Creative Resource: Tell me a little about yourself, your passions, inspirations, and goals with music

ZAYD: My name is Yusuf Zayd Boulanouar, but I go by ZAYD when it comes to my creative work. I’m from San Diego, I was born on March 10th, 2006, and I am a Pisces. My passions have definitely changed a lot throughout my life, but music is the first passion that’s felt really solidified in my life. I used to skate, draw on occasion, and vlog in middle school. At the time, these things were my passion, but nothing felt as consistent as music did. I’ve been working on music for about three and a half years now. It took me that long to finally release something, but the time was necessary.

My biggest goal with my music is to find myself on a big stage with an audience singing the lyrics I wrote back at me without having to get near the microphone. On top of that, I hope to be interviewed by Narduwar; it’s something that’ll make me feel like I really made it. My biggest inspiration is Varnish La Piscine, a Swiss artist who is a combination of Tyler, the Creator, and Pharrell. He’s definitely inspired some of the songs on my album UNMASTERED, as well as a lot of what I’m working on currently.

CR: How were you introduced to music, and how did you get into music production?

ZAYD: Music has always been a part of my life. I come from a musical family, and I was exposed to nearly every genre imaginable. My music journey began in fourth grade when I started playing the trombone, and as I discovered my passions, my love for music remained steadfast. Around early COVID, I was at my grandpa’s house, bored out of my mind, messing around on my uncle’s guitar. Mind you, I had no idea how to play at all at this time. He asked if I wanted to borrow it, so I said yes and had told him I’d bring it back the following month. I still have that guitar to this day. I taught myself how to play, and I never stopped, picking up piano later on in 2022. That same year, my work as a producer started. Back in middle school and high school, I used to watch a lot of Tyler, the Creator FL Studio remix videos and thought it was interesting to see how artists recreated songs. After watching others produce, I decided to download FL Studio for myself and started producing every single day. It was easier than I thought it would be, and of course, my early work was pretty awful. What set it apart from my other hobbies was that it felt like the most creative thing I had ever done. With skating, you can ride your board around at the skate park, but you’re still doing tricks that were invented by other people. You’re not really making something new every day. Around 2023, I started taking things really seriously, and what really solidified producing for me came after completing an album I never released. The song ‘BIKE RIDING’ on my album ‘UNMASTERED’ was the first song I completed after finishing that first unreleased album, and it was a huge turning point for me. I felt like I had finally made the song I had always wanted to make. I found a completely different sound in my music, and things just felt different; it solidified a new age for me as a producer.

CR: Listening to ‘UNMASTERED,’ there is definitely this sort of Nintendo-esque sound. Did you grow up with those games, and if so, did any of them give you some inspiration for this album?

ZAYD: I’ve been told that quite a bit, but I think that’s probably my favorite compliment. Behind all the bossa nova and brazilian influences in my music is Nintendos music; the track Starlight Plaza on UNMASTERED uses the same exact instruments from the game Wave Race for Nintendo 64. Everything that I love about music came from playing Nintendo games as a kid and hearing those soundtracks, especially from the game Endless Ocean: Blue World. That was my introduction to samba and all those Brazilian percussive sounds; I remember listening to the soundtrack when I was five years old, and I believe it truly changed the course of my life.

CR: You mentioned you really love working with percussive sounds in your production. Which percussion instrument is your favorite?

ZAYD: The cuica. Absolutely the cuica. It’s a Brazilian instrument, it’s common in samba, and it’s probably one of my favorite sounds. It has that squeaky sound you hear when you pull a straw up and down inside a fast-food drink. It has such a unique feel to it, and I really love that. It doesn’t look the way you would think it does, and I feel like that adds so much meaning to the instrument.

CR: How did the environment and communities you’ve found throughout your life impact your journey and your growth as an artist?

ZAYD: I’ve gone through so much change and not just with music but in all aspects in my life; one thing I don’t let myself lose is my inner child. I think a lot of people let aspects of growing up and conforming to the people around them consume them, and they lose that part of them that has been there all along. This causes their egos to inflate, they became emotionally detached or distant, lose their wonder and creativity, and a lot of times they lose themselves. Hearing my music from when I started and now, there is a clear difference, but my inner child and that wonder are still translated into what I produce. While I’ve grown as an artist, my end goal is still the same. When people tell me what my album feels like to them, whether it sounds like background music or the MII menu from Nintendo, it's the most gratifying feeling. The energy I am putting into this album is being pushed out. I don’t care about the streaming statistics; I care about hearing how people feel during and after listening to my music, and what parts they like the most, whether it’s someone just enjoying the feeling of a song, or another musician complimenting my chord progressions, or a more technical aspect of a track.

CR: You mentioned feeling like you needed the perfect moment to release this album and how your biggest obstacle was yourself. What drove you to release ‘UNMASTERED’ and what did that breakthrough feel like?

ZAYD: In a recent interview, Tyler, the Creator was talking about creatives and how they just need to drop their shit. You don’t need a crazy album rollout and don’t need to do what other people are doing — that’s how you put yourself in handcuffs and never end up releasing anything. The perfectionist side of me definitely gets in my way more often than not, which is something I need to learn to control still. As I mentioned earlier, I had an album called ‘One Last Dance.’ I did a whole promotional video for it, but didn’t end up releasing it because I felt like the sound just wasn’t me anymore. This realization was after I produced the track ‘BIKE RIDING,’ and when I made that song, it just felt like my sound had changed. If I were gonna put that album out, I wasn’t going to be true to myself. After this realization, I just wanted to have fun with producing again, so I just worked every day, and that helped me improve. I worked more on chopping up samples, finding the sounds I liked, putting more bounce in the bass, etc. That’s how we got all the songs that you hear on UNMASTERED; they all came from that period after that first album. So by not releasing ‘One Last Dance’, I actually created an even better situation for myself. That just showed me that even if I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m still doing something that could be very beneficial to my future. It’s funny how life works like that; things just fall into place once you let go. Then, in January—this last year—I started working on an album which I won’t reveal the name of, but it is still in the works.

CR: There’s this idea that “nothing completely human is perfect because we are imperfect and transitional beings.” With you mentioning how the title ‘UNMASTERED’ represents how you’re evolving as an artist, did this sort of beautiful human messiness come through more in these specific tracks?

ZAYD: Everyone’s life is a little weird, and every day is something different. One week is one thing and the next is another, so when I sit down to produce, I don’t just create whatever comes to mind. It comes from an internal feeling, and my environment. Even though everyone hears music differently, I think that honesty comes through. When listening to my music, you might feel something totally different from what I did when I made it, but that emotion you’re tapping into, whatever it is, comes from a place of truth. For example, the track ‘YESTERDAY’S PROBLEM’ was inspired by how it felt for me to just take some time outside by the beach and sit on a rock. The feeling can come from such a simple experience, but the emotion of the song is far from simple. Some tracks are more high-energy and some aren’t, but that’s life; you won’t feel the same as you did yesterday, but you’re also going to feel different tomorrow, and as long as you have a way to navigate that, things that hurt won’t hurt as much. Music and producing are my way of navigating those harder moments. Those more upbeat songs come from me just living my life without letting every sad moment consume me. So yeah, honesty and emotion are my biggest points I try to nail with everything I create and do in my life. Without those, I’d be nothing.

CR: You did some creative directing with FITSATSLO, a fashion community at Cal Poly SLO. How did mixing artistic mediums help you grow as an artist?

ZAYD: Looking back at that shoot, I know I could’ve done the colors so much better, but that shoot was so much fun. Those shots were beautiful, especially the first slide of that post on my Instagram; that’s definitely one of my favorite photos ever. I had met the president of the club early on in the school year, and we had become good friends. I had been begging to do a shoot since the moment I had met her. I showed her some of my music and other creative shit I’d done and promised that I could create and direct a beautiful shoot. She ended up letting me do the shoot during our second quarter, about a week before my birthday. I had the idea to do it on that mountain since the first time I had done that hike. I remember thinking, “Whoa, imagine how sick a photo would be with this background.” I drew the ideas I had for the shoot a week before, and having that sort of freedom to conceptualize something and bring it to life, fun and exciting would be an understatement. It was refreshing. It was an incredible opportunity, and the location was perfect too.

CR: Multiple listeners have expressed their love for your album, how does it feel getting this positive feedback?

ZAYD: For me to say I wasn’t expecting positive feedback would just be me lying through my teeth, because I mean, come on, I know my shit is good, but I wasn’t expecting to get this much positive feedback. Especially since it comes from the last people I would expect it to. From my sister's coworkers, my old family friends I haven’t spoken to in years, people I’ve never met before, and so on. I don’t mean this in a narcissistic way at all, but I’m a bigger fan of my music than anybody who listens to it. I've always been like that, and it’s definitely been a game-changer. It’s opened up a lot more doors for me, all just from me having confidence in my art. While getting my cake and candles from the people I surround myself with is super special and gratifying to hear, it’s been so surreal in the best way possible to hear about it from people that I wouldn’t expect. The word really did spread far, and I thank every single person who posted about it, told their parents about it, played it at work, etc. I consider the stuff I’m working on now 10 times better than anything on ‘UNMASTERED’, so to hear how much everybody enjoyed/enjoys listening to what I got out now makes me so much more excited for the future. You guys haven’t even heard the vocals and the raps yet, but the instrumental stuff is fun because the instruments are sort of the vocals. Doing that shoot with FITS is an example of that. With anything you do, really, if you don’t like it, then what's the point of putting it out into the public? That’s just doing a disservice to yourself. My music is my comfort zone, and to me, making music is just combining the things that inspire me and my favorite artists' work into my own thing. It’s like heaven, but don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely been in hell.

CR: On your social media, you have a lot of content with your friend group. How do you think your group of friends has helped you or influenced you as a producer?

ZAYD: Those are my people. They’re my biggest supporters, other than my immediate family, when it comes to anything I do. I can mention an idea for a video I might never release, and they’re the first ones to say they’ll be in it.  I’d be sitting in my room looping some 20-second track I’ve been working on for hours, and right as it’s done, my friends will just be jumping around and dancing to it in my room. They’ll be very real with me if—and when—I wanna do something that might be stupid, but still allow me to be creative and myself because they know that I know what I’m doing. I’ve noticed that I definitely gravitate towards these kinds of people. My friends also helped me name some of the tracks in the album, so that just adds more of that personal touch and emphasizes what the album means to me. Having these friends that I hold so dearly that also double as a support system isn’t something I take for granted. That idea of ‘having my own cheerleaders’ is way more meaningful to me than they even know, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.