Feature: Chris Cachia Decodes ‘The 27th Letter’
How does 'The 27th Letter' reflect your musical journey and growth as an artist?
’The 27th Letter’ is really the continuation of my growth not just as an artist, but as an individual and community-member. For a long time, my music was more overtly, more specifically about different mental health challenges. I feel as though, now, I can be more fully me and, by extension, I’m better-equipped to speak to a wider variety of people. I don’t mean that my previous music wasn’t me, it very much was, but it was more a focused aspect of my self. With ‘The 27th Letter,’ I’m trying to come to grips with what makes me more fully who I am and what makes all of us more fully who we are, including our many contradictions. At one time, the twenty-seventh letter of the English and Latin alphabets, coming from a variety of sources, was the ampersand. We now use the ampersand to mean “and,” which I’m using as a short-form to capture all of these contradictions, including those we sometimes hold simultaneously. A lot of my favourite Hip Hop artists, I think of KRS-One and Nas, have been criticized for trying to be two things at once, but those contradictions are usually, I think, what makes people interesting and, sometimes, what actually makes them progressive. We’re always changing and evolving and in flux and that evolution’s going to be inherently “contradictory” if you want to look at it that way, but the ability to hold tensions while also holding the core of one’s being is what makes a person thoughtful and real.
How did you work with the producer or engineers to bring your vision for 'The 27th Letter' to life?
My producer, Charlie McEvoy, is a brilliant musician and we’ve been friends since childhood. I’ve said this in other interviews, but we recorded our first song on my father’s tape deck when we were eight years old. Our friendship helps with communication, and Charlie is gifted in bringing any artist’s musical ideas to life. We started with a concept, this notion of contradictions and dualism and something called dialectics, and we branched-out from there. Charlie would compose sketches of beats, and we’d go back and forth about elements to add or change or remove. We tried to capture duality and tension in the music itself to reflect the overall theme of the project. Instrumentals themselves would also evolve, even after we recorded vocals. Charlie is very good at creating space for artists to experiment with and showcase their talents.
Which song(s) do you like the best and why?
The stand-out tracks, to my mind, are “Hot and Cold” and “Bars and Bass,” mainly because they’re a little different than the rest of my catalogue and demonstrate, I think, my versatility as an emcee and songwriter. “Hot and Cold” speaks to that dualism I talked about earlier; the first two verses are contradictory, two sides of a mirrored coin as I sometimes say, and then meld -- or, maybe, melt -- into one another in the third. “Bars and Bass” is the final track on the project, and points to the fundamental elements of Hip Hop as music.
Was there a pivotal moment in your life when you decided to follow your path as a musician?
I’ve always turned to writing to process the world, and I’ve always written rhymes. I manage obsessive-compulsive disorder, and for a long time it stopped me from doing a lot of things I wanted to do. Eventually, with a great deal of hard work and support, I got to a place where I was able to pursue my passions. Arriving at that moment, I came to realize that expressing myself creatively, including and especially through music, was therapeutic. That realization means this is a path I feel I have to follow and feel called to follow.
Can you walk us through your creative process when writing and composing music?
I find inspiration in many different places. Music, movies, art. Those are usually the spark. It all really starts with whatever I’m thinking about or what interests me at the time. Sometimes I’ll have a rough rhyme and I’ll discuss with Charlie the kind of beat that will fit, and sometimes Charlie will send me a rough instrumental and I’ll write to it. There’s a lot of give and take and, while I do like to give myself some structure, this whole process can be pretty messy, but in the best way, as I think most art is.