Northern Transmissions: Thank you so much for joining me today and congratulations on your new album, PURDY. I wanted to start off by asking you what the process was like for you to create this album.

Dominique Purdy: Yeah, I started by formulating some beats for it. Then the rest will just come to me. A lot of the time the lyrics all come in my head and then I put it to the music. I don’t necessarily know what it’s going to be right away. Sometimes after a few things come together, I do. The first things I came up with were in 2023. I was performing maybe four or five songs way before this album came out. When I did the show at the Broad Museum in 2024, I did it with a friend of mine who I collaborate with a lot, named Trent Truce, and we did this one part that’s the second half of the “Festivus song”, and it’s goes, “America, give me a break.” That was before I had the first part, and we performed a bunch of other songs that we’d never recorded, we were just performing.

So then when I finally started recording, I was like, “oh, okay, now I know the piece I want to use in the front, I’m going to add this America thing and put that on this piece”. It’s a lot of pieces that came together just naturally, and then when I was ready to record, I had three or four joints and I was like, “okay, I’m ready to begin, and I know where this is going.”

NT: Did you have an idea of where you wanted this album to go, thematically?

DP: Yeah, so, Finna Be Past Tense is probably the most not-so-obvious conceptually. That album basically, conceptually goes from prehistoric to futuristic times. It’s the last time you see me wear the wolf head too. Then with Little Dominique’s Nosebleed, which I was brewing after I was finished, I knew I had to let y’all know an origin story. And then there’s, ISTHISFORREAL? which probably split the audience the most out of any project. But “is this for real?” is something I would say all the time, with news and now with AI.

With PURDY, there is a conceptual aspect to it, but it’s not jumping out at you. It’s more like when you listen to it from beginning to end, you go “okay, yeah.” And I’m serious about my sequencing when I do my album. I know when I’m listening, this track needs to go more towards the beginning, this is the end, this going in the middle. I’m like a master at sequencing. And that, I think that’s what makes my albums. I’m not trying to make singles. I make albums for you to listen to in its entirety.

NT: Do you find that you have a through line between the albums, too? Are you aiming to get that kind of sequencing in the albums from one to the next?

PD: Yeah, I think that it happens naturally. While I’m making something, especially once it’s complete and we’re just mastering and mixing, things start to brew, fragments from the other things. I’m like “this element that I had in these couple songs, I want to stretch that out to the next album because that’s where I’m feeling now.” Even PURDY, I already know where the next thing is going. I know musically where I’m trying to create. I’m like my own type of novelist.

NT: I was reading something you said in Stones Throw a few days ago about PURDY coming out. You talked about wanting the audience to go in blind and I was wondering if you could elaborate on what you hope that achieves.

DP: If you’re not familiar with me at all, I think you could listen to this album having never heard anything, and say, “oh, okay, this guy’s good, the music’s good, and the album’s good.” When I say going in blind for people that have heard something from me, I’m saying you could see my government name Dominique Purdy or Koreatown Oddity and know it’s going to be some quality product of interest. That’s my little saying.

NT: When you’re listening to an album for the first time, how do you listen to it? Are there specific ways that you prefer to listen to full albums?

PD: I usually like to play it in the car. I like to be driving and listening to it especially right when it’s new. I guess now they force us in the cars to use Bluetooth and streaming stuff, but obviously back in the day we put on a CD or a tape. The car is probably where I’d listen, because that’s where I test out the album to see how it sounds. I feel like most people are going to hear it in the car or in headphones walking.

Having scenery while you’re listening to music, sometimes the music can hit you in a different way, because it might line up with something that’s going on in the world around you. Sometimes I see a crackhead dancing on the corner, and the crackhead might line up with some music. That’s an amazing moment that you can’t have by listening at home.

NT: Because you’re a multidisciplinary artists, you’ve done film, comedy, music, I wanted to know what you bring from those other art forms into your music?

PD: I would say, obviously, the creative part and having the freeness of those things. I may be able to express myself in a way that other people might not be comfortable, and using those elements to help me organize thoughts and music and paint a full picture.

You might have certain things going on in your album where you’re like, “okay, how am I experiencing this as a full project?” Film definitely helps for that. My thing is, you have to listen to the full album. You can listen to the album and then go find the songs that you like, but if you only listen to random songs, and you never go listen to my whole album, you didn’t even hear it. It’s a full experience and I really want to get people back to that. I’m not just putting songs together. I ain’t got no leftover songs, there’s no “I got a deluxe coming”, y’all. Ain’t no deluxe.

NT: I wanted to ask you something more specifically about some of the songs that are out right now from the album. In “Ragu and Prego” you found inspiration from the movie Soul. I was wondering if you could share some more insight on that.

PD: Yeah, so in the movie, he’s not really paying attention to life itself, because a lot of times people are like, “when this happens, that’s when the life starts.” But it’s not like a TV show where you can turn it off. It’s happening all the time. You have to remind yourself that the mundane stuff is life too, it’s not just the exciting parts.

In the movie after he finally gets his dream moment and he goes outside, he’s wondering “damn, well, now what?” and Dorothea tells him the story of the young fish and the old fish. The young fish sees the old fish, and says, “hey, I’m looking for the ocean.” Then the old fish says, “you’re
looking for the ocean? What you mean? You’re in the ocean.” And the young fish says, “nah, this is just water.”

You’re trying to achieve these things that you just forget that even you making a post on Instagram is life happening. That’s the reminder she’s giving them. And that’s what the energy of the record is connected to.

NT: I noticed also in the background of your video right now, you have the same MF Doom picture that you have in your music video for “Ragu and Prego”. I’m curious about the music video because your family also appears in that and I wanted to know what the relationship is between your family and your music.

PD: Yeah, the video is basically just in my house, in my crib and there’s art everywhere. My girl’s a painter so she paints a lot of stuff in the house. I just want to show the world that I’m in pretty much all the time. I’m in the art world, even the regular stuff that I’m doing is still surrounded by art stuff.

NT: Do you have plans for visuals for other songs?

PD: Yeah, we did a “Yahtzee” one. We’re doing a “Festivus” one and then we’ll probably do one for “Astro Turf”.

NT: Do you have all the concepts planned out?

PD: Yeah for sure. And then within that, I’m always open to come up with something extra. I don’t do treatments because I don’t really need the treatment. I just need a person who I can talk to and they can help articulate what I’m doing, which is what I’ve been doing with Alfredo
Lopez.

NT: Do you approach song writing collaboration similarly?

PD: Yeah I would say so. I might have a concept, depending on who it is. The first track on my album has Gary Wilson on it. When I first laid whatever I had, I was like “Gary Wilson needs to be on this.” So I sent him the song, and after a couple weeks, he sent something back. And what he did was perfect. Sometimes you’re working with somebody and they might help shape a thing even more, and I think that’s what happened with Gary Wilson. I wanted the first voice you hear when you listen to the album to be someone else, specifically Gary Wilson, and I was lucky enough to be able to get that.

NT: Your song “Yahtzee” is really interesting to me because it focuses a lot on intuition. In past interviews you’ve talked a lot about spirituality and your intuition and I wanted to know how those things were a part of your song creation process.

PD: Yeah, I mean, I’m kind of like a walking whatever that is, you know what I’m saying? And that’s why Little Dominique’s Nosebleed is basically if I was a comic book character. It’s the history of the character, the origin. My powers came from when I spoke with God after I’m lying there on the ground as a kid, having an out of body experience.

From that time to now, I’ve been the same. Obviously, I grow on the outside, I have experiences, but that soul has not been corrupted. I have protected that child’s soul throughout my life. And I’ve been given the mission to do that from there.

Now, every two to three days, somebody DMs me and says, “oh, my God, I just discovered you and this track you did made me feel this way.” It’s kind of crazy for people to say that some music made them feel a certain type of way or made them think a different type of way. We’re making recipes and doing things and make elixirs and doing chemistry, doing things for people. If you just write it off as not that, that’s how music becomes just some garbage.

But that’s why I say people got to listen to the whole albums. I’m not making anything for no reason. When I’m thinking about the words, I’m thinking, can I in 20 years listen back and say “yeah, that’s fire or yeah, that’s what I felt right then.” I don’t have to go back and think I was kind of embarrassing, because I’m conscious of what the words and music could possibly do. If I’m receiving these messages of people saying these strong things about how they feel about the music, then I got to keep on the same path of being conscious of what I’m doing with it. I can have fun and I can still be me but still be conscious of what this could do.

Order Purdy by Koreatown Oddity HERE