I met Kendrick after The Sun’s Tirade came out. I was in the studio with [producer] Teddy Walton, who’s doing a lot of my project as well. Moosa was telling me he’d get me a session with Kendrick soon, so we were getting ready for that. We got it in with him, and that’s pretty much based off ’cause Kendrick heard me on The Sun’s Tirade joint. So he was like, “Yeah, fo sho. Bring that guy through.” It was me and Teddy, we went in, Teddy played him some beats, and then Kendrick asked me to play him a few of my songs, and I think I played him about four songs. The last song I played was the one that he ended up picking up.

Is that “LOVE.”?

Yeah. The fourth song I think I played him that night ended up being “LOVE.” It’s crazy because like the first three songs that I played for him, he was hyped about them. He took all of them. He was like, “Man, these are crazy, these are dope, let me get that too.” And then when I played him the one that’s on his album, he didn’t really say anything, he stayed quiet, but he was like, “Send me that.” And then the next day they were asking me for the stems.

It was actually Teddy Walton, the guy that produced it, that urged me to play it. I almost played a different song. If it weren’t for him I probably wouldn’t have played the track.

What can you tell me about “LOVE.”?

One thing I can say is I think it’s definitely a whole new genre. It’s a sound that I've been working on a lot with Teddy Walton. We found this certain sound and I think that’s what Kendrick saw when he heard it. This song, this beat, the singing, the rapping—I don’t think it can really be compared to another song, as far as that goes. You can’t say, like, “Oh, this song kind of reminds of this.” It’s a whole new wave. And it’s all about love. It’s all about the title.

When did you start making music?

My parents had me in a performing arts school when I was like 8 years old, so I’ve been singing. I used to do like Elvis and James Brown stuff as a kid. And then I really got into like writing and singing when I joined the worship team for my youth group at the church. I learned how to play guitar, so I was initially just playing guitar. And then I started singing while playing guitar. And then I ended up leading the whole church’s band, all through high school, and I played saxophone through high school too, jazz band and stuff like that.

When I Google your name—was that you in a New York Times article a couple years ago about bear-watching at Katmai National Park in Alaska?

Oh, was there a New York Times article?

It mentions “our fishing guide, Zacari Pacaldo,” who was “torn between his love of music — he was heading off to music school in the fall — and his love of fishing.”

[Laughs] Oh yeah, that was me for sure. I spent three summers in Alaska. Right when I graduated high school. When I graduated high school, toward the end of my senior year I just started applying at a bunch of national parks, and literally Alaska was the only place that hit me back, like, “We want a dishwasher.” I was all for it. So by the third year I ended up being a fly-fishing, bear-viewing guide.