SMYTH on The City

The Music, and Mike Tyson Jab

By, Brandon McCleskey

Kidz At Play is a talented up-and-coming group of local artists, producers, photographers, and aspiring creative visionaries. As the opening act for both Smino and Pusha T this year, they are ambitiously cementing their mark on the Richmond music scene. I had the opportunity to interview one of the founding members of Kidz, SMYTH, just hours before their debut album, Mike Tyson Jab, was originally supposed to release. Below are some excerpts from our interview that I think best describe the kind of person I found SMYTH to be: daring, intelligent, and self-aware.

Brandon: You’ve been in on the local scene for a while now.

SMYTH: Yeah.

Brandon: You’ve had your finger on the pulse.

SMYTH:

For sure, yeah. And I try to still keep up with what’s coming out. I feel like Virginia as a whole has a lot of exciting things out. There are a few [artists] that really excite me from Richmond, but it’s definitely, like, few and far between, unfortunately. But that’s just me being honest.

Brandon: What would you say is the most significant obstacle you’ve overcome thus far, physically or mentally?

SMYTH:

… We’ve sacrificed everything to do this. All of my friends have made the biggest sacrifices in the world. Like, some stuff that people wouldn’t believe we’ve had to make, maybe, you know? And I think we overcome them every day. Whether that’s financial sacrifices, whether that’s time away from family, whether that’s sacrifices of an education, or, like, what we’re “supposed to do” and that type of path. We’ve made all of those sacrifices. I think those are definitely the biggest obstacles to getting to our dreams that we’ve had to overcome. Because what we’re trying to do, life isn’t set up for us to do it. There’s no path to it.

Brandon:

You’re very self-confident, very goal oriented. Have you experienced any failure yet?

SMYTH:

I feel like failure is just a natural thing in life. I’m not even going to say the creative world. Obviously, failure is so much maybe more in your face when you’re a creative, but failure is so much a part of life, and I think the way that I get through that is I never look at it as a failure. If you ask me if I failed, it’s gonna take me a long time to pick out a point where I feel like I actually just fucking failed. Because every time that something’s gone wrong, I’ve always pivoted to make it work… Because I feel like if you get so hung up on your failures or if you let failure be this menacing thing, you’ll fear it. And then you’ll never take a risk that might lead to failure. And so then you’ll just never progress because you’re not taking risks. If you’re scared of failure, you’re never going to take the jump..

Brandon:

Exactly. You’re not scared by it. It seems like it kind of keeps you going.

SMYTH:

Hell yeah. It’s part of it.

After the interview, we hung out in our alternative audio studio for over an hour, chatting more about the album and life in general. He gave me an early listen to the first few songs of the album, and I encourage anyone reading to go check it out. You can listen to Mike Tyson Jab , the debut album from Kidz At Pla y, now available on most streaming platforms.

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