In Conversation with James Francis | Creativity, consistency & finding your own voice

0:00He's a rapper inspired by Dave, but he's also classically trained and a true 100 %er. We're getting to know James Francis.

0:10I think the first time I tried to do that, I listened to Good Kid, Man City and listened to Sing About Me Dying with Burst and was like, why is the song 12 minutes? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're here with the legend, the rapper, producer, musician, editor, graphic designer, music commentator. It's a lot.

0:29James Francis:It's a lot. James Ransos. I've said a lot already, but for anyone who doesn't know you, what do you want to be known for? What do I want to be known for? Just being a creative person, I guess. I do a lot of things, obviously music, graphic design. But yeah, I feel like trying to learn through the process and being creative to like the through line through all of that stuff. So artists. Artists. We'll leave it at that. All creative outlets. All creative outlets. Amazing. So we obviously know you're classically trained. So how does the classical music come into your music today? Yeah, I think especially in terms of music theory, like when it comes to music production, like all of the music theory I internalize from all my classical training.

1:15I think also in terms of like arranging songs, like a lot of the times in classical, especially in like sonata forming classical music like it's very sectional um i think it really helped me think about hierarchy like when when it comes to song arranging i think there's also when you do a lot of different creative practices like it just allows your brain to do different like it allows your brain to do different stuff to like connect like disparate ideas to each other i guess because you do a lot of music kind of critiquing and reviews and stuff and you break songs down to molecular levels so that that has got a like from that musical training because you did like transcripts and stuff as well yeah i did transcription for a bit that was that was fun um that was mainly mainly a lockdown but i think yeah a lot of the critique stuff i do is pulling

2:08James Francis:it's pulling from that and now i have to explain that's so interesting we live in a time where like it's easy to do like hot takes or like to critique stuff but the way that you the way do you analyze music is actually super interesting because you there's that you're not hot-headed for one it's not clickbaity it's like very measured but it's also like justified and like there's rationale behind it you can explain why things are the way that they are or they're not and obviously there's your own opinion perspective in there as well but i think it's a very it's a fine line to be able to like provide an objective and criticism not i feel like it's associated with negativity it's not negativity but to be able to do what you do and it be well received is is very impressive so well done doing some good stuff it's difficult i think um yeah like you said i'm always riding a line of like nuance especially in short form it's really easy to like dumb down a really complex idea and like completely gut all the nuance from it yeah um but at the same time i don't want every time to make it super long just to counteract that so it's always a balance of like what information is worth keeping whilst also keeping the nuance yeah yeah well obviously we've talked about your commentary of other people but you as we said at the start are an artist and you embody all of the facets of that so we we know that you've spoken about like psychodrama being one of your like earliest discoveries of like an album and Dave being one of your main sort of like inspiration so we wanted to ask like what what is it about him and maybe that album in particular that was like I want to do this as well yeah I think um I think uh yeah Dave was for me like I'd listen to Kendrick obviously um especially through my older brother because my older brother is also an artist um but I hadn't really delved into Kendrick's discography yet I think the first time i tried to do that i listened to good kid mad city and listened to sing about me dying with thirst and was like why is this song 12 minutes yeah oh god yeah yeah yeah and then yeah and then at the time i was in um i was in the production space like especially in like the christian hip hop space doing a lot of production um and psychodrama was the first like concept rap album that I sat down and internalized.

4:30I think part of it was UK context, but also I think part of it is because Dave is fantastic at wordplay, but he's also super accessible in terms of his storytelling in a way that, because sometimes people can be complex and it can make you feel dumb for not getting the punchline. Yes, too much, overwhelming. Like it has too much, especially like for an entry-level person. I think at that early stage, like Dave validated for me, like oh like i can stories how number one and also two i can tell a narrative that's outside of just one song yeah um and for me that was just like such a mind-blowing concept because all the music i grew up on it's not really concept albums like outsiders um outside of like misdication of lauren hell um but yeah outside of that i hadn't really had like a rap concept album with a narrative so yeah we've listened to your like latest release the 2023 and on your 23rd birthday we can we can definitely hear that dave influence kind of coming yeah 100 is there anything else you kind of want to speak to that song in terms of a breakdown i feel like for a lot of the other birthday songs i've done done a couple yeah um like i produced the beat ages ago and then i adapted it for what i was doing but i think this was the first time i went in being like i want to produce this type of thing yeah um i also wanted it to be more like confessional than some of my other birthday stuff because i think a lot of the other stuff was very hype for me at the time um but maybe not as confessional i think i really wanted it to be like like more personal than some of the other ones that i've done yeah like it definitely feels like kind of a marker in the ground i guess that's your first release since like 20 well on on like DSPs since like 2024, right?

6:21So, yeah, looking forward to kind of what's coming, man. Yeah, man.

6:25James Francis:It's a very, very accomplished song. Thank you. Yeah, I very much enjoy listening to it. So big up, man. Big up. Obviously, we spoke about just now releasing on DSPs, but obviously so much of nowadays, the promotional side of things is like social media, as we all know. in 2024 you posted every single day online and I think we were saying before like it's easy to speak about the premise of just post every day just post every day but what did you actually learn by by doing that yeah and just just your posting every day isn't it wasn't regular yeah it was like good like great graphics like great fonts and stuff I'm like I'm a nerd for fonts and the fonts were clean um it wasn't just you kind of just talking to the camera and that's it there was like a lot behind it yeah that that whole year was such a learning process i think um i think in retrospect a lot of it made me think about in terms of people talk about like building a personal brand um and the posting every day for a year was it made me realize like so much of content is identity formation in terms of communicating the essence of who you are like at its core um and a lot of that is being honest with yourself with who you are um and especially because i was posting every day it was really hard to not be honest when you're documenting like every day of your life for a year um so i think it really pushed me to be more honest in my content and and more honest in the way that i come across because if you try and like if you try and convolute yourself through like oh i'm gonna have distance between who i am and the way that i present myself it's just gonna come across as inauthentic yeah um so yeah i feel like that was really the main takeaway and also like the consistency like constantly sharpening my skills yeah of course like as the year went on yeah such a good way of thinking about it And I think sometimes people think, oh, maybe my opinion is too niche.

8:31James Francis:So I'll shy away from sharing that 30%. But I think in that, everyone has like those smaller things that they think are niche and specific until someone else shares it. And you're like, oh, I can really relate to that. So I feel like it's actually such a nice way of like, you think that you might be speaking to nobody. But it's probably such a swell of people that are like, oh my gosh, I feel exactly the same. 100%. Obviously, you're classically trained. So you have an analytical brain, listen to a lot of music, have a lot of perspectives. How does that, all of that, like, impact the process of making your own music as James Francis?

9:04Yeah, it's been really interesting. Because, yeah, the analysis stuff, it kind of came by accident. I mainly started doing it because I wanted to teach myself, like, what are the things I value in X other artists that I can take away and internalise in my music process. and when I was posting every day my initial plan was I'm just gonna post my music and something's gonna blow and then that's it and then I realized if I do this for a calendar year I'm gonna burn out so I'm gonna like document the process a little bit more and then a lot of that turned into turned into commentary so yeah I feel like those videos as much as they're still for other people than mainly for myself like for me it's clarifying for myself like what are my values and the music that i'm creating and like why doesn't this land for me and i think that helps me to communicate better like my vision as an artist because i remember it was there's something uh baby he said in the beginning of casino of like i'm not for everybody yeah i think that's super important of like you clarify who you are like identity wise as an artist by going I like this and I also don't like these other things and it's not like to put a value judgment on like what's good and what's bad it's to go I'm defining that this is who I am and I think it helps to make clearer decisions rather than being like more wishy-washy with like your end goal.

10:40So what was the moment when you were creating where you thought this is who I am and this is worth something yeah i'm not sure it ever like coalesced into one moment where i was like i get it yeah i've done it i've cracked the code i think when um when i was about halfway through the year i definitely had like a mindset shift um because i think well there's two points so the first one was when i hit 10k followers on instagram that was like two months into posting every day and i was like i can do this um the the time before that was um very early before that rhapsody um like posted one of my videos on a story and i was like okay like if i just like stay consistent um then i can really lock that in and then crazy co-sign by the way it was so mad it was so mad that was such a a chance thing i think um a couple years prior i did some graphic design stuff um and she dm'd me about it and was like this looks really sick yeah so i did a freestyle basically because at that point i was just like well i didn't really have a lot to lose yeah and i was also just like i just need to talk about the things that i like um so i did a freestyle basically saying to rhapsody like I really appreciate X, Y, Z.

12:08And then, yeah, she put it on the story and was like, this is really sick. And yeah, at that time I was just like, I can actually do this. And then the second time I think was when I was around 50, 60K. I feel like at that point I was in a bit of a rut with myself. I think pushing through that, there was like a couple of weeks where I was just like, I'm so ready to quit this. And like pushing through that. I think it really helped clarify for me of just like, one, like how fickle metrics can be often. And two, that like the identity formation is like never reaches up front. Like you're constantly evolving.

12:50For sure. It's crazy to say like that you're, you thought that you were in a rut because seeing the trajectory that you've been on, it feels like it just rocketed. So it's crazy. So you're 23 now. Indeed. We saw we saw one of your reels. You said kind of one speaking of metrics, one of your goals is to kind of hit a million followers. Let's go, man. Let's go. You got this. So beyond the numbers, like what would success look like to you at the end of the year? Honestly, I feel like putting out this project and just being happy with the process of it. I think, yeah, definitely at the beginning of the year, I was very goal oriented.

13:29I feel like less so now. I think I'm also enjoying the process of just like making music again. I think the one thing that I missed in 2024 from posting all the time was I wasn't really writing because I was spending so much time filming and editing. So yeah, I feel like in the last two years I've scaled a bit back on the content to get back to making music. It's so fun. so yeah the main thing for me is just like to get at the end of the rollout and be like I'm happy that this is in the wild yeah it exists yeah

14:06James Francis:it's sick man amazing well thank you so much for your time we're going to let you get upstairs to the studio what are you working on today I'm mainly going to do a listening session for this project for some of my audience so is the project complete? almost it's really it's like 99 % there nice love it listen bro it's been a pleasure So have a good one. Love man. See you soon.