🧬 Sonic Study
An Artistic Curriculum for World-Builders
It always feels good for your work to be understood. You don't set out to create with those intentions, but it does help make you feel like you're on the right path when people can recognize what you're trying to build (even without the mediums being perfect).
DrewsThatDude: Crafting Sonic Worlds From ‘Petty Tape’ to ‘En Amor’
A piece that did a great job of highlighting my journey as an artist and even made me sit back and realize how long I've been doing this thing. While it did cover a good range of the music, I wanted to cover some of the things they spoke about and put it into context. I've always wanted to figure out a kind of artist guide but not one of those bloated "here's how to get poppin'" playbooks. I'd rather highlight the real influences and building blocks behind my albums so it can spark ideas for how other artists might build out a world of their own. To me, that kind of blueprint is way more valuable than any get-rich-quick, one-size-fits-all guide and maybe this could be something I do for all of my projects.
En Amor (2016)
The Infamous Debut
The En Amor cover by Frans Clemente was intended to be a hand-drawn love letter to New York. It takes that classic NYC feel with the iconic fire escapes and cramped buildings, and flips the script using a saturated, dream-like palette. Bold pink pavement to shift the energy from a gritty city sidewalk to a psychological space. Basically you’re looking at the neighborhoods I grew up in through the “En Amor” lens.
We Had Our Time (Explicit) (2020)
We Had Our Time was symbolic in reality and narrative in that it was my first project that I released when I moved back to New York after the place I was staying at in Los Angeles caught fire. While that was a tumultuous time, I definitely used it as an opportunity to get back home, nurture my roots, and kick-start my new ventures. Similar to the paths I'm building out in this story, I really wanted resilience and the concept of driving through situations to be a focus because it was an experience I went through, and I hoped that this project represented that range of emotions. Honestly, probably my favorite project still.
Flirtin (Instrumental) (2024)
Flirtin (Instrumental) was a track I made in 2015 that was definitely appreciated by people in the SoundCloud era. The OG had explicit lyrics that I just didn’t feel were necessary for the projects I was putting out, but I still wanted it to be a part of the overall audio journey. I wanted to capture the essence of it, strip it down to the feeling underneath the words and let that breathe on its own. That’s the space I’m always chasing… scoring the visuals in my head, building the atmosphere like a scene that doesn’t need dialogue to hit.
Petty Tape (May 2025)
Petty Tape was a remix tape that I had developed right around the time when I was getting my most copyright strikes LOL. It was appreciated on SoundCloud when I originally released it, and bryse. developed a lot of dope art pieces around this project that I still use as promo and to set the stage for future literary projects we’re working on. I think I want to get back into remixing records. Even if the copyright thing is annoying to navigate, it is an undeniable part of the journey so who knows.
Key Observations Oreate Made:
Recurring Interludes — “Nimbus (Interlude)” and “Quickie (Interlude)” appear on both Petty Tape and We Had Our Time, which were thematic and sonic threads across projects.
Evolution Across Years — They tracked the journey from En Amor (2016) → We Had Our Time (2020) → Flirtin (2024) → Petty Tape (2025).
Collaborations — They noted different features across the discography.
Instrumental Exploration — They called out Flirtin (Instrumental) as showing “a different facet, perhaps a more atmospheric or purely instrumental exploration.”
World-building is a concept that everybody loves throwing around but sometimes I think people are overthinking it.. it’s something
