INSMNC Interview: New Sounds and New Challenges
- Evan
- 15 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Change is an essential part of being a musician. Adapting to new sounds, discovering what fans like and dislike. Great artists live in a constant state of flux, adapting to the world and, perhaps more crucially, changing to challenge themselves.
Some artists find their niche and stay there, comfortable and predictable, but INSMNC has gone in the opposite direction. The New Jersey producer, known for his mind-bending production style fusing genres and samples alike, has dedicated 2025 to redefining his musical identity. No longer is he INSMNC the DJ; he’s INSMNC the rapper/producer/vocalist, tackling all sides of the hip hop landscape.
Having kicked off the year with IMPOSTOR SYNDROME, the producer’s full-length debut as a vocalist, the momentum has not slowed down since. “For me, it was a natural progression,” the artist said. “I’ve been writing silly little fun things since before I started working on music. As a kid, I wanted to be a writer of some sort.”
This isn’t the first time INSMNC has toyed with vocals, but until now, his heart has never fully been in it. “In the past, I’ve made music with people – I had a band called The Mutations back around 2008, with friends of mine. We did some vocals, this and that. Back then, I was never comfortable with how I sounded to really put it on a recording. It took a while to really find a way to use how I sound in ways that would work.”
Discovering acts like DJ Screw and the ‘Screwed Up’ scene in Houston, INSMNC found a whole world of hip hop artists dedicated to strange, syrupy vocals layered with effects. The colourful underbelly of Southern hip hop laid the groundwork for the artist’s new direction, leading to projects like Husky and the upcoming Brief Interviews with Dangerous Men.
With the former produced by WZRD Gundlach and the latter by Gammorad, INSMNC’s latest efforts are the first in his career where he is not the sole producer. “It actually is a lot more liberating, and that becomes addictive,” he said on working as a vocalist. “You don’t have to concern yourself with every little setting, every adjustment on the instruments and everything like that … It’s almost more natural, in a way, connecting to music that way.”
As a producer, INSMNC made it his mission to build an atmosphere to accommodate the featured vocalist. Now on the opposite side of the recording booth, the art of collaboration is a whole new challenge. “I look at a song very much like a puzzle. Working my way through, scheming through, figuring out, ‘Okay, I want to do this kind of concept – how do I make it all fit together?’ So being sent a beat from someone else, especially somebody I’m really impressed by, is like being given a new toy or a new puzzle … I get to strategize something new.”
One of those puzzles is Brief Interviews with Dangerous Men, an EP where INSMNC takes on a host of villainous personas across the Gammorad-produced tracks. “One of the things I love about songwriting is that you can be anybody,” he said. “As soon as I had that one idea, I was like, ‘Oh, well why not just do a whole EP of songs like that?’, concepts of people who are imposing or dangerous or whatever, playing these roles and examining, getting into their heads.”
Beyond flexing his skills as a storyteller, taking the mic allows INSMNC to bask in the spotlight like never before, as he realised making Husky with WZRD Gundlach. “I think a part of every artist or producer or creative person, is the desire for praise, attention, being noticed. I think that being a vocalist is just about the most direct way you can communicate with the world … Also, the fact that it was a collaboration really made me want to impress him, too … It was almost a game of one-upmanship.”
Although the artist has been on a run as a vocalist, the appeal for producing has never waned. Both skills unlock different kinds of fulfilment for INSMNC. “I think a part of every artist or producer or creative person, is the desire for praise, attention, being noticed. I think that being a vocalist is just about the most direct way you can communicate with the world. Sometimes I feel like that; sometimes I want to just scream messages to the world, get up on a soapbox, and sometimes I have that other feeling – I’d rather step back from engaging with the world at large and make a scene for somebody else, play it cool.”
On the production side, INSMNC is gearing up for the next InsomniWuka album – his collaborative series with rapper Onwuka. Titled Extra Large Icons, the upcoming LP is set to be their most braggadocious effort yet. “This is an album that I would say has a yin and yang relationship with Brief Interviews with Dangerous Men,” INSMNC said. “That one was a reaction to this global mood in a way that acknowledges, that dives in to what’s going on, whereas I would say this is almost a way to defy that negativity and say that, ‘We’re alive, we’re here, we’re going to have a good time goddammit!’”
In typical INSMNC fashion, Extra Large Icons is an album without labels – a splatter of sounds and concepts tied to no one genre or style. “There’s funk, jazz, electronic textures going on, boom bap, there’s synths. I think, with each of these InsomniWuka projects, we each challenge each other and ourselves a lot, and inspire each other to push further and perfect things in the moment.”
While Extra Large Icons represents that classic style INSMNC has made his trademark, the artist is determined to not get too comfortable. “I [never want to] abandon the concepts and structures [that underpin] hip hop, but I want to challenge myself to incorporate more different genres as well … I also want to challenge myself to compose more rather than sample. I’d like to get better at that.”
With a host of projects behind him and even more coming up, the rapper/producer/vocalist is driven to push himself harder than ever. “What I want to do from now on is continuously push myself and really value what I do because before, I felt like I was almost racing to amass a body of work. Now I almost feel like I’ve reached that level where I don’t have to prove that I can do things. I’ve said enough and now I can try to reach that next level of really trying to explore and do something unique and special.”