Cranking The Feedback
Today I’m bringing back the interview/conversations I did earlier in the year. I have a handful coming out this summer, but the first among them is with Kian Stevens-Winston aka Sugar Pit!
Kian makes in-your-face, danceable, and relatable music under the Sugar Pit moniker. Doing all of the instrumentation, songwriting, recording, as well as video production for music videos and TikToks (until signing to a major label recently, which we’ll talk about), Kian has really blown up in the past year or two. Having several viral hits. You may know him from his song “Customer Service,” which racked up 3 million plays last year.
Kian and I first met at a humble open mic in college where we both played. We both seemed to like each other’s songwriting styles and kept in touch. Knowing I do comedy on the side, he included me in a few fun promo sketches for his music, which we reference at the top of the convo.
Anyway, enjoy the conversation. Topics include:
how to balance the grind-set with living life
how a new environment effects the kind of work you make
getting signed to a major label
leaning into the caricature of yourself
finishing something even if you know it’s bad
who Sugar Pit is collaborating with
WILL DINOLA: The last time we were talking was for a much different style of interview.
KIAN STEVENS-WINSTON: There was more of an agenda…
WD: How are you?
KS: I'm in a weird mood today. I woke up in a weird mood.
WD: Why, do you think?
KS: I just got a solo spot and now I'm living alone. I'm in my house all the time and then I went to go see people yesterday. I went outside of my house and it broke my force field.
WD: Is that making you look at the situation that you're in of being in this space alone differently, in that you miss the socializing? Or is it popping the focus that you had?
KS: I think both. When I'm alone, it's like tunnel vision. And then you step outside: and I'm like looking at my situation from a bird's eye view.
WD: Do you have strategies for getting back into that focus?
KS: I'm trying to figure out what the strategy is. Is the strategy to try and get back into the bubble or should I be trying to expand the bubble to include more outdoor activities, for instance?
WD: I mean that's kind of a whole different thing, just beyond socializing, because I definitely need to go on a walk today. I'm gonna go after this, because I've only been inside today.
KS: Yeah my coffee machine broke recently so I've been making the walk every morning to go get coffee. Monarch Bakery.
WD: How do you like living in LA? How long have you been there?
KS: Two years. I like it. My new spot is sick. I’m in Boyle Heights now. I’m right by this bridge on the interstate. And so I’ll walk to the middle of the bridge and I’ll be above all these layers of traffic. I just stare upon this vast expanse. All the buildings are in the background. I feel like I'm king of the freeways. It feels very wistful. I like it. That's what I like to do at my new spot.
WD: Comparing it to where you used to live, what was the environment you used to live in LA?
KS: Debatably South Central, which is a more gnarly area. I remember learning about food deserts in college and I didn't really know what that meant until I moved there. All my neighbors were very nice and the people were generally very nice in the area. It's liquor shops and bodegas and that's it.
WD: I'm curious if the [new] environment's changing your music at all.
KS: Yeah. It's way more crazy. I feel like I'm trying to get more crazy. I'm kind of in the middle of a big tear right now. I started this new batch of songs, like roughly a month ago. And I was like right about to move out, but I didn't have a place yet. So I was kind of in this weird middle ground that was very much stressing me out and making me feel crazy.
Because I knew that I was going to be living alone next, I was also thinking about what the next stage of my life is going to be like. It felt like moving on from an era. I was feeling very crazy and I was putting a lot of craziness into the music. I was writing a ton of shit. Now all of a sudden I've got like 15 really crazy songs that are all like… BLAH! type of energy.
WD: That's a good album title. BLAH!
KS: *laughs*
WD: I feel like people might describe your other music before this is as crazy too.
KS: I almost don't even want to put some of this shit out. I’m like, Ugh! Too crazy!
WD: I like your Instagram stories because I relate to them in a lot of ways. I think probably anyone who's doing music, especially people who are working on Logic, getting into a tunnel vision and seeing the same things, always on the screen [could relate]. I would describe [the Instagram story comments] as passive-aggressive, but also with love [toward] making music.
KS: What do I say? What do you mean?
WD: The one that I recall [was] talking about “audio regions.”
KS: It’s aggressive more than passive. The music I’m making is like those stories. All the songs are like: AUDIO REGIONS! MUSIC! GUITAR! BRING IN THE DRUMS!
WD: Is that something that you're like being intentional about, that attitude, or is that kind of organic?
KS: I feel like I'm kind of leaning into [a] caricature of myself… I don’t know. I started that sentence but I don’t know. *laughs*
WD: Well, maybe it’s more organic, the fact that you can’t really put it into words that easily. It’s more like, this just makes the most sense, so I’m leaning into it.
KS: I think I'm just writing a lot about being in your room, which I am a lot, and being on your phone a lot, and getting swallowed by technology and the future.
I’ll send you a link to all of this stuff. I would love to get your thoughts on it.
WD: Yeah, I’d love to hear it.
How has it been to build out a new kind of room/studio thing?
KS: So I got signed recently, which is amazing. It's a dream come true, literally. And so, I'm definitely not rich, but I have like a little bit of money to upgrade my living situation. And yeah, [I] set up this amazing studio. I'm on my desktop. I can't really flip it around, but it's huge. I've got my drum set over here and all my amps over here It's very spacious and it's [a] great workspace and all.
I also just wake up and just write songs, which is what I've been dreaming of doing for so long, but never been [able] to because I always had to work a job and [now] I don't have to work a job and it's like, WOW! AMAZING!
But it's kind of put me in this weird headspace where I'm like, wow, this is in some ways it feels like this is as good as it could possibly get. I'm like, wow, my dream is here and I'm living it. What could happen from here? You know what I mean?
My default thinking was kind of like, it could only get worse from here. But someone said to me out loud with their words the other day, they were like, it could get better from here. That really threw me for a loop. I was like, I can't imagine.
WD: Sometimes we don’t anticipate what we want either. We don’t even know what we want until we have it. Our dreams change too.
I think it’ll just be like, you’ll do something and you’ll be in it, and then eventually you’ll just want something different. A new challenge.
KS: For sure. I think there’s an element of that as well.
WD: What’s the label?
KS: Atlantic.
WD: That’s awesome. Has that felt mostly exciting or has it also felt overwhelming?
KS: No, it's pretty much all exciting. It took some acclimating to. I felt like coming into it, I was excited that there was a deal, but I was also skeptical of it, being a major label. Because I was kind of signing off of “Customer Service.” I like that song, but it’s hokey and it’s a viral thing. So I kind of thought, like, is this what they think that I am? Is this what they're expecting me to continue to produce? And be this prank character online?
So I think at the beginning there was kind of a lot of, like, what's going on here? What are your expectations of me? What should I expect of you? What are the politics at play here? Who's top dog? Who should I talk to about this? How are things structured? Should I be pushing to get this release date sooner? Should I let you deal with it and go with the flow?
Just trying to figure out, like, how the fuck that shit works.
And also managers are a whole fucking crazy thing too. Trying to find a manager is a big piece of the puzzle. I discovered it immediately. When you have a label, they’re like the communicator.
That's what I was trying to do at first. I felt like I was this tiny little ant screaming at the skyscraper being like, we got to get the next single lined up!
A good manager can make or break you. It’s hard to find the right one.
WD: This is kind of the other side of the dream. The bureaucratic end.
KS: No one really cares at all in the same way you do. Inevitably they're going to look at you as a product that may or may not become profitable. It makes me so, AHH!
WD: When you're doing this tunnel vision stuff, when you're getting in these zones, what is inspiring you, like, in between those times? Because that's a thing that I think a lot of artists struggle with is, I have to make time for my work, but then I have to make time to live and experience other things to inspire the work.
So I'm just curious, what is inspiring you?
KS: It’s like a feedback loop. Like you just said, artists need to go live so that they have input that they can turn into output. The things that I'm writing about [are] just being in my room writing songs all the time and then I'm writing songs about writing songs all the time.
I'm frantically trying to make something really good. There's like a pressure in the background. And I feel like a lot of it is just kind of me like freaking out about the pressure, but also still trying to make something really good. The music I'm making right now is worth it.
WD: It's like the craziness is maybe that internal anxiety manifesting itself in the actual sonic quality of the work. I'm excited to hear some of it.
KS: Some of it I hate.
WD: How have you been with throwing out material versus what you're keeping [for a release]?
KS: I think usually I know that while I'm writing it. Usually my process is I sit down in the morning and I start with drums and then kind of by late afternoon I have a feeling of, okay, this is [good] or no, this is not going anywhere.
I try to finish everything that I do whether I think it's good or not. I feel like it's good to do that. In the process of being like, ah, fuck it! This sucks [but] I'm gonna finish it anyway, something awesome pops up because of that attitude that you're approaching it with.
I’ve found that that momentum of just finishing something propels me to the next thing like, okay, thank God I got that done. I finished that shitty song, now I can do a good song.
WD: You start with drums, then add bass? Do you build the songs like that usually?
KS: Lately, yeah. I’ve been starting with drums. Drums, some kind of basic riff going, and then just talk over it. I've been trying to not use chords lately and just do more sounds on guitar, like harmonics, screeches and feedback and shit.
WD: I guess because that building block nature, when do you know it's finished? Is it like a time thing? Or is it [adding those] elements based?
KS: There's maybe like three vaguely big categories that they fall into.
One is being like, I don’t really like any of the parts here. The verse isn’t very good. There’s not really a hook. That’s bad. Done.
Then there's another kind of song where it's like, I like this one part and I love this riff and I love the way the vocals interact with the riff here, but it doesn't go anywhere. There also isn't a verse to back it up. There's nothing supporting this one good idea.
To me a finished song is like, I like all the different parts AND it goes somewhere AND it's saying something.
WD: Especially with how you’ve come up in the past year or two, it’s been very visual with TikTok. Does that play into certain songs making the cut? Like, oh I already have an idea for a visual. Or do you usually wait until, this is the EP. This is the album. And then you’re reverse engineering the videos from that.
KS: It's kind of reverse engineering. I'd like to say that it has no say in how I value the songs, but it does have some. As I'm listening through these demos, there is a part of me that, in the back of my head, is kind of scanning for: I could see this being a [TikTok] sound.
I think the sweet spot for me, when it feels good, is like if I feel like I'm actually saying something that is true to me AND I've packaged it in such an easy, dumb way that it could also be used as a sound. That's like the ideal.
WD: Some people bad mouth that way of thinking. The, oh, I need to shorten the intro so that it works for TikTok or whatever. But I always felt like this is how art has worked forever. People make a movie purposefully a certain length because that’s what audiences expect movies to be. Same with a TikTok, you know?
KS: I'm definitely curious to hear your thoughts on these songs. I think you'll see what I'm talking about.
“No one really cares at all in the same way you do. Inevitably they’re going to look at you as a product that may or may not become profitable. It makes me so, AHH!
”
WD: We’re getting closer to the end here. Is it just music, music, music? Or have their been other things that have been in your lately that you’ve been interested in or thinking about?
KS: Pretty much just been music, music, music.
I’m working with this one visual artist making content for the next song. So that's been fun, because they're actual artists. That's been one amazing thing about working with a label is there's a budget to pay actual artists to make really cool shit. So on the side, I have been going back and forth and mood boarding with artists.
WD: So you’ve been collaborating. Sometimes I see you’re at other studios. Is that working on your music or working with other people?
KS: Yesterday, I had this session with one of my favorite bands. I don't know if you know these guys, Model/Actress.
WD: Yes, I’ve heard them.
KS: They're such a sick band. I randomly got hooked up with them and I had a session with one of the guys, this other guy from this band, Lily, which was super fun. Not that I do a ton of that, but a little bit.
WD: Do you want to talk about the single or the next release?
KS: I’ve got a new single coming out on June 5th called “Data.”
I think it’s a great song. It’s vaguely about, in a world where we are controlled by out data and looked at as a set of data points. WE have the control of our own data… of the mind.
WD: I’m excited to hear this and the rest of this stuff. Is that going to be on a subsequent larger work?
KS: No idea.
WD: I'm glad to have talked to you and I'm glad to hear you're doing well.
KS: You're an awesome interviewer when you're not being mean.
WD: I’m glad.
will dinola (he/him) is a film composer, musician, and writer currently working in new york city
he is interested in people’s passions and pushing the art of film scoring to new horizons
he writes about his experience in a newsletter called “do”
