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Featured Music
Oct
15
Ever since we featured Jessica Tonder’s The Bee featuring Proton on Your New Favorite Mixtape we have been receiving a lot of emails asking for us to feature more of her. Well, I finally got a chance to catch up with the 22 year old vocalist to ask her a few questions about her influences and her new up and coming project The Robot & The Little Girl with producer Derrick Drop Braxton.
Zack Lee: What inspired you to sing growing up?
Jessica Tonder: I started singing when I was conceived basically. My mom would always sing around the house….and my dad would play Coltrane and Ella records. So I just knew that’s what I was supposed to do for the rest of my life. You know, as an artist you experiment with different things and grow into what you do. It’s definitely a process.
ZL: What albums are you currently listening to right now?
JT: The Beatles - Revolver, Sigur Ros - Takk, Outkast - The Love Below, Lewis Taylor - Lewis II and Portishead - Third. I definitely have been listening to what I always have been listening to like Coltrane and Ella though.
ZL: What is your writing style? Do you write from life experiences?
JT: A lot of the time I do, sometimes I try writing outside myself. Just picking up things and experiences from people I know or people I meet coincidentally.
ZL: Like, The Bee. What inspired that?
JT: The Bee was written with my producer Drop. It’s the whole concept of “don’t put me in a box”. Basically, people allow themselves to compromise in situations because they are afraid of setting themselves apart from the norm. That’s the whole point with the EP we are putting out. The Robot & The Little Girl is a concept EP. It’s basically my producer and I wanting to free the world from it’s bubble and showing them that we are doing it, hoping they’ll use us as a portal to do the same.
ZL: Speaking of The Robot & The Little Girl, can you explain a little about the concept or is it top secret? Because the artwork is really intriguing.
JT: We’ll, that’s all I can really say about it as of right now. But the story will be released!
ZL: How many songs deep are you guys for the project?
JT: Well, we wanna record 40 before we choose. We’ve recorded 20 so far. We want them to be the right ones and have them be cohesive and make sense together like a story line.
ZL: How did you meet Drop?
JT: I met him through an engineer I was working with in New Jersey before I graduated from Berklee School Of Music in Boston.
ZL: Nice, how was the Berklee experience?
JT: It’s a great school! I learned a lot from just being in that environment. You meet a lot of people in your classes and just around school that end up being an inspiration. There was so much talent, it was really motivating but at the same time you really had to have a strong sense of confidence and make sure you weren’t swayed into doing things so technically all the time. Because in your classes you are taught guidelines but you are only supposed to use them as tools and make sure you only use them when you need them. Not to run your life or your music, and that was the hard part.
ZL: Well, it definitely sounds like you know how to use the tools. When are you guys trying to put out The Robot & The Little Girl?
JT: In the next couple of months. Just digitally…ITunes, Rhapsody, Amazon, strictly indie for this one. We’re not really thinking about a major as of yet. We’re just trying to make the album as great as it can be. We just want to have something circulating and put out this concept EP that we’ve been working on since we basically met.
ZL: Can we expect to see a video for The Robot & The Little Girl project? Possibly an animated cartoon??
JT: Ahhhhh! You’ll find out soon! 
AUDIO
Jessica Tonder - Soldier (CLICK TO LISTEN)
Jessica Tonder - Art Of War (CLICK TO LISTEN)
To hear more from Jessica Tonder check out her MySpace Page!
Exactly.
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3 Responses to “20/20: Jessica Tonder Interview: The Robot & The Little Girl”
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An interview! Finally! More more more!
[...] looks to THE EXACTLY for the dope read. <–Late Pass 2 [...]
We need more jessica! she needs to release her music a.s.a.p