Before The Hype: Civ Pierre
Coming out of the Inland Empire, 27 year old rapper Civ Pierre seems to have no issue finding his way among hip hop. Born Pierre Simpson, Civ has been able to perfectly fuse the sounds of R&B with that of Rap. It is not a new concept but when someone is able to bring in a new perspective you have no choice but to pay attention. Pierre has been studying music for about 12 years, "...I’ve studied multiple styles of music basically did my own artist development studying ppl like Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, J cole, and Michael Jackson etc." And it shows, listening to tracks like "Would You (Issue 2)" it reminiscent of an early 2000's Justin Timberlake track over a Timberland beat mixed with the cadence and flow of Kendrick Lamar. It sounds crazy right, the two should not mix but Pierre finds a way to perfectly fuse the different generational sounds.
If that is not impressive enough, no one knows what he looks like. Somehow he has found a away to entice an entire audience solely based off his music. When asked why he decides to hid his identity he responds " I strictly wanted my music to speak the audience sometimes are so infatuated on the artist appearance I wanted to keep that mystery within the music. Kinda how the Weekend didn’t show his face at first its captivating." And it makes sense, more times than not an artist is able to sell themselves based off their image, when you take that away all the artist has left to stand on is their image. Pierre is still super early in his career, with a full length project coming this summer, I would not be surprised if we are looking at a superstar on their ascent. You just had the pleasure of knowing his name [as hopefully his face] here at KILJOY Magazine.
Link to his page on Apple Music and Spotify