There was a moment of silence when our friends were playing pool and it was just the two of us, me and 454, when he turned to me and said, “Do you have any siblings? You said you have a sister, right?” The question was, for whatever reason, so jarring to me that I could have cried. When was the last time anyone had been conscientious enough to ask about my sister?
454, born Willie Wilson near Orlando, FL, is an artist who the public needs no convincing is great. Engagingly enigmatic, his releases — whether it be a record, a mix, or a shoe collaboration — garner the sort of attention that signal he’s a producer and rapper who is genuinely beloved by his fans. Beyond traditional accolades, it’s worth noting that the response his musical contributions receive from real life people rather than institutions (like the “if nobody got me, I know 454 got me” memes which go viral every few months, for one) make it obvious—even in a world on fire, his music makes people feel good.
On our walk to the bar after shooting the photos for this story, we stopped to flip through CDs at a yard sale. Willie told me he remembered meeting me at a MIKE show, but I was pretty sure this was our first time meeting. Really, I credit the producer (and polymath) Gum. mp3 for introducing us—I asked Gum to facilitate this interview between the two after I saw his tweet a few months prior which read something like, “Who’s gonna let me write about 454?” which followed a series of tweets he wrote analyzing lyrics to the track “STITCH + LILO.”
In fact, I first learned about 454 from the North Carolina-born Gum, which would make sense—the DJ who’s worked as both a librarian and academic archivist posts 454 tracks on a weekly basis. I like Gum not only because his own music is great, but because he publicly likes what he likes, and is usually finding a way to share whatever that is for free. He manages a Google Drive filled with folders of revolutionary texts he scanned himself; even now, as I write this, he sent over an essay about the Situationist movement that I had been trying to find for days.
You listen to only half of a 454 track and learn quickly that he’s just as generous in his own right. Also from the South, his music is filled with intensely vivid feelings. The two have a shared language of bravado, except rather than a pretension of alienating themselves from their peers because they’re better, there’s a sweet and traditionally Southern celebration of the mundane in their music, punctuated by reflections of loss and a sincere curiosity about what happens next for any of us. Instead of, “I’m the best!” 454 records are more like, “I’m alive! I’m blessed by connection to people and place!!” And though it’s humble, it’s this unmatched down-to-earthness that makes 454 so special, a unique figure both aspirational and accessible in equal measure. And it bears repeating—if nobody got me, I know 454 got me.
Gum: This is my second time interviewing somebody, ever. I’m 2-for-2 on interviewing other Black Southern people. I say all that to say this—in my previous interview with another Black Southern individual, the starting point was religion. A lot of people think I’m religious, but I grew up in a super agnostic household. The only reason I went to church is ’cause I wanted to play on the church league basketball team.
454: That’s crazy! But with that though, did you learn anything [about Christianity]? I guess you had to.
Gum: We had bible study class and I gotta be a good student—my mom wasn’t tolerating anything else. What was your experience of Christianity like growing up in the South?
454: Growing up, my grandma and all her sisters were in church. So, I went with her on Sundays, Easter, New Year’s Eve, stuff like that. I had these two brothers who I skated with. They were older than me, and they were really good at skating so I looked up to ’em. I was 18, and they had ended up getting into Christianity really heavy. Through that, I just started looking into it. They would just come to me as a younger homie and be like, “Yo, you should check this out.”
So, I started checking it out and then I also got into it heavily. Started going to church on my own and just memorizing scriptures and quoting them every night and morning, bro. It had got serious, but that was 2014 or 2015. When I got [to NYC] in 2017, I got exposed to a little bit more life. My girlfriend, she kind of opened me up a little bit and my relationship to Christianity changed. I’m not saying I lost that, but I just wasn’t as extreme on myself. I used to carry myself a certain way, and I felt like I still had a shell. I wasn’t really social, so I was still to myself a lot. But yeah, I had gotten into it for real. I stopped listening to certain music and everything.
Gum: What caused the most friction with me with Christianity was that it has always been framed to Black people as like a punishment—oriented relationship. As a STEM kid growing up, it was hard for me, on top of the racialised aspect, to deal with things I couldn’t “prove” with science and already didn’t believe in. The idea of being punished for certain things didn’t sit well with me either. I always had more alternative interests and more radical politics. That being said, it’s amazing to see that this piousness and devotion came to you through skateboarding. How’d you start skateboarding?
454: Bro, so in 5th grade I moved to the suburbs. My parents got a crib that was maybe 15 or 20 minutes from Orlando. My cousin had an old school skateboard. I took it around the neighbourhood and I saw these kids—they had a ramp though! I was like, “Damn!” They skated, but they were a little bit more elevated than me. So I went over to ’em and I was like, “Damn bro, I think I want to try this.” So I tried to drop in, bro, and I fell—got smoked! But I just kept trying it. I was like, “Man, I really like this!” After that, it was a wrap.
Gum: I think I started probably around the same age. This is another important question: Did you have four wheelers and dirt bikes growing up?
454: Sure did, bro. We had a four wheeler. I didn’t have a dirt bike, but I had a Pocket Bike.
Gum: Yes, the red joints!
454: Exactly.
Gum: What’s your favourite skate video?
454: Baker 3. That stuck with me a long time, but as I got older, I realised there were a lot of older videos that I just didn’t see until I either moved [to NYC], or they were just pushed more towards me based on the algorithm on YouTube. I like Girl’s Mouse. What else? It’s Official, the DGK video. I’m gonna say one more: Fully Flared was like the first video I had seen! At the skate park they had a little fake premiere. They just were like, “Yeah, it’s a new video. We’re just gonna play it.” That was one of my top videos for a long time.
Gum: I’m glad to hear some DGK love!
454: DGK was killing it! When they were in their prime, skating was in a different era then. They were going crazy. What about you, what’s your favourite?
Gum: The Supreme Cherry video, and Palasonic.
454: Facts. [Cherry] was one that brought something else to skating, you know. Everybody realised like, “Yo, this shit is insane!”
Gum: I had that shit on my NYU Google Drive so I could watch it in class while I was in my art lectures, bro. I was tuning into that shit weekly. When I was in college, I think that was the time where I wasn’t necessarily skating the most ever, but it was a time where I was skating the most at a decently high level. I came to college and I was skating everywhere. I was at Tompkins Square Park religiously.
454: I didn’t even know you were out here around then. It makes so much sense now.
Gum: Take me all the way back. The context I’m interested in the most with Florida is this budding culture war. When I look at Florida, with all the book bans and obviously the murder of Trayvon Martin—Florida even kind of has that meme reputation. It’s like, “Yo, Florida niggas crazy!” Ostensibly, there’s always some crazy shit going on in Florida. I’m wondering about your experience as a youth and as an adult. How did navigating these subcultures brush up against the rest of the insidious conservative Floridian miasma that’s everywhere else. What is it like to be a skateboarder and what is it like to be a Black Christian in Florida under all these conflicts?
454: Coming up, I didn’t really see how crazy it was. When I moved to a new neighbourhood, there were some things going down back then that were kind of weird, that white people were doing to us, but I was too young to really know what the fuck was going on. I didn’t realise a lot of it until I got older. Being a Christian too, bro. It’s just a part of our history in a certain way. I started thinking how fucked up it is the way Christianity was brought to [Black people]. Being in New York, I look back on Florida and there’s certain shit that just... Even going back, there’s a certain energy, but it’s weird because Florida is so diverse. It feels like something’s happening...
Gum: Something that shouldn’t be happening?
454: Y’know? It’s super weird, bro. And I really don’t get it. But maybe that’s because it’s a red state, and I think it’s because there’s a lot of people with money there, too.
Gum: The retirees.
454: Yeah.
Gum: What was your school experience like?
454: School was cool! Middle school, I was skating. I wasn’t always a “loner,” but as I got older, I started to just like, go deeper—deeper into just wanting to be by myself. Especially when I started making beats and trying to figure that out, and then balance it with skating. Not that I didn’t really care to have friends, but if I had friends, it was because we were skating together. I didn’t really have friends in school who didn’t skate or were into music. And I wish I did! I started ninth grade in Tampa, and then we moved in tenth grade back to the area where we were living before, closer to Orlando. It was kind of weird, bro. I ended up doing virtual school for maybe a year and it didn’t work out. I finished up at this charter school. It was like, you go for four or five hours and you just do your shit and you can go home, do whatever. So I just finished out that way. Then, I was just skating heavy and making music!
Gum: Are we the same age? I’m 26.
454: I just turned 27! Yeah, school was calm. I was a shy kid coming up, but I still had my homies and friends and whatnot. School wasn’t where I was thriving though.
Gum: Did you do music in the church at all?
454: Nah, and that’s my thing. I really wish I did. With the church, I wish I was able to have that discipline of sitting down and getting that done.
Gum: Some real mentors.
454: Right. Learning from somebody with their own technique.
Gum: Who’s been in your corner, as far as music? Are there a couple people or a specific person who’s really pushed you further along?
454: Honestly, a lot of homies. With putting out beats on YouTube, that came from just you know, SoundCloud culture. Just wanting people to hear my shit, trying to get heard. Through that, there was a couple underground heads who tried to support ’cause they fuck with me. But since I’ve been up here, really trying to put out my own songs? Really bro, Niontay. My sister Pig [the Gemini]. My homeboy Marc. That’s really it, as far as like, from the get-go.
Gum: How do you think your relationship to masculinity has changed since then?
454: Growing up I wasn’t really getting girls or like, trying to make that a thing. I wanted to skate. All through high school, dog, I was just skating. Right before I graduated, I started dating this girl and it just wasn’t the relationship that I wanted it to be. It just didn’t pan out. So after that, I was for sure like, “Oh hell no. I’m definitely scared.”
When I met my [current] girl, bro, that definitely evolved me as a person – as a man. I just realised where I was, even if I didn’t think I had masculinity. I realised all that when I got into a healthy relationship.
Growing up, the men in my life – I was just not taught. At that time it was just, you know, you gotta be tough. You gotta hold a certain, I don’t know, a dominance. That’s what I got from my uncles and from my dad and from just being in that era. Really up until I met my girl – that changed a lot for me. We met when I was 20. It was a crazy time to get myself right.
Gum: I think that’s also something that comes through in your music. I was trying to articulate how I felt about the music, but I think – just that question. It wraps it up for me, I think. And for why other like-minded guys are attracted to the music. Even if it’s not explicitly said—and it does explicitly come across in the lyrics sometimes—it’s just from an earnest and a genuine perspective. I think people resonate with that. I definitely resonate with that. I feel what you said about masculinity, and about dominance.
454: That’s the only thing I could really think of when I think about masculinity around that time, and what was taught to me. It’s fucked up. Seeing what my cousin went through, how they were treated when they came out as trans, it was just fucked up in a sense to where I didn’t wanna be that type of person, you know? I didn’t wanna live my life like that.
Gum: I don’t know why I had that kind of conflict with what I thought was masculinity either. I have such a strong mom. So, I knew that I didn’t necessarily have to be this super tough, angry guy—but then I also really looked up to my dad. I love my dad, and he’s not in the streets anymore. He’s been a barber for over ten years at this point. We have a great relationship. Growing up, I thought he was the toughest guy around.
I came to New York with a big chip on my shoulder, and I thought I had to be tough as the out-of-towner trying to make his way. I’m acting out doing this, that, and the third. I’m being somebody—not that I wasn’t—I was being a part of me that should have stayed a part of me, but I wanted it to be my whole thing.
454: That’s crazy though, bro. I had the same chip. Niggas shot my dad, he lived.
Gum: Right, so we’re thinking, “Oh, we up! We tough!”
454: I feel that. That’s real life.
Gum: Back to what we were saying earlier about the music and why people will resonate with it. This earnestness definitely contributes to this virality around your music. That’s one thing I noticed when I read any other writing about you. They’re always talking about you going viral all the time. Obviously, that’s an important part of your career and how you’ve been received to larger audiences. I wanna hear how you feel about it because things going viral makes me paranoid. I freak myself out about surveillance and people knowing a lot of stuff about me. How are you navigating that? Does it freak you out? Do you plot and plan for viral moments, or any crazy marketing scheme that’s going on? Is it just all random?
454: Honestly, all random! It’s weird because I don’t understand how shit travels. Just how even people who are outside my circle or outside of people who I knew in Orlando or New York are even hearing the music. That was mind blowing because I never knew how people would react to hearing my voice versus just the beats. Not saying it was never meant to happen, but I never wanted to be a rapper. I wanted to just produce and skate. I wanted to go pro at skating, but when I got older, I realised that wasn’t where my head was at. I just didn’t have it in me. I wanted other things out of life.
It’s still weird seeing certain shit and seeing people come to my profile and see who I am. Sometimes they just hear my voice and don’t even know how I look. That’s kind of weird. It’s really funny. I laugh every day!
Gum: How do you feel about using your vocals lately?
454: That’s my thing, bro. I don’t know, it’s just something about my voice that—not that I don’t like it–I just always had something with it. I’ve seen certain [jokes and comments] about my voice that I’m just like, “Oh, yep. They damn sure are right! My [voice] does sound like that.” But then I got people who fuck with it.
So there is a balance. It’s a good balance. Putting music out has allowed me to just be grateful for my voice. I try to capitalise and use it now as an instrument, versus just rapping. I’m trying to make everything sound like one, if that makes sense. I want this shit to sound like, I don’t even know...
Gum: More refined.
454: Exactly. It’s helped me just love my voice and my girl always tells me, “That’s literally why I’m with you.” Like, that’s part of the reason. If I’m ever down about anything, that helps me for sure. My thing is though, I wish I could sing. I can’t really do what I want.
Gum: What’s your favourite song that you’ve written?
454: I would say “Late Night.” That was a song where I was like, “Yo, niggas gotta hear this!” I was super hyped. I just wanted it to be a certain way and I recorded it and made the beat all in the same day. It’s not necessarily written like a traditional song. It got a little hook, but it don’t really got a hook. It is a very weird song, but I like how it’s written. Since then, I’ve been trying to just be free. However I came up with that song, I want to be free with other tracks like that, and just let it flow naturally as opposed to overthinking. I would say “Heaven,” too. That’s the one that took me the longest on the project. I sat with that track for weeks, and just kept taking stuff out or putting stuff in.
Gum: Getting real granular with it.
454: Yeah, “Heaven” for sure.
Gum: First date I had with my girlfriend, I was driving back and “Pisces” came on. I was like, “This nigga is my favourite artist.” Because nobody’s gonna understand how I’m feeling about this young lady until I show them this song! It’s very serious. I played that shit like 20 times that night.
454: That’s unbelievable. That’s great to hear.
Gum: I’ve had so many pleasant experiences to Fast Trax 3 and 4 Real. All of your projects really. I play them on loop and just go drive somewhere. I feel what you were saying, though, about trying to let go of traditional song structure. That’s something that baile funk is really helping me get out of.
454: That’s what Fast Trax are, just a bunch of tracks that I felt like were unfinished but that I wanted to get heard. Thank you again bro, for even understanding.
Gum: If you think you ain’t got no fans left in the world, I gotta be dead. I’m here, I’m tuned in! What’s your dream situation to make an album in?
454: One of my life goals is—the cliché—go to somewhere that’s secluded, whether it’s on the ocean or in the mountains. Just go somewhere and have people come through and make whatever. I wanna see how that experience is for me and see how it would be for me to work with others in that environment. It would be dope to go to Jamaica, or go to Electric Lady and make something. The homies, man, making music with friends. That’s where I feel most comfortable.
Gum: What are your ambitions for this year?
454: I always hope to just go on a cool tour. It doesn’t necessarily have to be with somebody who’s music I really love. But if it could work for us both to travel together, then I’m so down for it. I’m just hoping for that. I love going on tour. That’s really why I do it, aside from putting music out. It’s dope to just go and see and meet people who like what you’re doing. It’s dope to play the shows, but I really enjoy meeting the people who come to the shows.
Gum: It makes everything visceral.
454: Real visceral, you know. Because this is still so unreal to me.
