mau from nowhere makes his mark, with debut album “The Universe Is Holding You”

After months of waiting, mau from nowhere has finally brought us the album we’ve been ready for. With 15 tracks, and 55 mins, prepare your heart because mau takes us on an emotional roller coaster with his debut album, “The Universe is Holding You”. Since December of last year mau has consistently released singles and visuals as buoys for his fans to hold on to. If you’ve been a long time follower of the rapper/producer some tracks may be familiar;“Try” and “Dogtail”, created in his earlier years make welcomed appearances. But with this spectacular first go at a full length project, mau has also introduced new tracks that are steadily growing into fan favourites. 

mau from nowhere has been a powerful force within the alternative music scene in Nairobi for the last few years so it’s wonderful to see this gentle giant stake his claim in such a meaningful way. 

You’ve spoken before about how your moniker mau from nowhere is influenced by a conversation you had with a friend around the idea that you do not exist anywhere. Especially as a third-culture kid, how is your music today influenced by that feeling?

I have a lot of different influences, but some of them are harder to trace. So there was an original joke that the name came from and I say that it’s a joke because I try to give it less weight now, because otherwise your artistic process becomes very rooted in searching for something that isn't really ever going to be found. I think identity is like breathing, it's natural. As soon as you try and do it or try and seek it, it's a bit of a false error because you're not going to find everything you're looking for.

So now what I like to do is lean into how my music comes about naturally and being third culture in that sense just means that there have been a lot of different touchpoints, and a lot of different influences that I allow myself to explore.

Where would you say your creativity or your music comes from? What are you tapping into when you're making music?

I think of my writing process like a tunnel. I'll surprise myself with all the places I end up going in a song. It doesn't have to be about a specific thing or a specific person. I'll maybe start talking about missing someone or some sort of regret towards a past situation, and it’ll end up leading towards something about my family or something about how I navigate the world, it's interesting how it can feel therapeutic. I get wary of saying music is therapy because like actual therapy is therapy and I've learned firsthand that as much as I can be vulnerable in this way, I'm never going to heal from my experiences fully unless I actually do it professionally in some ways. But I do think music is really good at helping me understand where things come from. A lot of songs have really helped me get to the root of myself. 

What does the name “The Universe is Holding You” mean? How did it come about?

It came about from a conversation I had with my sister. It was one of those moments where life was like, you're kind of in the pits, you're very confused, you don't know where the future leads. This was at a time when I was about to leave the States, and so much of my artistic foundational knowledge, but also just identity as an artist was formed in this city.

In my mind it was like leaving would really hinder any ability to actually keep going. It definitely felt like if it doesn't work here, then I'm kind of fucked. I was really nervous and I had just graduated and I didn’t have a clear path. I remember talking to my sister about it and she was reassuring me, and said that exact phrase. She said, “Be patient and breathe. The universe is holding you.” I'm not a very religious person, but I'm trying to understand my spirituality and that felt like a phrase that I could identify with or feel comfort in, knowing that there's a crazy grand scheme of things that exists and somewhere within that there's a space for you to be held and that was that was really comforting for me.

Coming into the album creation process, where did you start and where did you finish? Did you know what story you wanted to tell as you were creating these songs? Or was it a process of batch creating and then picking the ones you felt went well together?

Definitely batch creation. I was such a singles person when I first started making music the thought of an album did not cross my mind for the longest time. It wasn’t until I graduated that I started to see a through line. I think the second I started to see that through line, I recognised sonically and thematically, I have a bit of a style now. ” It was around the time when I was going through a shift. And it definitely triggered my musical growth spurt in a lot of ways.

It was a breakup and graduating that were definitely the catalysts for me to realise I had a lot of feelings, and a lot of words for them, but I needed an outlet.  And because the feelings were so difficult, but also important to me, it had to come out in the right way. I unconsciously ended up working a lot harder on music all of a sudden. One of the first songs that really showed me this could be an album, was “s_t_l” and “i_d_k” in the spring of 2019.  I loved those songs, and that was when I was really like, I don't want my “thing” to just be sadness, but I feel like the way I've captured this is in a way that it softens that feeling.

Now what feels nice about this album is it almost feels like I’m having a conversation between my past self, my current self or even a future self because it demonstrates how I dealt with certain feelings in the past, as in with a song like “s_t_l” and now it's a song like ‘I Would Hope”. To me that shows really nice growth because it's not just about the pain, they're both songs about things ending romantically or feeling sad that something ended or someone left you. But I felt like I graduated from a place of “woe is me” to a more holistic understanding of how I feel. I love  “I Would Hope '' because it's about “the how”, the gratitude of having felt this with someone is more important than me just feeling pain.

What would you say is your favourite song on the album? And what does it mean to you? 

That's a tough question. I feel like it's probably going to change, honestly. But I think it's, “I Would Hope”, for a couple reasons. “I Would Hope” was me experimenting. When I first started making music, and even producing, it came from an insecurity about being able to rely on collaboration or share a lot of these very personal feelings with people on a collaborative level.

I worry a lot about dependency and I unequivocally suck at asking for help. I think it came from film, which is a medium where collaboration is a necessity. You can't make a film all by yourself. And so the DIY approach to music just made sense for me, but I got very comfortable in it to the point where I didn't really see what the point of collaboration was. Collaborations to me meant features or someone making a beat for me. But after I first made “I Would Hope” and started performing it with the Soft Steppers, it became this whole new thing. When we started adding all the instrumental elements, and even just the harmonies between you and I, what was a song that rested in a very melancholic place, suddenly brought me so much joy. And I was like, “Wow!” This is actually what happens when you include people. This is what happens when you open up your process. 

You mentioned how in the last year, you've begun performing on stage with a live band. What made you want to expand like that, and has it at all impacted how you create music now?

I remember having this conversation with Polycarp or Fancy Fingers, after I started doing some sessions with him for his individual project. He was dropping me home one day and was talking about music and I was learning a lot about the music industry in Kenya. But it had never crossed my mind to get a band. Partly because I thought if I can captivate people with just myself and a microphone and someone DJing to me that'd be dope. When you're told to use less tools and when you put yourself in a box it almost pushes you to be more creative. 

And it was going well, but I remember talking to him and he was like, first of all, in Kenya you need a band. He was like, “Kenyans love live music.They want to hear instruments.” And to me that was kind of scary because I don't play many instruments live like that. I didn't really know what that meant for me. But it was also a moment for me to take a step back and recognise this is not about you as much as it is about the audience, and this is a good chance to develop your skills.

Every time I perform, I feel like I'm creating a community. And everyone has input and to me that's a really beautiful thing. That’s why I'm also excited post finishing this album because I’ve learned so much being in Kenya about how beautiful it is when art exists in community and not just in the individual.

Speaking to the power of collaboration I want to talk about the “Haba Na Haba” “cypher” you've got going on. What made you pick this specific song to remix, and have these particular artists on board?

Honestly, that was a random idea. I always knew, and liked the idea of cyphers. And I love it when people come together, and just rap. And at that point it was actually the first song that was made for the album. And as soon as I went into album mode, I knew I really loved, “Haba na Haba '' it's a song that encapsulates me in many ways. It was my first breakthrough musically and really captured my essence. And while it is a song, it’s actually more just one long ass verse with a chorus at the end. So in coming up with it, I was like, let me just get a bunch of people who rap, but like rap very differently as well, and see what can come from it.

I knew Maya was very melodic, but she writes very poetically. Junior is a fucking Shakespearean poet, and great rapper, and also someone who weaves storytelling into his music really well. Chevy I completely fell in love with how he raps because of “Kiinyume”, and how tough his delivery is. But also how he can say anything and make it sound cool. And then Monski, I had found through Instagram and I’d heard her stuff, and she's actually just an insane rapper. The thing I love about the beat is it lends itself to a lot of freedom for writers, butI knew I physically could not do it at the time. So I reached out and, and they all understood the assignment. It was really nice because one of the beautiful things about music in general, but especially like some of the best rap I like are the “kick it” vibes, where people are just rapping about rapping, but also about life and anything in between. So I think everyone did that in a really beautiful way. It's a long ass song and  it's so funny because there are barely any features and then there's like one song with four. 

What have you been working on lately? What projects can we see from you in the near future?

I'd love to be in a more collaborative space, not even just with my stuff, but everyone else's stuff too. I've been doing a lot more features recently, which has felt really good, to be able to dip into other people's projects and learn. I really think for me the biggest thing is just trying to get as weird as possible on the creative side. I would love to almost dip into character studies where I'm actually full on emo punk boy, whatever that sounds like. I want to lean into that fully so I'm not stifling that creativity. I have a lot of songs that have started fitting into different genre pockets. And I would love to see how either they fit together or they work as individual projects.

But I'm definitely trying to get more into closing the gap between my multidisciplinary sides . The album was great and I don't know if an album is necessarily going to be my musical avenue all the time, and I feel it'd be really interesting to step back from the industry a little bit and have a bit more freedom. I could try and incorporate music into visuals, into writing in a way that's more unique to me.

Check out mau from nowhere’s debut album on all streaming platforms now.