the internet forever. So we're trying to get to a place to where we can really make this shit happen and make our career out of it.
Nick: Take it offline and in person.
Stickerbush: Yeah, take it to the real life shit. That's what we're really working on right now.
Nick: Any final words you wanna leave us on?
Stickerbush: Shoutout to you, the interviewer, you a GOAT. Shoutout to Sidepeices. Shoutout to everybody who've been listening. Shoutout to OPN. Shout out to Satanicpornocultshop too. That's another group I really wanna work with. That's one of my favorites as well. But yeah, I guess I'm just shouting out niggas at the end.