Wrap Session: Gentleman Contender
Gentleman Contender is adamant about his sound being “not rap.” In fact, it’s easier to describe his music by what it isn’t: his beats are not quite electronic, he sings but his sound isn’t quite R&B. Rap is just the latest genre he’s pushing into creatively, but Gentleman Contender doesn’t wanted to be painted into a single corner. His first major project,, Blank Narrative, is due to drop in November and Gentleman Contender sat down with Glass Reflex to talk about his music and why we’ve spotted him on stage with Well$ recently.
Glass Reflex: What’s your real name, artist name, and how did you come upon that name?
Gentleman Contender: Holland Gallagher. My stage name is Gentleman Contender. Got it by chance, I used to make electronic music and so the name was kinda arbitrary to me, I just had a bunch of songs and I wanted to put them on the internet so me and my friends in my dorm room went to a random word generator and came up with Gentleman Contender. It was either that or Banded Intellect, but ultimately it was Gentleman Contender.
GR: How much different do you think your career would have been if you’d been Banded Intellect?
GC: If I’d been Banded Intellect, I would have made it by now, I think. That’s obvious. No, I don’t know, I never thought I was gonna rap.
GR: So you kinda got into rap accidentally?
GC: I guess so, I played my first show in my freshman year dorm and it was cool and it was really fun but I realized that no one wants to come and see you play keyboards or fuck with shit on your computer. For me it didn’t feel like I was giving a good enough performance. So I decided to put words into my songs and the first song I wrote was about evacuating hurricane Katrina because that was the most interesting thing that I felt like I had in my life. So I wrote that, and I listen to a lot of rap, so it’s just what came out.
GR: Hurricane Katrina was a significant thing for you and led to you being in North Carolina right?
GC: I was living in New Orleans, that’s where I was born and where I grew up and then Hurricane Katrina hit and we had to leave. I had family in Charlotte so we went there and then we found out that we couldn’t go back. My family had a friend in Raleigh so we moved over there. Weeks had gone by and I had been out of school, and so they put me in school in Durham and we ended up never going back and that’s how I ended up in NC, and ultimately probably why I ended up going to school at UNC.
GR: So how did you get started recording?
GC: Initially, when it was just electronic stuff it was just programs so I didn’t really need to record vocals or anything. My dad happens to be an audio engineer and ran a recording studio for 30 years in New Orleans and he knows what he’s doing and we have a studio in his basement, so I recorded all of Blue Heron just in my house, in my basement, with my dad. And it was cool but it still wasn’t very serious so we didn’t put a lot of energy into mixing and mastering it. The pivotal point for me was this summer. From that point up until now I have gained 300% more insight and knowledge into the industry, and so I kind of know how to do things the right way now, or know how to go about getting people that do know how to do things the right way. And so on this, Blank Narrative, which is my next project, we definitely weren’t gonna settle to put anything out that wasn’t gonna hold up to anything else that you would hear anywhere else. The goal was to make it as professional as possible. Stylistically I was paying attention to everything I was doing, like if I had lyrics sometime I would rap them and it wouldn’t be right so I would sing them or we would cut them all together. Actually Well$ is executive producing the project so he had some say on it too, so it’s more “rappy” than anything else I’ve ever done but there’s also a lot more singing. Stylistically it’s just more concise even though there’s more rapping and more singing. Leroy is in the industry and so tracking him has allowed me to meet people and understand what goes on behind the scenes.
GR: You’ve been seen a lot lately on stage is with Well$ as like as a hype man.
GC: People always ask me what I do with Well$ because you see me on social media and it’s kinda confusing. I was opening and he came to me afterward and said, “I fuck with your sound. Let’s hang out. Let’s talk music stuff.” I went to his house and played some beats and he was like, “Yo, come to New York with me I’m about to go up there and do some press runs,” and I was like “Yeah, of course.” So I went up there and from that point on he asked me to be his hype man for some shows, and I make some beats for him. We have a couple songs together that we haven’t released and it’s mutually beneficial because he has a vision of music that’s really different from mine, but it’s a mutual respect thing because my sound is like way out there in one direction and his sound is way out there in a different direction and when we make songs together it’s a different thing altogether. Basically, I’ll hype man for him and he’ll DJ for me every now and then. We’re just two musicians man.
GR: So you said the next thing is Blank Narrative, what’s different? When are you releasing it?
GC: I think, honestly, the quality is going to be a lot better. It was still recorded at the home basement but we just put more effort into it. And as far as it being different from Blue Heron – each song on the record is very different from anything I’ve done and each song is very different from every other song on the record. One thing we were keeping in mind was not to have any filler so we just paid a lot of attention. Blue Heron came out over a year ago and I’m releasing 8 songs in November. Where I would spend a certain amount of time on one song on Blank Narrative, I would have spent that time writing six songs on anything in the past, so I think each song is more nuanced and just better in general. I’m excited about all of it.