Blvck Svm has a certain kind of magic touch that can turn nothing into something. At the beginning of the pandemic, he was out of a job and looking for any path forward. He had finished school at the University of Chicago almost two years before and was considering moving back to his family’s home in South Florida. While most people would have accepted defeat and returned home, Svm decided to risk it all by committing himself to a full-fledged career as a rapper.

Throughout a year of almost total uncertainty, Blvck Svm began releasing a steady stream of loosies. Svm’s drops came every two weeks no matter what the circumstances. With a captive audience starving for new music, Svm was able to build a following and parlay that into something much bigger. The first single he dropped, and to this date, his biggest release was the track “Bleach.” A playful trap track that relies on clever wordplay (“Hit a stain like bleach” // 7am on a beach // studying flows, the ocean got hella to teach”) showed the immense promise of Svm’s work to come. On one of his recent latest releases, an EP called not enough live wires, stands as a tribute to Svm’s rap idol MF DOOM. The tape’s artwork is a remix of Madvillainy and throughout in the three tracks, DOOM’s influence is undeniable ion Svm’s lyricism and wordplay.

We caught up with Svm at South Facing Windows to talk about milestones he’s hit this past year, what’s to come for the rapper and of course, MF DOOM.

These Days: Your work ethic is really impressive; releasing a steady stream of new songs over the course of a year where most things completely shut down. What drove you to keep up the pace? Did you have any difficulties with the creative process? 

Blvck Svm: My fear of leaping back into the murky chasm of academia and my aversion to working a soul-sucking 40-hours-a-week job drove me to make something happen for myself. When the pandemic hit and things shut down, I lost my job, and aside from the occasional ghostwriting bag I didn’t have enough to make ends meet. My best option was to move home so I didn’t have to pay rent, apply to grad schools, and apply to jobs. But I knew if I did that then I’d have to quit rap, or at least go on an extended leave of absence until I could find my footing. And after 5 years of chasing my dream I wasn’t ready to give it up. Having my back against the wall pushed me to work harder than I’ve ever worked to improve the quality of my music and stay consistent with my output. I didn’t run into too many obstacles with regards to my creative process. I got a little writer’s block here and there, but I learned how to be patient with myself and take advantage of my writing hot streaks when they came.

On Twitter you said that “oneofone” might be your best song. What stands out to you about that track? 

I just really got in my bag on that one. Like I was reaching into my bag as I always do but somehow there was a bag inside that bag, so I opened it, and inside that bag was another bag, so of course I opened that bag, and inside that bag was ANOTHER bag, and so on and so forth. Went on for like 30 bags. Like when Spongebob and Patrick were tryna sell chocolate bars but that dude finessed them. Anyways, what I’m tryna say is that I got in my bag. I was using flows I’ve never used, I was switching speeds like Derrick Rose in his prime, I used some of my best one-liners and bar sequences on it, my vocal quality during the recording session might’ve been my best ever, the beat (produced by Presto Beats, shoutout Presto) was sliding crazy, it was just a perfect storm you feel me?

What role does DOOM play for your EP not enough live wires? Overall how would you break down your influences? 

DOOM is my favorite rapper of all-time. For many reasons I don’t idolize rappers, but I made an exception for him. His convoluted flow patterns and rhyme chains, his elevation of technique over narrative, his wit, his inimitable style, his vignette-esque song structures, there will never be another artist like him. Shortly after news of his passing broke I realized how much his style has influenced my own rap style, so I wanted to embrace his influence on not enough live wires. He was extremely good at what he did, and he was unapologetically himself while doing it, and I’m eternally grateful for him and his music because without him I wouldn’t be the artist I am today. 

My other two biggest rap influences are Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane. Wayne was my introduction to rap, and he was the reason I fell in love with the genre. I discovered his music when I was in middle school and never looked back. He’s why I have such an affinity for lyricism. When I was in high school I discovered trap music, and Gucci was my favorite trap rapper. Trap God is probably my favorite mixtape of all-time. He (and Migos and Thug, but to a lesser extent) shaped my high school years, which were my formative rapping years.

When can we expect a follow-up full-length project to Yasuke? 

I think by late October I’m gonna try to have a full project ready to go. It might not be an album, but it’ll be longer than the projects I typically release. Part of why I drop singles so often is because I’m impulsive. But a larger part is because listeners’ attention spans (including mine) are generally not good, and unless an artist is established, in my experience, longer projects don’t get the same type of attention that shorter ones/singles do. I released a 6-track EP titled Ankle to Jaw in January 2020, and I noticed the streams pretty drastically tapered off on tracks 4-6, which for a while discouraged me from putting together longer projects. But things are different now. I have way more listeners, I’m making way better music, and I’m way more proficient at marketing and promotion. So I think maybe it’s time to try again.

“Bleach” was the first single you dropped as part of your series. It’s also your biggest track numbers wise. Can you talk us through the story behind that track?  

The story behind Bleach is pretty underwhelming, I think. It wasn’t until after the song came out that things got exciting, but here’s the backstory: Back in March 2020 I decided I wanted to release a song every other week to see if I could revive my rap career instead of quitting and moving home, like I talked about earlier. Bleach was the inaugural biweekly release. A couple weeks prior to all this, I found a bar floating around in my brain that ended with “hitting a stain like bleach.” “Hitting a stain” is slang for stealing something, and bleach removes stains from white clothes, so I thought it was a clever simile. At the time I didn’t know if I was gonna do anything with it, but I wrote it down in my Notes app just in case. One morning while searching through YouTube “type beats,” as I often did, I found a kinda lofi, kinda trap beat on the YouTube page of a producer named level. I wrote the song in about two hours. I went to record it later that day with my engineer, Chxll. I purchased the cover art from my friend/mortal enemy, Carlos, and I released it almost immediately. 

A month after its release, it already had around 10,000 Spotify streams, which was more than I’d ever gotten on a song before, which was wild to me. But I truly had no idea how wild it would get. 

Recently you’ve collaborated with artists like Roosevelt the Titan and JIG LeFrost. Is there anyone you would want to work with going into future projects? Rappers? Producers? 

Shoutout Rose and JIG, a big reason why I love making music is that I get to meet and befriend a lot of really cool, talented people who make good music, and those are two of them. There are a lot of rappers I’d love to work with in the future: Valee, Action Bronson, JID (but I’d feature on his song, he can’t feature on my song because I don’t wanna get bodied on my own song), Tierra Whack, Westside Gunn, Drakeo the Ruler, and a lot more. In terms of producers I would love to work with Alchemist, he’s my favorite producer.

What initially attracted you to Chicago? Did the music coming out of the city play a role? 

Honestly the only reason I came to Chicago is because I applied to college through a scholarship program called Questbridge and matched with the University of Chicago. Had I matched with one of the other schools I ranked I would’ve ended up somewhere else. I’m very glad the school I matched with is in Chicago though because I could’ve ended up in Ithaca, New York or Providence, Rhode Island or something and I guarantee Princeton, New Jersey would not have provided a suitable environment for an up-and-coming rapper like myself. Before coming to Chicago I knew about Chief Keef and Kanye, but I didn’t know too much about other Chicago artists, so I can’t really say the music drew me to Chicago. But once I started listening to more Chicago artists, the music scene quickly became one of my favorite parts of the city.