Featured GGT: Inner State 81 and Vante Alonzo

Inner State 81, a Pennsylvania native and formerly based in Atlanta, is a producer and artist. Within the last year, Inner State 81 has taken a leap of faith by moving to Los Angeles, using the government-issued stimulus check to fund his travels. The most recent chapter to this incredible story has him teaming up with his longtime friend, vocalist, and artist Vante Alonzo, forming quite the complementary duo. They met a few years ago by chance and haven’t stopped working together since. Their new collaborative project, “COMPOSITION”, feels like a journal – full of different ideas, deep expression and multiple flavors. It feels like a constant stream of ideas coming straight out of a notebook you might have had in middle or high school, full of dramatics and deep emotions that came in those early years. Coincidentally, this whole project came straight from Vante’s composition book.

I sat down on a call with both artists to discuss their new full length LP “COMPOSITION” and what to expect from them moving forward. It has been a long time coming, but only the beginning for these two.

For those who don’t know Inner State 81 and Vante Alonzo, who are y'all what do you do?

Inner State 81: What’s up, everybody! My name is Inner State 81 and this is my guy, Vante Alonzo. We make music together. We make music videos. The reason I’m saying this is because I just met [Kalid’s] crew. But we have a similar type of crew in Atlanta, now kinda out in L.A, and we all collaborate with each other. It’s like an in-house thing, you know. Our other friend is the engineer and our other best friend animates. He’s actually in Fort Worth; Son Boro, Scotty Folsom, Shoutout Yung Wacho – he does everything. He did the guitar on our track “VILLAIN” and he animated a music video that we’re going to release for “SNAKES IN THE GARDEN”. It’s similar vibes to the stay pretty gang.

Kalid: Since yall are a group, how did y'all meet each other, specifically, y'all two and everyone else?

Vante Alonzo: I met 81 through my friend Bella (Behwah). I've been friends with her since I was in middle school through the internet. Randomly, one day she was in Atlanta, she was like, “Yo, come to the studio session with me.” And I was like, “Okay fine.” I just came and it was with 81. Ever since then it just clicked.

Inner State 81: That had to have been September 2019. So I met Bella literally through tinder. I was living on my friends couch in South Carolina after I dropped out and it was before I could move into the spot I was moving into in Atlanta. We just kept in touch on some artist sh*t. Then she hit me up and was like, “I want to put something together, get out of my comfort zone. Is this anything you can do?” Because by stroke of luck through a Facebook housing group, I ended up moving in with the rosegoldltd boys, Scotty (Son Boro) he turned one of the rooms in the house into a whole studio setup. At that point he was finishing up his last semester at Auburn, so he wasn’t even there, but he left it there for everyone to use. That changed my life. I used that setup before I even knew him. He let me use that studio to record people, so Behwah and Vante came over – I didn't even know Vante was coming. I'm so glad that they did, when you're in the presence of a crazy songwriter you just know it. Vante was just pulling out these composition books and pulling out a bridge here and a line there – whatever. I remember just sitting there taking it all in like, “Wow, I just met a superstar.” Same thing with Bella, in two different ways. And it was so crazy; we were all sitting there in the room like, “We have nothing to lose. Let's just have fun putting together the ‘more than just a____’ EP”. We had more plans to do stuff with it, then COVID happened like a month after releasing it. After we made that I remember, it wasn't 100% spoken, but me and Vante knew we gotta do some type of project together. The two of us. We were both in the same type of time. No plan B. This is what we’re about and that's how we met.

Kalid: What was the process like making this collaborative project?

Inner State 81: Part of this project was us figuring out how to work together, as a duo. And then that duo became a trio with Scotty, you know, reasons we’ll get into later. This wouldn't have happened without him. I remember last summer Vante sent me the first thing that ended up being a demo for this project, the outro “EVERYTHING REPEATS”. As I was camping out to LA to move out here I remember thinking, “How did you record this?”. Because I knew he didn't have a full setup.

Vante Alonzo: Most of the songs on the album, I didn't write them recently, are old, old songs I wrote in high school or middle school. I'm 20 now so whenever Tucker (Inner State 81) would send me [beats] my brain would go like, “This goes over this,” etc. I didn’t really even have to write anything. It was just a matter of getting those beats and recording something on them that I already had. I did that on my iPhone 8 with the Apple headphones that come in the box.

Inner State 81: We used that to make the demos. We kept some of those adlibs. The next demo we had was “DROWN” and that was the first time we actually recorded it at a setup since I left Atlanta. This was right before Christmas. Vante went over to Scotty’s. [Scotty] just knows how to do everything on the computer and he had it live streaming through Discord, which isn’t crazy to do, but just the fact that he took the time to do that. So I was present in doing that. I remember thinking, “Damn, we all gotta be in the same place for a couple days.” So then mid-January I flew over to Atlanta and Vante and I stayed 7 days straight at Scotty's house, which was so generous of them to host us. Shoutout Scotty and Meghan! They were making sure we were fed and...you know.

Vante Alonzo: We recorded the whole album 7 days straight at Scotty’s house.

Inner State 81: Scotty has a 9-5 and he and I would take shifts. I know how to record sessions and all that stuff. so we would go back and forth. The crazy part is that Vante would stand in the booth watching TikToks! So headass *laughter*.

Kalid: Vante, you mentioned a lot of the songs came from composition books in middle school and highschool. Is that why it’s called “COMPOSITION”?

Vante Alonzo: It’s a double meaning. All of those songs come from my composition books in middle school and high school. The project as a whole – a lot of the themes are about heartbreak and how that changes a person, the composition of a person, so it all came together.

Inner State 81: Vante had these songs written and I know you were definitely manifesting them turning into a project. And I had all these beats. I was putting out music on my page that was just a fraction of the production that I do. It wasn’t an accurate reflection of the kind of beats I was trying to send out to people. Vante was one of the first people where I could send a couple different styles, things I never even dreamed about turning into full songs. He would hit me back with it and it really was just so awesome. I was just so grateful because I didn't think a lot of those beats would ever see the light of day.

Inner State 81: It’s kinda beautiful because the songs were written in this notebook and the beats were on my laptop hard drive, just waiting to find a home. And it came together like they were made for each other, when they were designed separately. That’s why I’ll always love this project, because that’s a beautiful thing.

Kalid: I saw you guys just released a video “PERFECT FOR ME”. Who came up with the idea?

Vante Alonzo: I just have a lot of ideas in my head. I was gonna go to school for film before I decided to go heavy with this. Tucker was like, “Yo, we need a video for this.” I was like, “Okay, here’s this idea,” and that was what came out! That’s the same for our video coming out next. (OUT NOW AT THE TIME OF THIS ARTICLE RELEASE)

Inner State 81: We have a video for “ANYWHERE USA” that ties together! I knew we needed to make a video, but it had to come from Vantes's imagination. Part of this project for me was helping Vantes's world come to life. Because that’s just how it came to be. It’s crazy – I’ll hit up Vante when we need an idea and he’ll hit me back up with a note with detailed description of visual stuff, really like a business plan for all the creative stuff. And that's one of the reasons why we were able to put this together because we were both serious about what we were doing and we actually followed through on everything.

Kalid: What’s next for Inner State 81 and Vante Alonzo?

Inner State 81: We have “LOCKDOWN xD” coming out July 8th! It’s something we’ve had for a minute. It feels right to put it out now. I was stuck at home last summer and for a couple different reasons related to COVID, I had to move out from my spot in Atlanta. My dad was an at risk person so I had to be isolated. I was looking out my bedroom window daydreaming of when I was a kid and thinking back of the fond memories at the local pool and they had the radio on. It would be all those Benny Blanco produced things, and Vante was able to put into words to juxtapose that with the feeling of being in lockdown, and you're able to listen to it right after without it being weird. That’s a tough thing to do, but I think Vante did it very well. It’s the first Inner State 81 primary artist release since 2019. I wouldn’t want to be kicking off this new era of my releases any other way. We knew the album was gonna marinate for a little too. We have so much on the way it would be a crime to hold onto it.