Pitchfork: What does the success of a track like “Tropicana,” which has more than half a million plays on SoundCloud, or “Powerball” being played on Beats 1 mean to you?

Topaz Jones: It shows that there’s more than one path, that urban music doesn’t just have to be what radio or the club dictates. It can have connection to Black music’s past and embrace things that maybe people have forgotten about and still seem fresh and new. My goal is to merge things retro and futuristic. So right now feels great, but there’s so much left to do.

When did you start making music?

I had a boy band in kindergarten and first grade, back when ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys was popping. It was me and four white boys that I went to school with. I wrote all of the songs, and they all sang them. I was so young. We wrote songs about being firefighters, just little kid shit. Then I started writing weird soul ballads when I was 8. Me and my older cousin used all of the stock demo sounds on this keyboard that I had in my room and made a cassette tape. Cassettes were still a thing! We put our name on it and “sold” them—but really just gave them out at Thanksgiving to our whole family. That was my first mixtape; I made a mixtape at 8.

Topaz Jones: "Motion Sickness" (via SoundCloud)

Who are some of your influences?

Definitely my dad. It’s funny that, with this album especially, I find myself circling back in order to find my own voice and separate myself from all the other rap influences that I’ve had in the past. [After] the last album, people would say, “This shit is super fresh, but you remind me of this person.” They would say it as such a compliment, but I would take it as such a diss because I don’t want to sound like nobody else. When I first heard Cudi or André—these are people you could never confuse with anybody else. I wanted that same energy around my shit. So I just put myself on a diet. I went back to all the music that my father raised me on: Prince, Parliament/Funkadelic, Ohio Players, Earth, Wind & Fire. This is where I come from.

How difficult has it been to learn how to sound like yourself?

It just takes a lot of real honesty with yourself. In the past I have been more fake honest, like, I know that this is something that people want to hear from me versus what I really have to say. With every song, I get better at tapping into that external thing that has to come through you, versus you trying to force a message.

A real message passes through you. It doesn’t start with you. I’ve written a lot of things that I had to scratch out and start over again because it just didn’t feel genuine. I’ve written a lot of things that were uncomfortable and made me feel weird, and then I knew I was doing the right thing. Even on this album, there’s a song that I go back and forth on because it’s really uncomfortable for me to share. But it’s arguably the closest I’ve ever come to achieving that authentic voice. Anything that’s going to make you uncomfortable and scared has some value and some merit to it. So I’m trying to step out onto more ledges.

Topaz Jones: "Coping Mechanism" (via SoundCloud)

How much does your music channel political ideas?

Because of my mom and the people that I grew up around, politics has always been a part of my DNA. In 2013, I made a song called “Coping Mechanism,” shining a light on police brutality, and it rings so true today—it almost makes 10 times as much sense now as it did a few years ago.

But this album [Arcade] is way less political. The statement that’s being made here is how it’s hard not to want to run away from these ideas. On “Grass,” the first line is: “I found love, a great distraction from checking the evening news and staying up on what’s happening.” I got into a relationship. I focused on music. I did all these things and found all these ways to distract myself from the reality of the world. I was forgiving myself for tuning out the world.

It’s understandable as a black man in America to not even want to have to deal with these things that you’re being bombarded with—these images, these narratives that are being pushed on you. When people who look like you are being killed on television, that’s a crazy thing, and rather than attacking that head on, I found myself just avoiding it all together and trying to distract myself from it as a coping mechanism. My role is more to just make really good music and to make things that represent my truth, and to have people relate to them.