WEATHERBY: You’re obviously experimenting with a lot of different things, and some might not expect that there are also a lot of different genres that inform your music and hip-hop in general. How would you describe the music you make?

P.O.S: I think the best way to describe my music as a rapper is, I want to rap on beats that are more interesting than your average hip-hop beat. I grew up listening to metal, hardcore, and punk rock. I like things to sound urgent and noisy. I like taking pieces of rolls and trills and shoving them into a trap kit and making it all work. I like rap music that is about something and not necessarily always about partying or love.

WEATHERBY: You don’t really write too much about love.

P.O.S: I have two love songs in my entire history of being a rapper. I’m not a big love-song writer. I like love and I have a great time with it, but that stuff is covered. As of right now, I write about the world around me and how it’s beautiful or horrible and that’s where all that inspiration comes from, just being alive and spending time here.

WEATHERBY: How did you come up with the title for your latest album, We Don’t Even Live Here?

P.O.S: In spirit, it’s about escaping and having the best time ever and not being in a place where everything is confined or about money or politics but just escaping that and doing whatever you want.

WEATHERBY: Did you have any other ideas for the title?

P.O.S: The closest runner-up was Only Impossible Things Forever. [laughs]

WEATHERBY: [laughs] That’s a really good one.

P.O.S: I still might call something that.

WEATHERBY: You did a lot of collaborating on the last album. What track did you have the most fun with?

P.O.S: On the last record, me and Mike (Mictlan of Doomtree), “Get Down.” That was a really fun song to make; and I got the beat from my friend Patric (Russel) who used to play in a band called Innerpartysystem. That was a really fun band, and now he’s making beats and just killing it in the world. I lucked out and got that really good beat from him.

WEATHERBY: What would you say is the most critical song to the album that it just could not do without?

P.O.S: “Lock-picks, Knives, Bricks and Bats,” the middle track.

WEATHERBY: You’re making a lot of statements on the album about the world being shitty and maybe not the best place.

P.O.S: I think that things are shitty. I think there’s a lot that’s just wrong all the time. But the feel of this album is that, as bad as things possibly can get, you can grab a section of your people and make a consistently enjoyable life for yourselves and try to play outside of everything else. The world is set up in a way where you need money, you need A, B, and C in order to do anything, and that’s frustrating, and it sucks, and a lot of people don’t know how to deal with it. They end up on anti-depressants or they end up hating their life or hating their job. I think that the vibe is to recognize that you can get by with less and to make the corners and the shady spots a happy and comfortable place.