Shamir believes in signs; he writes monthly horoscopes with his mother for Talkhouse, and finds meaning in numerical symmetry.“[Revelations] comes out November 3, it’s my third record, and it comes out right before my 23rd birthday. Three is this year’s number for me.” With dark times behind him and fate on his side, the sky is the limit for this talented young crooner.

NATALIA BARR: What was going through your mind as you pressed the button to upload Hope on Soundcloud?

SHAMIR BAILEY: I never had so much anxiety in my life before I, yeah, pressed the “Upload” button. It was crazy, because I was like, I can’t believe this actually worked out, I can’t believe that I even got it mastered. Everything just flowed and felt very meant to be, but also, I didn’t tell my managers at the time. I didn’t tell anyone. I just did it. It was very nerve-wracking, but I was very happy with the response. It made me happy to see that people do react to vulnerability.

BARR: With the introduction of Hope, you said you were almost going to quit music the weekend you released it. What kept you from quitting?

BAILEY: I think the good response from Hope, that kind of gave me a reassurance that I can do this on my own. After Hope, I ended up having a mental breakdown, and having a psychotic episode, and spent some time in the psych ward. When I got out, I went back to being a soul singer, and that’s where Revelations came from, once I realized I had a group of songs together, because I had nothing else to do in Vegas. I was just recording and writing my own album. I’m just going with the flow now. It’s not really that calculated anymore. I’m bearing my soul in these songs, and just giving it how it is.

BARR: You wrote on SoundCloud, “When I would listen to immaculate recordings with my friends, their praise over the quality of the art as opposed to the art itself made me feel really sad for music as a medium in general.” How did that view affect your music?

BAILEY: I think people right now, when they hear stuff like Hope and Revelations, they’re like, “Oh, Shamir is just like anti-studio, anti- clean recordings, anti- nicely produced stuff,” and I’m not. I want to do it; it’s just that it never shows itself to work out in this time period. My goal with these records was to show people that it’s the art itself first. It’s the actual songs first. A friend of mine described it like this, like songs as water. You want water to be as pure as possible. You don’t want your water to be contaminated. Production is like a soda machine, those new soda machines where they have the sparkling water and they add the flavor. That’s what production is. It should add flavor. It shouldn’t contaminate the water. It’s crazy to hear a lot of songs on the radio these days, and even on some of my older songs, you can’t even sit down and play the songs acoustically if you wanted to, because production is what’s driving the song. I think the songs should be driving the production.