First of all, the title The Syndicate was thought of by my mother. A syndicate is a group of individuals or organizations combined to promote some common interest. I throw ideas off of her and she will give me feedback.
She is the reason I am so deep into hip-hop. I got into her CD collection when I was like 7 or 8 years old and found the soundtrack to Peter Spirer’s 1997 documentary film Rhyme & Reason. From that point on I just loved hip-hop then I ended up learning the cello, that’s another story.
The making of The Syndicate started in early November 2019 and was fully completed in the middle of January 2020. My inspiration came Dreamville’s latest album Revenge of the Dreamers 3 and the work DJ Khaled had done since I could remember him producing the song “We Takin’ Over” about 12 years ago. So I decided to use the depot of artists I accumulated over the five years I lived in Virginia.
To create The Syndicate, I had to create an objective of what the album stood for and promoted. My goal in life is to create a platform for independent artists to get the recognition they deserve. I took that passion and then wanted to bring artists together that have never worked with each other or will complement each other on a record. This started when I drop my song Pew Pew featuring Kuatro Kash and Bully. That was for fun, then I heard about LISTENtoSIN getting one of his songs remixed and I wanted to do that to my song. After that, I created the 16-bar open verse and I put the word out about anyone wanting to be on the remix. The remix now has Acevswill, Israel Dope, Kuatro Kash, Bully, Lil 6, Shawn Stark, and OhCartier.
The Syndicate has 12 songs on it and of those 12 I was able to facilitate two of the songs personally, like in the studio and create the idea behind the song. One song is an R&B song called Ain’t A Thing by JessArose and Nasá, produced by Cameron Warren. Ain’t A Thing was the first R&B song I worked on and it was out of my comfort zone because I am not a fan of R&B music, but it wasn’t til met Nasá and her EP made me like R&B. The song other is a rap called Life Like. The artist on the song is Dave King, Camp Cee, and me, but I went under my old rap name Kidish Gamdino, with production by TheBeachBoyy. The other songs were done in the time and space of the other artists on the project.
I learned a lot during the process of making The Syndicate, especially since it was finished in about 3.5 months. The next syndicate album will be on all platforms in 2021 and even more artists that weren’t on the first Syndicate. Listen to the album exclusively on Audiomack. – Dom Savant
