Today, Weirdo Click’s Aux Jennings releases his album #MuckAFolly, featuring production by Cam Smith. Aux and I were maximum-chilling last week as we talked about #MuckAFolly, trends and pop culture, doing drugs, and Kanye West.
Only 21 years old, Jennings has a unique perspective on his generation; his is the first to embrace technology to an overwhelming extent and he thinks about it. He also has some beefs – one with molly (MDMA/ecstasy), a pervasive club staple – and some other shit, too. Jennings hopes #MuckAFolly will reach the like-minded. Under the umbrella of Weirdo Click, the last few years of hard work are showing. Get #MuckAFolly now and vibe out.
Mixtape Magazine: How long have you been working on #MuckAFolly?
Aux Jennings: Since my last mixtape; it took me a while. I’m really indecisive, but I own it all. It’s all mine. But I’m really random. I don’t have a concrete procedure at all. I’m really sporadic.
Are you excited to put it out? For people to hear it?
Yes, I actually get neurotic about it. But I know that, for most people, if you’re not in the hip hop scene around here, you don’t know shit about it, which I think is really fucking weird. I think it has to do with people’s automatic assumptions of what we have here, which is so far from what it really is. People don’t even think, ‘I wonder what this hip hop scene is like, who are these guys’ — it has nothing to do with people’s preference in music. I think people just don’t know.
A lot of people listen to rap, but a lot of that is mainstream, in video games or at the clubs, but not so much local artists, partly because there are a lot of really bad rappers.
There are always going to be tons of people that admire rapping and want to do it. But you can’t just start to rap; you have to have it in you. If someone is a naturally beautifully singer, as opposed to a trained singer, I will always enjoy listening to the natural singer over a trained singer who hits every note exactly, because it loses the artistic vibe and energy. You want to listen to something with meaning and purpose, you know, structured but artistic music.
How many people are featured on this album?
My mixtape was very feature-heavy so I only have 3 or 4 on this one. I like doing features. It got me into the scene and I got to meet people like Jay Mayne and all the Dartmouth boys. It’s hard to do this shit if you don’t know anybody and no one’s helping you out and you’re not helping anybody out. So it’s good we at least have a small community — it’s small but it exists, at least.
What’s the vibe of #MuckAFolly then?
In general, I’m not an up-tempo type of dude. I’m pretty negative for the most part [laughs] but my music’s not really negative. It’s realistic. Sometimes people don’t understand it. They think I’m saying something just to sound cool, like just some cool rapper shit, right? Like on “Dripping,” I say girls are either stripping or in college. But anyone from my generation, anyone I went to high school with, sometimes you think, ‘what are all the really pretty girls from high school doing now?’ Then it’s like, ‘That girl is at SMU taking accounting, oh, but that girl’s in Toronto stripping, and oh, so is that girl, and that girl just had a baby and she’s stripping.’ You wouldn’t ever fathom this in junior high, that these girls you’ve known for years are actually doing this shit. It’s real, and I’m not saying it’s bad or good. I never frown upon it in the song. It’s just a statement and it’s relatable, and it’s comical at the same time. It’s almost funny in a really dark way.
Yeah, it’s definitely funny.
Yeah and I think a lot of the songs — specifically a couple — are dark humour, like dark comedy, and I feel like the project in general has a lot of emotion. I want to make you feel a certain way on a song, whether you’re relating to what I’m saying or the general feel. I just want my shit to be relatable in some aspect, to some degree. The project doesn’t have a full concept that’s wrapped around the whole thing; it’s just an emotional how-you-feel type of project. Some songs are real slow-paced, then I turn them up real quick. It’s random shit.
So tell me what #MuckAFolly means.
Well, it’s about what becomes trendy in my generation. It’s so fucking weird. If you told somebody 30 years ago what we’re doing now, they’d be like, ‘what the fuck?’ But history repeats itself because 30 years before that, people would be like, ‘what the fuck are you doing?’ But now it’s to a degree that you got girls putting twerk videos online. I mean, it’s funny, it’s entertaining, but at some point you’re like, ‘God damn, what the fuck are we going to do when we’re all adults?’ And dudes do the same shit. Some dudes are weird online, flexing their six-packs in every Instagram picture like that’s necessary. I’m not saying it’s just women. It’s in general: the Internet is weird. And I like the Internet and all the trends, too, but I recognize how ridiculous it is. So #MuckAFolly, well, it’s fuck a molly really. The idea of molly is on the trend, too, you know, every motherfucker wants to do molly. Why? Why do that shit?
What about smoking weed every day?
Weed isn’t a drug. It’s as much a drug as alcohol. Real drugs to me are anything chemical-made, you know, man-made things – with certain drugs, they’re just promoted to a heavy extent. Like alcohol, even. It seems fine to put an ad on TV about how cool you are and how many bitches you’re going to get if you drink this particular beer, but you can’t say that about weed. You can’t say that you’ll have a great time smoking weed on a camping trip.
[Laughs] But you would for sure have a great time smoking weed on a camping trip.
But you can’t get away with that, even though it’s true. I had someone ask me if I’m promoting drugs. No, I’m not promoting drugs at all. I’ll promote weed, I’ll promote weed happily but I don’t feel like it should be categorized as a drug. So it’s like, I’m just acknowledging this. I don’t ever want to be preaching. I’m not preaching. But it’s just gotten to an extent that it’s complete overkill now. People are literally just doing drugs because they heard a fucking Chief Keef song where he said he’s on molly. But for what? You got eight guys in a room playing NBA2K on molly? Why? So the album’s about the stripping thing, it’s the molly thing. It’s just the generation I’m growing up in. People are just so trendy and overkill anything that pops – but you’re not really great if you’re setting trends, unless you carry those out and effect people in a huge way.
What do you mean?
I mean like Kanye West. He was wearing pink polo shirts in early 2000s and everyone thought he was gay. Everyone was all, ‘he’s a metrosexual, he might like dudes, he was on a date with a model and it was a man.’ Whatever. But he was just pushing envelopes and, at first, people were so weirded out by that, but then all you can do is respect that guy. Like, goddamn, this dude got called gay every day of his life until the next guy wore a pink polo, then it’s like, I guess everyone can wear pink polos. He’s really smart as fuck when it comes to feeding off things.
That kind of publicity shit, like Miley Cyrus too, is so much about money, though.
Well, everything is about money, really. But we don’t do this for money yet. It’s not about that yet. It’s a movement. It comes back to Weirdo Click: what we’re all living in, how we’ve all grown up, what we can relate to. There are too many people that don’t focus on everything, and that’s hard and that’s a huge statement. Like, how the fuck can we focus on everything? But like, you need a rapper like that. You need someone that can give you that: a good song about a relationship, and a relationship that’s real. And then give you a song that has to do with smoking weed, chilling, making music, your dreams, what you want to do and then being realistic and actually getting there. I don’t want to hear songs just about smoking weed. No. And it’s good our build has been slow. We’ve been doing shows a good amount of years now, and we’re just starting to get a bit more exposure, which is cool because it makes us really value what we get. It’s not like we popped out of nowhere. We actually really appreciate what’s going on.
And you’re a solid team.
Between me, Jacob [Toney] and Alex [William], yeah, it’s a really clean factory. That’s the only part where we have any structure. There’s music, business, and photos and videos. I feel that works the best. And this is like the first time Alex and I have broken off doing our own music but we’re still under the same thing. I mean, Weirdo Click is not as much a music group as it is an idea. If you’re Weirdo Click, you’re Weirdo Click. You don’t have to be a rapper, you know? Not everyone’s a rapper and I feel like … shit, I forget what I’m even talking about.
(Coughing) … I forget what I asked…
Well, it’s either you’re going to understand the album, or you’re not and that’s cool, but hopefully I’m musical enough that if you don’t understand it, you’re still like, ‘Hey, I like this melody’ ‘cause some people just listen to melodies. I mean, some people will like it even though I’m saying ‘hoe’ and ‘bitch’ the whole time … but it’s all comedic. I don’t really see women as hoes and bitches. But you can get away with that shit. It’s just so common; it’s just regular. Like, wow, how do I get to say this? When I’m performing and I’m like, “Bitch, shut the fuck up, you know you love me, hoe,” and every one is screaming it and into it, well, that’s crazy. It’s so dope. My mom doesn’t understand it. I show her my new songs and she says she likes it but I’m like, ‘no you don’t, Mom.’ You know the whole time Mom is like, ‘Oh, God. My son! What has become of my son!?’
But she’s supportive?
Yeah, definitely. My mom and my dad are both really supportive of this shit. My dad’s a musician himself and he doesn’t care if I’m playing music loud or mixing and stuff. Unless I get more tattoos. Then it’s done. Game over: Mom’s crying [laughs]. But really, it’s a blessing to have parents who are respectful and understanding. And we all just embrace the dope things that happen and hope another dope thing happens after that.
Yeah, 2013 was landmark for you guys; Sappyfest, Halifax Pop Explosion.
Yeah, it was, because it’s so hard to build something slowly, and you really feel that in Halifax. It’s a fucking miracle if you can get yourself out in the industry from here, just getting your sound waves past our boundaries. It’s hard because of prior assumptions about who we are and where we’re from. But I feel like, for once, I’m talking about things that are relatable here, as well in the middle of New York City or Atlanta or India; in any high school. It’s hard to find something that everyone can understand. But even then, people are still very slow to embrace progression.
#MuckAFolly is available for download now.
Photo: Supplied