Quadeca on creating music with meaning and his do-it-all new album

Just as Trent Reznor is to Nine Inch Nails and Kevin Parker is to Tame Impala, Ben Lasky makes up most of what is Quadeca.

On his fourth album, Vanisher, Horizon Scraper, Lasky wrote, produced, mastered and provided vocals, guitar, bass, piano, synth, percussion and drums on nearly all 14 of the tracks. However, Quadeca is far from a one-man band as shown by their recent sold-out shows at Thalia Hall in Chicago and Madison’s Majestic Theater.

“So I have a band that has flute and guitar/bass and keys/synth, and then I have a live drummer. Total number of band members is five, including me,” Lasky tallied for me. “Yeah, I would love to do, like, a 14-person group. That’d be awesome. I think that could happen — multi cellists, Multi flutists. Yeah, I think that’s probably in the books.”

Quadeca started by posting videos on YouTube as QuadecaX8, with his focus on freestyle rap and soon diss tracks after being attacked as a “fraud” by fellow YouTuber KSI. Quadeca’s diss track “Insecure” was soon praised by KSI, and his music started attracting enough attention that the project released debut album Voice Memos a year later in 2019.

Since the July release of Vanisher, Horizon Scraper, 88Nine has been playing the single “Monday” — a beautiful track with all of Lasky’s talents on full display. After several (I mean, several!) listens, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone has approached him about using “Monday” in a TV show, film or even commercial. “No, but they should!” he answered. I feel we’re not too far away from that becoming a reality.

Quadeca interview highlights

The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

On having a sounding board for the album since so much of it was done by him:

I think the only way that I can finish things is if I invite the least amount of other voices possible. [It] makes sense into my process. Because as soon as you play an unfinished song for somebody and they go, “That’s the best song ever,” and you want to cut it, now all of a sudden it’s really hard to make decisions. The more voices in your head you have, the more difficult it is to execute.

So I try to have as little people to soundboard off as possible when I’m working on the music, because it just keeps it true to the original vision. But there are certain things like, you know, I’ll ask my manager, “What do you think’s the best single?” You know, certain questions about positioning publicly, how I wanna do it. But I would say most of the stuff comes down to what I feel in my heart as … that’s what it’s gotta be.

I like to collaborate with others, so I wouldn’t say I’m completely closed off. But when it comes to the kind of big-picture decision making, I think that every time I’ve betrayed my heart and tried to satisfy all the other voices.

On the beauty and meaningfulness of the song “Monday”:

I think I saw somebody playing it at their wedding or dancing to it at their wedding or something. That was really cool. But I appreciate that you appreciate that song because I think that song will have a long life because I think it’s one of those that, you know, it’s a very timelessly written song.

I have noticed that in the months after it’s come out, it’s been the one that kind of slowly rises more and more, and I hear more people talking about it. Because the other single, “Godstained,” I think was the more, like, blockbuster. But, as time goes on, “Monday” is catching it, which I always think is interesting to see the ways that certain songs have that growth over time.

On his listening habits when listening to new music:

I have certain periods — I’m not sure what exactly inspires them, but there’s certain periods where I don’t wanna listen to any music at all. And then there’s others where I’m trying to listen to everything new, like the way that people are with being a cinephile where they have to go back and watch all the classics and whatever.

I really just want to experience as much music as possible because there’s so much. I could spend my entire life listening to every good album, and I still would only probably listen to 2% of them.

There’s times where I have a very expansive mindset and then others where it’s like, I don’t want any outside noise. And so when I was making this album, I was listening to a lot of Brazilian music. I really liked kind-of-sentimental Brazilian guitar music. I was just listening to a lot of different folk music from different places in the world.

I get inspired by everything. So … it all ends up on the album in little ways. But that’s what I think makes the album really difficult for people to recommend to their friends because their friends are like, “What type of music is this?” And they’re like, “I don’t know. It’s like rap, but he’s not rapping. … But it’s also hip-hop, but it’s also rock music, and it’s also experimental.”