The Uproar and Upswing of Ryan Caraveo

This 21-year-old Seattlelite has been honing his art for the
past decade and he’s about to drop his debut album, Swings, in December. Caraveo has already gathered a respectable fan
base opening for solid names like K. Flay and Big Krit with his fresh hip-hop
beats, so keep your eyes on this kid because he has an amazing lyrical talent and
his live shows are full of energy. CULTURE
grecently had the chance to chat with Caraveo about his influences, how he got
started and his upcoming album.

When is Swings going to be released?

On December 12, I will be dropping my album Swings at The Crocodile in Belltown, and
that night at midnight it will be my birthday on December 13. I kind of wanted to
book that so we could celebrate and drop my album at the same time on my
birthday! For every show that I’ve done so far, DJ Vega has been there behind
me and stuff is moving pretty quickly right now so I’m pretty excited about
that.

When did you start getting
into writing and performing?

Really young, I want to say seven years old. My older brother
kind of got me into hip-hop through all the local artists like Blue Scholars
and BoomBat Project, all the way to Wu-tang and Nas, and he kind of coached me
the correct way. We used to have rap battles when I was younger, he would write
my verses and we’d plug a microphone into a sound recorder and we’d go back and
forth. In 7th grade, I wrote my first song and in 8th grade I put together my
first album. I presented a little business plan to my Mom and I got a 100
copies pressed up through Guitar Center, put it out on iTunes, I pushed my
first album and within a week I paid my mom back and ended up making $700 in
middle school. That’s when I started taking it seriously.

Who are your
influences?

My brother used to listen to Nas and Rakim and I kind of
grew up in between Seattle and California at my parents’ place. Back then, I
was listening to Nelly, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park; it was really mixed up and as
I got older I have to say that I was really influenced by Kid Cudi melodically,
his Man on the Moon mix-tape really
influenced me. I got to say Eminem too—day and night, growing up I was
listening to him.

Who was your producer
on Swings?

A lot of the album was produced by Teal Douville who is an
engineer up at UNDERCASTE Studios. He produced a good majority of the album,
one track was produced by Vic Music and then I produced a couple of songs on
there. I dabble in production but I like to get the records and let the mood
drive me. Sometimes with some of these beats I’ll sit on them for a three or
four months and then revisit that song again, because you don’t know how you’re
feeling and when you go back to it, the mood is different.

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
JA
X-NONE

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-fareast-language:JA;}

www.ryancaraveo.com