What are you the first at?

Well, I am the first Charles in my family, so I can at least be that. I went through this whole thing with that name where I wanted to change it for a while because I didn’t like the way it flowed, but one of the first people to ever fuck with my music was this girl from India names Priya who ran a blog called Getting Deeper. I told her I was going to change my name to Hawk, and she was like ‘Do not change your name! CharlesTheFirst is swag, just do it!’ so I think it’s turned into something a little bit different. I just decided I was CharlesTheFirst one day. I’m still figuring it out. I actually had to double check that there weren’t any other Charles’ in my family. I went back really far, and I’m good for at least 200 years.

As a journalist, storytelling is important to me, and in some ways a lost art form. Why do you tag a lot of your music in that way?

I feel like I gave up on classifying the music in terms of genre. “Storytelling” is the only thing that really fits every piece of music that I write, because it’s all trying to convey some sort of story. So, I’d rather use that as a label for my music than try to put it into some other box. I started as a lyricist, that was my introduction to music, I was trying to be a rapper. I’ve been writing poetry since I was a little kid. I got brought into a hip-hop group by some of my brother’s older friends; they took me under their wing, taught me how to rap, taught me how to make music. That’s actually the root of where the whole hawk thing came from is that dude, Joey. The dude who taught me how to make music passed away, and that’s how the hawk connection started.

What’s next for you?

We’re working on a bunch of exciting stuff. I have a new album that’s going to be coming out sometime in August or September. We’re going to create a whole new experience for it and have a really cool Fall tour to promote the new album. We’re focusing on the creative direction of it.