TRUly Chancelor: Where are you from and how is it there?

ZXQaos: I’m from Ireland, but I’m currently based in Indonesia. It’s a long story, but essentially I travel to go and live in a different place every three years before returning back to Ireland for three more. I’ve lived in China, Ireland, Iran, Belgium, Nigeria and Indonesia. It’s pretty awesome out here to be honest; good food, everything’s pretty cheap, very friendly people, very easy paced — living comfortably, no justified complaints. I have a photo blog on Genius to document my travels, so there’s a reasonably significant insight into my lifestyle and perspective there if anyone’s interested.
TC: Since you’re finishing up high school, what do you want to do afterwards?

Z: Well like any HS student I have no clear direction of my future, but I’d roughly like to follow my interests in film above all. I think the pursuit began when I was like nine upon wanting to become a YouTuber, and I was always filming little family events here and there on this dreadful quality camcorder. I started getting big into photography last year, hence the blog, and when I was picking my courses for this year I saw film was an option so I chose it as a higher.

And it’s great, I’m loving it! I helped put together the school’s first film festival (which I did a submission for here), I’ve been doing presentations and studies on theory and cinematic technique, it’s fascinating stuff. I’ve specifically developed an affinity for cinematography and editing, so I’ve been looking at a couple media institutes as college options which have surprisingly easy admission rates. We’re about to start screenplay writing this semester so hopefully I can get a better grasp of plot construction (by the way s/o to Alekazam for rebooting The Screen Scribes Project) so I can get a bit more versatile in the medium.

Oh, and I’m putting together a photo collective and video of my recent bout around Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong. Stay tuned!

TC: I noticed the Q in your username and am wondering, are you part of #QRules — you should add your name to the HQ page if you are — or is it something completely unrelated?

Z: Nah, it’s just a childhood sentiment. About six/seven years back I wanted to come up with a unique username that didn’t involve my name followed by a long string of numbers. So, being the 10 year old that I was I just thought “well, my favourite word is Chaos and my favourite letters are Z, X and Q”… So, I came up with this idea of “”Q” replacing the “Ch” as a corruption of the word’s spelling, then just threw the other two letters at the start. Been my online alias since. Genius, huh?

TC: How long have you been a member of Genius and what is your favorite thing that has changed since you joined?

Z: I’m pretty sure I joined Genius sometime in August 2014, because I know I was edded April 29th 2015 (I always remember because it was exactly a week after StillAtIt was), and it had been about seven to eight months since I joined — which if you ask me is the optimum timeframe for a user to have a chance at being an editor. There was a D12 lyric I was researching and I came across the site through it by chance, thought it was cool and signed up about a week or so later. Oddly enough, the tate was dreadful, but I fixed it up when I became an editor. Clearly I‘m no veteran, but if you were around back then you could vouch for the sheer number of things which have since changed or been added.

That said, my absolute favourite change — or rather improvement — is simply the communications between the different roles on Genius. When I first joined, I indirectly got a spiteful vibe off of certain editors and moderators, just from observing arguments with whitehats. There was a certain amount of condescendence and patronising, which I expected, but it was just so cold and terse on a front of how people of a higher rank dealt with others — at least from my perspective, anyway. Now it’s miles better, I just think there are much more mutual feelings across the board. Then again, I’m not on the forums too much at the moment, but still, the Editor Community to me is a lot less aggressively assertive now, I’m far less intimidated by being associated with it.

TC: What’s something you miss from when you first joined Genius?

Z: I guess I kind of miss the format, to be honest. I don’t dislike Bagon or prefer Mecha over it, but there’s something very welcoming and familiar about that old black matt styled layout. As someone who moves around quite often, I get intimately nostalgic and misty eyed over the things gone. Otherwise, just a couple of users I knew back in the day that I’ve grown apart from. They’re not really too active anymore, so there’s not much point in naming them :(

TC: Now to get down to the music questions, I noticed from your profile that you seem to be a big fan of D12. I also used to be pretty into D12, but could never get into any of them as solo artists (with the obvious exception of Eminem). Have you been a fan of any of them as solo artists? Also, have you enjoyed their music post-Eminem leaving the group?
Z: There aren’t any solo albums or projects that any one of them has made that I’m particularly attached to, although Swifty McVay’s Assassins was decent, but there are tracks here and there I quite like; Kuniva’s “Derty Headz”, Swifty McVay’s “Funeral", Mr. Porter’s “Cooking" and pretty much anything they’ve put out on Reel Wolf.

I can’t say I’m too happy about their latest antics in not putting Em on any of their stuff, but hey, they made Devil’s Night so if they can replicate the feel I’ll get with it. And even though they’ve said it a million times, I heard them say in a recent interview that they would drop their 3rd album soon so I remain hopeful.

TC: In the wake of Watch The Throne, and more recently What A Time to Be Alive, collab albums have been having a major resurgence in hip hop. How do you feel about this? What are your favorites/ones your looking forward to? Do you have any dream collab albums or ones that were promised but never came?

Z: I’m all for them, I suppose. I always thought that those kinds of albums were an interesting in theory but in practice quite unlikely, although I have no issue with being proven wrong. They’re healthy for the genre — the only way you’d gain exposure as an artist is through collaboration, mixing audiences. My favourites are Champion Sound, Madvillainy (wow, I really like Madlib, just realised), Hell: The Sequel and I’m gonna say Only Built 4 Cuban Linx simply because Ghostface was all over it.

In terms of collabs I wanna hear, there’s supposed to be one with Ka and Roc Marciano coming out that I need to get ‘cause I love Ka and just any emcee with a monotonous, soporific vibe. If it ever drops, that Ghost and MF DOOM one would be dope. I would’ve loved to have heard an album by The Commission if there had ever been one but sassily it seems such things never come to fruition.

TC: Recently the XXL Freshman Class voting for 2016 started. If you were able to pick 10 artists from this list, who would they be?

Z: I genuinely know very few of these artists by their music, so I’ll just say the ones I know best; Anderson .Paak, Desiigner, Father, Jidenna, King Mez, Quentin Miller, Post Malone, Kyle, D.R.A.M., Jay 305.

Again, I know very few of these so don’t shoot me.

TC: I saw that you broke down Kanye’s Runaway film, which is cool because I’ve been pretty into hip hop short films recently. What are some of your favorites?

Z: Well, that Hopsin short film was pretty funny, even though I’ve hardly heard any of his stuff. Pusha T’s Darkness Before Dawn promo was pretty dope. I also kind of like the narrative aspect to 50 Cent’s “9 Shots” video, although the plot is pretty weak. Other than that, I can’t think of too many. It’s not a very expansive genre…

The real reason I did the Runaway breakdown though was because a few months back I did a music video annotation for Kanye’s “Lost In The World” for StillAtIt’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy cleanup and he approached me with the idea. Out of interest in film, I tagged along and it was done in like a month. I love that project because it’s got a lot of the better end of my work on Genius, but it was really Damasa who held it all together — that was totally his shine moment. Not really a surprise since he already analysed like three or four other films though. Drew hopped along too which was pretty awesome too. Shame Dam’s been dwindling in activity recently because he’s in college.

That was only part one of the film though, and everyone involved is really busy right now, so if anyone with extensive Ye or film knowledge is interested in trying their hand at part two hit me up, help would be appreciated :)

TC: Who are your top 5 new school rappers?
Z: Man, that totally depends on how you define “new school” really. In my head a new school rapper is from 2005 to now (I know, a whole decade but still), regardless of the consensus view that seems to be circa 2010 debuts onwards, so I’ll go with that:

- Shaz
- Lupe Fiasco (s/o to Angela and Swinelord)
- Kendrick Lamar
- Joey Bada$$
- Jay Rock

TC: What is your all-time favorite producer tag?

Z: Ugh, I hate producer tags. I mean, I get it if it’s like an instrumental off of Soundclick or Datpiff and you don’t want people using your beats without recognition, but the fact that professional, well known producers who already earn thousands from their work are using them is phenomenal to me.

Does Young Metro trust you though?

TC: What city do you think has had the greatest impact on hip hop in recent years and why?

Z: Clearly Chicago, regardless of what I think. Lupe, Kanye, Common, Chance, Chief Keef, Vic Mensa (s/o to B4_Da_BASED)… it doesn’t even matter if people actually like them or not, Chicago has been all over the game for essentially the last decade. I don’t know or understand why, nor does it really matter since so much of the music is just really good. Some people may not think this resonates as “impactful”, but being in recent years it’s usually hard to determine the influence of any given thing, except when it’s so glaringly obvious that it’ll be inspirational: like Chicago in hip hop.

TC: How do you feel about the enigma that is Young Thug?

Z: I'm just going to refer to another Hopsin video here.

On a more serious note, I just can’t listen to something I can’t understand. His “music” is just inaudible, I just can’t follow it. Look, I come from a background where the behaviours of hip hop would be heavily frowned upon, but minus a few exceptions my rule is that if there’s at least some evidence of a strong, significant message in the music then artists can do whatever they feel they need to in order to get it heard — even if I don’t like it. I can handle cliché artists if they can bring something new to the table, but otherwise I don’t want to hear it. Sorry Thug. Trapping just isn’t for me.

TC: Who are some of your favorite non-hip hop artists?
Z: Wow, there’s a lot. I didn’t even really start listening to hip hop until like 2012, so there’s a lot of both old and contemporary music I’ve followed over the years before then and after as well. Screw it, I’ll just list them all at once; The Script, Ed Sheeran, Kodaline, Adele, Johnny Cash, Queen, Bastille, Bruno Mars, Hozier, Meat Loaf, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Don McLean, LMFAO, Jason Derulo and C418.

I like lots of other individual songs here and there, radio hits or other little tracks by names you’d know. Otherwise that’s mostly it.

TC: What albums are you anticipating most in 2016?

I’m pumped for Pusha T’s King Push, J Dilla’s The Diary, Nas’s next album if he drops it, Royce Da 5’9”’s Layers and Lupe’s DROGAS. In terms of music as a whole I’m not very up to date, but nonetheless I’ll be keeping my eye out for anything that comes down my lane :)

TC: Bonus Question: Are more doors open or closed in the world right now and why? Word to Cody.

Z: I am clueless of what this is a reference to. Nevertheless, being the indifferent fellow I am, I’ll say about equal. The pessimistic me wants to say more closed but being someone who rarely closes doors after I enter the room I should probably just keep my mouth shut. Thanks for the interview!