Formerly LEN is no stranger to collaboration. Having made music with the likes of Mo Iqbal and Boldy James, working with others has become a core feature of the Texan rapper’s music. On his latest mixtape, No Page Left Unturned, LEN takes things a step further, turning the project into a full collaboration with his own audience.
Described as a ‘living mixtape,’ No Page Left Unturned is LEN’s first project in over a year, released gradually over the course of six months. “The goal [was] for each release to be a unique listening experience,” he said. “The rollout started last December, and since that point, every three to four weeks, I would drop a new iteration of this mixtape … With each iteration there would be a new quote-on-quote ‘chapter’ … A new song, and then the track-list would move around, and sometimes there would be updates to the mixes and stuff like that.”
In part, the mixtape was inspired by The Life of Pablo by Kanye West, an album which saw multiple revisions before it was finally complete. “I decided to do something a little more interactive,” said LEN. “I would incorporate my audience into this by doing some polls on my social media and asking some questions and asking what kinds of songs they would like next.”
Rather than basking in the praise or deflecting the critiques, LEN took on board every opinion to make No Page Left Unturned the best possible mixtape. “I started asking my audience for feedback after the second song dropped,” he said. “I started playing snippets of some unreleased demos, and seeing which ones they would like more, just on an engagement level. From there, I took that feedback to see which song comes next, to see whether I should release one of these songs at all or not.”
Beyond building a rapport with his audience, the mixtape acted as a whetstone for the rapper to sharpen his skills as a marketer and hook more ears into his music. “I have a sophomore album that I’m working on, but before that, I need to play into some of the meta strategies of the music industry in general and build up engagement by being active … With every new track, I tried something new on the marketing aspect of things to see what worked and what didn’t.”
As well as testing different marketing strategies, LEN incorporated a variety of sounds to make No Page Left Unturned an eclectic event for his career. From the melodic drill of ‘That’s Life’ to the old-school boom bap of ‘Under the Crescent’, no two songs are alike. “I had it in mind that I did want to incorporate all these different elements, even before the rollout began. It just so happened that my listeners don’t have one style of mine that they prefer … so it definitely helps that I have a receptive fanbase who are really open to listening to anything I put out.”
However, the process of making a living mixtape had its downsides, too. “I was making songs between releases. It’s not like I had everything ready, and it was just the rollout, because that would have been a lot easier to manage. Sometimes, I would send Jango the stems for a song and need it to be mixed within a few days, and obviously that’s a really difficult deadline to meet … It’s just so much stuff that goes into it, and working full time and doing other stuff, it’s very draining, and it felt like I had no energy for some time because of how much I was working.”
Even more stressful were the collaborations. No Page Left Unturned features beats from myriad producers and a handful of guest verses, many of which left LEN anxious about meeting his creative goals. “I wasn’t giving them a lot of stress about it, but sometimes I was running behind schedule and I needed something changed for the beat, or I needed instrumental stems, or I needed a verse by this time, or I needed clearance for a verse … Those were the most stressful parts of it; the parts that weren’t under my control. At that point, I’m at the mercy of others to meet my own deadline.”
Perhaps the one saving grace from the ‘living mixtape’ rollout was the fact that it was just that: a mixtape. Rather than moulding songs to fit a general theme or sound, the end-product is an eclectic mishmash of whatever LEN felt like making. “I didn’t put too many resources into finishing something and then say, ‘Oh no, that’s not going to make it,’ because this is a mixtape, not an album. Even if I had a completed song that I was confident in, and let’s say it didn’t fit how the other ones sounded, or didn’t hit the same thematic points, as a mixtape you can excuse that.”
Although the songs share little commonality in terms of sound, they are all linked together by LEN’s passion for storytelling and songwriting. “There’s always going to be a deeper meaning behind it for me … [For] a lot of other artists, their thing is their sound. They’re able to get a good aesthetic, to get good visuals, and they have something going for them – they are able to characterise a brand very well, and that’s associated with a sound. But for me personally, my value in music is about the storytelling, about the message.”
Despite the tribulations of his creative process, the benefits of making the living mixtape far outweighed the drawbacks. An excuse to sharpen his lyrical skills and garner more listeners in the process, No Page Left Unturned marks a turning point in the rapper’s career, setting him on course for his next body of work.
“That was the main purpose of it,” he said. “To experiment with a bunch of different stuff and learn along the way, to get ready for what I’ve really been working towards. Don’t get me wrong – personally, I think it’s a great piece of work to put out, but it was just testing the waters.”
Regarding his sophomore album, LEN offered only cryptic descriptions about what the project will entail. “All I can say is that it’s going to be huge.” But with all the lessons learned and skills refined through No Page Left Unturned, there is no doubt that Formerly LEN will deliver on his words.
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