Born Again with QUIN

Her audience was surrounded by projections of her universe as she sang with fellow artist 6lack. After a few years of being under the elusive contracts of labels, she’s finally able to come out on top as an independent artist again. The solitude of the pandemic gave QUIN the time to manifest “SCORPIA.” Before her big event revealing her new project, she spoke to office about her journey and where she wants to go from here.

Watch the new video and keep up with QUIN at Scorpia.World.

Tell me about your artist rebirth era, going from 2016 to now, what’s the trajectory you want to go into with your new release?

In 2016, that was when I dropped my very first project called Galactica. Since then, it's been “Dreamgirl” and “Lucid” going from independent to being signed with Interscope and back again. So, leaving that behind and realizing that, I have everything I need, I'm just going back to the roots of what's in front of me, what I can trust, who I love, and how I’m going to get vulnerable enough to ask for help, and that's been fueling my creativity lately. Right now is kind of the conclusion of a chapter. I’m entering a new space, because I've been kind of halfway dipping into making new music, and I think that there was a story that needed to be concluded first. The goal of this specific project was to pull out a miniature story from what I've already made, mainly because in the pandemic, I was like, ‘What am I going to do next?,’ because I completely split from the label/management. I started completely over. I asked myself, ‘What is Fantasy Soul?’ Let's regroup. Who am I actually?’ When I did that, I started taking a look at all of the music that I had. I started seeing a story form. It came out of frustration and a need to remind myself of who I am through what I already had because I didn't have the means at the time to make all the music videos that I wanted to make. I realized all I had to do was focus on this story and expand on that.

With the new release, my intention is to reintroduce myself and reintroduce what “Fantasy Soul” is, but with a team that I trust and feel supported by. I started looking at what was right in front of me. I have all that I need here, and we can go forward from there. My main goal is to rebrand what “Fantasy Soul” is. It's a genre, it’s a world, it’s a family, and everybody's gifts kind of just go together perfectly, and it creates this. It's really the first project where I feel completely like me and my friends made this from nothing. This is completely independent and cuts all the bullshit out and, look at what we did. It feels like the beginning, and it feels like a conclusion at the same time.

How does your personal style inform your creativity as you continue to recreate different iterations of yourself?

I'm continuously checking in on how I feel and inviting that through my style. I’ll ask myself, ‘What color do I feel like today?’ then that's the color of the day. Lately, I've been feeling a lot of earth tones, but, overall, I just go with how I feel, and that intertwines with everything, like music. I check in, and that's what it's giving for the day.

So your projects came out as a trilogy in your universe, what made you want to release your music in that way?

I always felt like, it was an everlasting story unfolding. From the beginning, when I put “Galactica out, that’s where Fantasy Soul started. Then all of a sudden, “Dreamgirl came out, and I’m like, ‘Oh, this is a compilation of cute love songs! Who knew I had that inside?!” Then it clicked for me that the next project had to be “Lucid,” because “Dreamgirl” and “Lucid” go together. Then I started seeing the story form. This story is making itself, and it's just reminding me of what's always been. I'm just kind of following the way of my imagination.

How did you come up with your universe “Fantasy Soul?”

I came up with it out of convenience. Everyone's like, “What kind of music do you make?” I was saying it's a little bit of this. It's a little bit of that. I was done with the adjectives. I was done with explaining too much. So, I started checking in with myself, and I'm like, I just need one thing, and that was my prayer for a while. It just dropped from the sky, and it was like, “You make fantasy soul music.” And I was like, ‘Yes, ma'am.’ You know, so then somebody happened to ask me, what do you do? I'm like, ‘I make music.’ and he's like, ‘Oh, what kind’ and I was like, ‘This is your moment. And you got to say it confidently.’ I was like, Fantasy Soul. And he's like, “Oh, I get that.” And immediately that sparked something in his imagination So, that's where Fantasy Soul came from. It came from me not being able to identify with just one genre and needing to find a way to explain myself in a really simple and direct, and confident way, and lately it’s been expanding into so much more where I’m like, ‘Oh, this is bigger than me.’

How would you describe your sound’s transformation currently and where do you see it going in the future?

My sounds transformation, first of all, you find your voice along the way. I feel like it also just has a lot to do with the producers that I work with. I do stick to the same guys mostly, so far, at least but, I like it like that. “Lucid” was the most hands-on I had in the production and I think I'm just getting into the world where I really expand on that, like really going in and producing with my friends more and more, so I think that, as a producer, I want to evolve the sound like that and just make it cinematic. I want you to listen front to back and have an experience. So, I think that in that way, it will expand with the experiences that I add to the listening, for example, SCORPIA, is a whole immersive exhibition. The experiences are going to evolve, and they’re going to be tangible, and full sensory. I love that cinematic shit, I want to make movies, you know?

Tell me about SCORPIA’s conceptual assemblage, how did that come about?

I was sitting in the pandemic, ‘What am I going to do? Do people even remember that I make music?’ I'm like, mad, frustrated. I'm, like, fuck the industry, you know, all that shit. I'm like, I want to put together a live show. So I'm on the phone with my best friend, and we just, made a list of all the songs, and then we started making a web out of them. Then we were figuring out what songs go together. I thought it was just going to be a live set but, the more that I started looking at them, I was like, I'm always talking about water. So then I started really seeing this pattern. Every album had something to do with the water element. As a Scorpio, naturally, I’m like a triple water sign. Immediately, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there's a common denominator here. This is the show. And then I was like, this is deeper. I want to make a movie. I called my friend Andres and I was like, look, I have a little playlist. I think we should figure this out. He immediately was like, I got you, and I didn't have many resources at the time. So I was like, how am I going to expand on what I already have? Also so many people have never heard these songs before. I wanted to pull them out because I felt like they deserve some recognition and they deserve visuals. It's something I've always wanted to do for those songs. So my friend Slim and I produced and weaved them all together. That's how it came about. So it's like a verse, and a hook from each song that forms the story SCORPIA and the bigger story is the trilogy which later on will be revealed as “Sea of Space, and The Oceans in the Sky,” because this was a theme that’s been popping up since I was writing poems on my receipt papers at work. It’s a reoccurring story for me, so then it all clicked.

What’s your favorite track on the album?

I have to say all are going to be a favorite for different reasons, right? But I named “Fav” originally because it was my favorite and because I feel like I had never gotten that sexy on a song yet. I was always going deep and going somewhere else, but the second that I heard that beat, I was like, this is what we're doing, okay. It just came out of me. It sounded like water. I immediately hit 6lack, and I’m like, I have this song you’ll like. It sounds like us. And soon enough it was done. I love the falsettos, the beat is amazing. To me, it was just pure water, and I love that. And then “Sea of space,” has been my favorite, the production on it was why I completely fell in love with it. This was around the time when I was always like, give me your weirdest beat ever, and my friend Rich Skillz. plays this, and I’m like, Thank you, I needed a challenge. If you listen to the track alone, there are so many places that it goes, finding the melodies, the rhythm of the words, fitting in the pockets of the music- it’s like rapping, I love the game of writing. I listened to it literally 3000 times on the way home.

How’d you come up with the concept of giving your community a multi-sensory experience? 

To be honest, it's as simple as that's just what I want to be around. That's where I want to be. That's the event that I want to go to. That's the experience that I want to be in, and I got to a place where there was just a moment of stillness where I was like, I can't depend on anyone, and maybe I don't want to or have to. I need to create these things for myself because there's nothing to do out here, and this is what makes me happy. This is my idea of fun. So, let me just share it, let me figure out a way to do it. So, I can actually book myself and then also give myself and my besties exactly what we want. So it came from me needing it.