Second-year Sports Management student Aidan Vickery has always been interested in music, but he had no idea how long it would take to create his first rap album. Vickery’s been working on the release, 嬴檜堅~Cantina, for about a year and a half, and it’s finally going to see the light of day through Spotify, Apple Music, and other digital service providers on November 22.
“I tried to do it in high school, but I didn’t have the right equipment and I hated how it sounded,” says Vickery. “I finally got started right before I started Camosun. The project kind of went from there.”
Like a lot of musicians, Vickery says that he has difficulty classifying his music with a specific genre label when people ask him what it sounds like.
“I guess you could call it a rap album,” he says. “Alternative hip hop? I guess I really didn’t think about defining it. I can talk about it, but I am not the best person to judge it because I made it. There is a lot of influence from different songs and genres. For the majority of the songs, I have tried to take myself out of it. When you write a song and really put yourself into it, then people might not be able to identify with it as much.”
Vickery credits a lot of his musical sound to other artists who have inspired him. He says that it’s hard to be original, because he’s often basing his sound on artists he enjoys.
“You have to remember to give credit, because all the music I enjoy, all the music that I listen to, that is going to show a bit in my own work,” he says. “You have to have some level of influence from other people.”
Vickery remembers an experience from childhood that almost put his dream on the back burner forever.
“As a kid I wrote some poetry. I mean, I was super young,” he says, “I hid my book under my bed, and my mom found it. She was confused about what I was doing—was it a poem? Was it a song? But the fact that she found it and she was confused—I was so embarrassed that I stopped for a long time.”
Although that kind of experience can make a mark on someone, Vickery prevailed and produced the album all these years later.
“I am only now just starting to be able to promote and tell people about it, because it’s such a personal thing,” he says. “It’s so weird to think that anything I make might actually be decent. I think that it might be what they call ‘imposter syndrome.’ Even when I get a compliment, if someone tells that they like it, I’m always thinking, ‘Are you sure?’”
Now that his album is finished and about to be released, Vickery is unsure about the direction it will go, but he’s just happy he’s had the experience.
“Even if no one listens to it, I just want to be able to say that I’ve shared it, and it’s there, and people know about it,” says Vickery. “People joke about getting rich and famous, and that would be great. I would obviously be happy with that. But, honestly, that’s not the point. It’s more that I enjoy making it, and I so enjoy connecting with people through music. If something happens, though, that’s cool.”