Digital Cover Story 10: Cautious Clay

”I’m just trying to stay curious, because if I’m not curious, I’m insecure.”

As I sat awaiting my zoom call with the American artist, heralded songwriter and record producer Joshua Karpeh, otherwise known as Cautious Clay, the sunlight beamed through my third floor apartment window, permeating throughout the room and creating a warm glow - the perfect backdrop for a Cautious Clay listening session. Joining me on his laptop was the man himself, and what ensued was an intellectual and eye-opening discussion, centred around his upcoming debut album, ‘Deadpan Love’. We jumped straight into it, with Clay detailing the significance of the title - “As a person, I’ve always wanted an album that could encapsulate my perspective on the world from an emotional standpoint. I feel like the title of ‘Deadpan Love’ really encapsulates that because, essentially, I felt like the title represents two sides to the same coin, in the sense that ‘Deadpan’ is associated with comedy, wittiness, wordplay and sarcasm. I’ve always had that approach of employing wordplay, specifically as a way to shield and protect my empathy and my compassion, or my ‘Love’ for instance. So yeah, ‘Deadpan Love’.” And this duality is not only reflected in his music, with Clay remarking that “it’s my overall approach to life. I have these two sides to my personality, and I wanted to highlight that”.

Words by Oliver-James Campbell

“It’s really an album about relationships, misguidance and kind of like learning. Not always learning, but experiencing mistakes and experiencing things that don’t always necessarily do the best for you, but they mean a lot and reflect what we all go through”. It’s evident that relationships are a key theme explored in the project, especially so on the single, Wildfire, with lyrics like; “This love is so costly / It’s killing me softly”. “Wildfire explores the fact that people’s intentions sometimes get lost in translation,” says Clay. “Good intention is not always enough to prevent people’s emotions and insecurities from spiralling. Subtle signals or cues can unintentionally ignite emotions—like a brush fire”. Clay tells me that “the song is genuinely about people’s intentions, even if they’re good. Not always being enough to prevent someone else’s outburst or someone else’s kind of issue. It’s almost about it’s kind of like a coded thing, where if that person is really into the situation, or they are just kind of faking it, and it’s like an insatiable urge to like, to reckon with that”. Recalling the newly-released music video, Clay says that he also wanted to explore the phrase - “it’s what you want, not just what you do”. “Being an artist, you have to reinvent yourself all the time. So in one sequence, I have this different makeup on, and I’m trying to match whatever is in front of me. I’m on the TV and nobody’s really paying attention, they’re just zoning out, playing their games and doing their thing. I wanted to think about how artists have to reinvent themselves, and then people feel like they see them, but they don’t actually see them. Madonna has done her thing forever, she’s invented herself all the time. They don’t really know who she is”.

Speaking more broadly on the album as a whole, Clay states that it was originally going to be called ‘Karma and Friends’, and “that actually ended up being one of the songs on the album, because I always felt that the relationships you have are the most important thing you have. We’re only as good as our relationships and the people we surround ourselves with”.

Turning to some of the other tracks on the album, I mentioned that ‘Spinner’ was a particular favourite of mine, with a beautiful opening piano melody, and lyrics that best demonstrate why Clay was and still is championed as a world-class songwriter from some of the world’s leading voices. The likes of Taylor Swift and John Legend have employed his services, and it’s not hard to see why on the likes of ‘Spinner’. Also among the track list are the likes of ‘Artificial Irrelevance’, which explores how technology and mobile phones can become an emotional barrier between each other, and ‘Bump Stock’, which explores the growing problem of gun violence.

Referring to a tweet of his, I asked which his favourite track from the album was, as he himself wrote that the “best song is not the single”. “Spinner or Box of Bones. I really liked that song. I think it was probably one of my more creative songs that I’ve put on the album because of the really interesting vocal production. I continually bring dynamics in and out based on stopping and starting, then the slight melody changes”.

Photo Credit: Leeor Wild

“When I was growing up, people always thought I was really nice. You know, I’m just like, some nice guy. I never publicised that I sang, I never publicised anything I did. But I like to try new things”
-Cautious Clay

I was curious to know of Clay’s outlook on life, as it appeared to me that he was someone who was quite philosophical and self-examining. “I took some philosophy in college, you know like Immanuel Kant, Nietzsche etc. and I do take a lot from that. I do things the way I like to do things. I form relationships that are meaningful. It’s really risky to be honest, and if you’re putting yourself out there in a meaningful way, it’s a tough thing to do”. The topic of authentic individuality, along with relationships, came up a lot in our discussion, with Clay explaining that while it is hard to be constantly presenting yourself to the world, detailing some of the things you just don’t expect when being a public artist, he himself does so the only way he knows how: by being unapologetically himself. “When I was growing up, people always thought I was really nice. You know, I’m just like, some nice guy. I never publicised that I sang, I never publicised anything I did. But I like to try new things”. He also attributes his curious personality to being from the Midwest; “I’m not super fake, like the West Coast. You know, we’re super sharp”. He even highlights the track, ‘Strange Love’ which deals with his personality more deeply, where he remarks -”I’m just trying to stay curious, because if I’m not curious, I’m insecure”. Reflecting on this, Clay has tapped into a feeling I myself relate to, which left me wondering just how common a feeling this is?

Moving on from the album (which we found ourselves lost in the discussion of, so much so that Clay’s laptop battery was nearly dead, resulting in him heading to his next door neighbour to ask to borrow a laptop charger), Clay opened up about his creation process, and detailed the answers to some more technical questions that I had been waiting to ask him. “It’s a discussion with myself - I have a lot of thoughts about what would fit on a song. I always use this analogy, but take cooking. You know when a meal is done right? Not always because every ingredient is in, but because you’ve done it a million times. And so it’s a discussion with yourself. That’s the sort of thing that I’ve developed over the last four years as a writer, because I used to just be a producer, and I feel like that skill set can only take me so far. But as a writer, understanding song structure has allowed me to understand those types of nuances. This song doesn’t just need drums, he just needs a piano, and that’s it”. Although now an accomplished artist in his own right, Clay began as an engineer and producer.

“Being an artist, you have to reinvent yourself all the time. So in one sequence, I have this different makeup on, and I’m trying to match whatever is in front of me. I’m on the TV and nobody’s really paying attention, they’re just zoning out, playing their games and doing their thing. I wanted to think about how artists have to reinvent themselves, and then people feel like they see them, but they don’t actually see them.”
-Cautious Clay

Even as a child, Clay’s parents exposed him to a variety of musical influencers, and this eclectic taste manifested itself in the form of CD’s of Creed, The Isley Brothers, and Lil Bow Wow. A taste Clay refers to as “a little bit of trash, a little bit of taste, and a little bit of being a child”. His individuality crept in through the flute - an instrument that Clay decided to learn after misidentifying it in Aladdin. Interestingly, his teacher, Greg Pattillo would later become one of YouTube’s first viral musical stars. This showed Clay how creative one can be with the instrument, and how you can use traditional instruments in a contemporary manner. “He instilled in me that there are no rules in music - it was super impressionable on me”.

As someone so established being outside of the booth, I wanted to know whether he prefers staying away from producing, mixing and writing his own songs, or whether his career as an artist is about exploring something that remained untapped for a number of years. “I feel like it depends on where my headspace is. I really do love getting in the weeds of productions. But I haven’t really been doing that as much lately. And so I guess I’d have to say that getting a song done is fun because the production is easy for me. But like when you know you’ve found the right sound, you know, you found the right sound, you know? It’s actually funny, like, yeah, people are always,“oh being a producer”, and they feel it’s not easy, but it is. I feel like it’s harder to write incredibly good songs like, you know, as opposed to just pulling a beat together.” With regards to the state of songwriting right now, Clay feels that there is a disconnect between the songwriting profession and other artists. “Some artists just don’t need songwriters - some artists really do need songwriters”.

We talked more about the comments left on his social media pages, such as one which pointed out Clay’s multiple Scrabble set’s in the background of his home. I pondered as to whether this was the secret behind his otherworldly lyricism. He laughs.. “I wish I could say that. But yeah, no, it’s really just fun. Like, I like games a lot in general. I’ve always loved words. And my mom is a lawyer so she would just say words like ‘scrupulously’ and ‘enigmatic’.” Oddly, he also proclaims to be an audio-learner, as opposed to a visual learner like the religious-reader I’d assumed him to be. This lends itself to the creation of his songs, in which he says that he creates music with a feeling in mind. He experiences such a feeling, and works to create something that manifests that feeling. Nowhere is this more clear than on ‘Wildfire’. Which is ultimately about a very specific kind of feeling, and was so clearly born from Clay trying to create something with the feeling as a reference.

Photo Credit: Leeor Wild

Speaking of creating cinematic music, I used the time to ask Clay about his recurring role on HBO Max’s Godfather of Harlem with Forest Whittaker. “I’d love to do more of that. I think I’d like to have more involvement in TV and film and writing and scoring as well. Just because, especially in the context of like jazz and whatnot, I think it’s a passion of mine”. Then lastly, began to wonder about the name, obviously a reference to Muhammad Ali, or Cassius Clay. A few days prior to the interview, it had been the 56th anniversary of the infamous photo of his first round defeat of Sonny Liston.“I think his confidence was always not my confidence. But I think of him as a spirit animal. I’ve always been very particular about my music, and I want my music to have certain elements, whether that be production elements or writing etc. Music has always been my biggest outlet for expressing my emotions and I’m not always best at doing that in my personal relationships”.

From this I inferred that adopting the moniker of such a confident and charismatic individual, has emboldened Clay, and allowed him to express himself more assertively, in the way that music best allows him to do so.

Listen to ‘Deadpan Love’ below!