By Kalena Reynolds | Staff Writer
What does a cardboard cutout of Queen Elizabeth, lemons and Kanye West have in common? The answer lies in four roommates who decided to write an album inspired by their college experience as individuals and living together.
While the album’s title, “808s & Roommates,” was inspired by Kanye West’s “808s & Heartbreak,” the band name, “Mad Lemonless,” was inspired by an interview with a rapper named Datin that San Antonio junior Jackson Posey listened to and ultimately found whimsical inspiration in.
“It’s a great bit to pull up now anytime somebody mentions lemons,” Posey said. “The guy says, ‘Back to back, the enemy, attack and attack, and I pray for them, and they gon’ receive a blessing from it. Y’all gave me sour lemons, but I made some fire lemonade. I fed everybody that was thirsty behind me. And you’re gonna receive a blessing from it, and they gonna be mad lemonless because they can’t throw them at me no more.’ I’ve thought about that every day for the last five years of my life. And finally, we get to commit to the bit and say that we are ‘Mad Lemonless.'”
While Posey mainly focused on the rap portion of the album, the other three roommates — San Antonio junior Brooks Fessler, Beaumont junior Major Hargraves and Beaumont junior Luke Garza — all worked on writing melodies and lyrics to complement the verses.
Hargraves said that between film, writing and music, creativity is never in short supply within their apartment. However, each roommate has distinct sonic and artistic preferences. Regardless, the quartet decided to join forces before the winter break to brainstorm the beginning phases of the album.
“The three of us called Brooks because he had already left last semester, and we said, ‘Hey, we should all get together, come to Waco early and make an album together, and we just call it 808s and Roommates,'” Hargraves said. “And Brooks was like, ‘Shoot guys. That sounds crazy, but I’ll do you one better. I have a home studio in San Antonio.'”
As each roommate brought a different sound to the project, the intersection between Tame Impala, Kendrick Lamar and folk influences ultimately converged.
“I’ve got a track on there that’s a solo acoustic guitar and voice thing,” Garza said. “There’s some indie pop-esque songs. There’s a piano ballad on the album as well.”
Aside from the sound, the lyrics also heavily rely on inside jokes acquired among the roommates, which helped inspire different facets of the album, Posey said.
“That ranges from everything from a cardboard cutout of Queen Elizabeth that’s in our living room that I took on a blind date to Olive Garden once, to a DVD-shaped box of cheese that was discovered in one of our cabinets, [which] allegedly and nearly ripped all of our friendships apart,” Posey said. “And it’s a really fun time, and we’re sort of shooting to be an intersection of Veggie Tales and Kendrick Lamar.”
While three of the four roommates had prior musical experience, Posey was the only one without a background in music. He decided to revive his “sixth-grade rap days” to write and record verses for the songs.
“I live with three actual musicians, and I’m just a wannabe SoundCloud rapper,” Posey said. “A lot of my friends call me ‘JPose,’ which is like my sixth-grade rapper name, which is fun. I rock with it, but I’ve never made real music because I’m not a real musician. I don’t play any instruments, I don’t sing. I’m not actually good at music production — as much as my 12-year-old self would like to think differently.”
Each roommate contributed to the creation of the intro and outro songs, but they decided to split forces on the other tracks to bring a sense of diversity and something personal from each individual.
“All of them mean something about college and our experience living with each other — what that is like, and some struggles with that, and some joys with that, and just the ups and downs of doing life together,” Hargraves said.
While Garza, Hargraves and Posey focused on writing, Fessler homed in on his vision for the production while still collaborating with the three other roommates on arrangement and sound for the tracks.
“We didn’t really have an idea of what we wanted it to be,” Fessler said. “So that first day was just brainstorming ideas, maybe like album themes or certain things that we wanted to talk about, write about in our songs. Slowly but surely, it all came together into one cohesive idea that we could all act upon and work together towards the final goal of a banger album.”
The band is currently finishing the mixing and mastering. Once released, the album will consist of 10 to 12 tracks, starting with singles and eventually an album drop on all major streaming platforms.
