Jaal Talks As It Stands, Lyricism and Independence in New…

Jaal will tell you that his latest EP, As It Stands, is less concerned with being conceptual and more a display of his penmanship. This holds true when you listen to the project. As Jaal flits across the seven tracks, his rapping is the most refined and clever it has ever been. The exemplar of this is “Uzi (Dialed In),” on which Jaal invokes the legacy of the legendary John Coltrane to reflect on his own journey. His storytelling has sharpened, too. On “Trust Issues,” over a jazz-laced beat, he gives a vivid account of him and his friends being mistakenly rushed at a train station by police, despite looking nothing like the suspects police were pursuing. On the EP’s closer, “Merci,” the second half of the song, which follows a beat switch, feels like a dreamy soliloquy that gracefully interweaves his past, present and future.

The Melbourne rapper says that he was having fun on As It Stands. Compared to You Only Die Once (YODO), the robust 14-track project he released in late 2023, making this feel less intense and more streamlined. Jaal has steadily released projects since 2016—nine to be exact—but YODO felt like a true demarcation point in his career as his longest and most polished project. Of that EP he says, “I went into that project knowing what I wanted to communicate: life is short, make the most of it—it’s an imperfect journey, but those imperfections are all part of the journey.”

In some ways, as bodies of work, As It Stands and YODO feel dialectical. On the latter, Jaal says he was more focused on “speaking from the heart,” but on the former the tone leans braggadocious. YODO’s credits boast a score of producers, mastering and mixing engineers, and feature artists; As It Stands’ list is significantly slimmer. If YODO was a cohesive and deeply conceptual work, As It Stands is thematically dizzying, and the conceptual thread is less tightly woven than on YODO. In Jaal’s words, the EP is loosely about “the duality of things, staying the same, being in the same place and with the same circle, but still evolving so much as a human.”

That theme is interlaced in the making of the record itself: As It Stands was kept, for the most part, close to home. The EP was co-produced by Jaal’s longtime friend and collaborator, OGK. C000kie, another longtime friend and collaborator, lends her vocals to “Stay In Your Bag.” The cover art and the EP’s trailer were shot in Melbourne’s south-east—where Jaal grew up—at Dandenong Plaza with his people. Indeed, part of the photoshoot for this story was shot at Yarraman Station, a place he picked because of its significance as a spot where he and his homies used to meet up. His longtime friends and stylists, Lahiru and Miyuru Fernando of TwoFold, did his styling for the shoot. From production to rollout—it’s all stayed local. The only real exception to this is the two features on the album from Austin-based rapper Mike Melinoe and London’s Lord Apex.

To celebrate and reflect on the release of his latest project, Jaal sat down with Complex Australia to talk about the making of As It Stands, how a night in Japan led to snagging a Lord Apex collab, sharpening his pen, and his decision to remain an independent artist.

How’s it going? How are you feeling about your latest project being out in the world? Tell me about As It Stands.

I’m feeling elated. I feel like my projects are always a snapshot of where I’m at mentally, physically and spiritually—I like to look at my music as time capsules—so I feel like this is just another one of those. My last project was heavily conceptual, but this is very different. There’s a really loose concept around this project: it’s kind of about the duality of things, staying the same, being in the same place and with the same circle, but still evolving so much as a human.

With that being said, going into this one I just wanted to have a lot of fun and not be limited to a specific or concept. It’s really just me having fun and getting loose with a bunch of different sounds, you know? I’m blessed to still be with a bunch of good people that I have around me and still do what I do.

On the relationships tip, your longtime friend and collaborator OGK exclusively did the production on this project, what was behind that decision?

Yeah this project was completely just me and him. I’ve always had a vision of just locking in with him and making something together and seeing how it comes out. We just gravitate towards each other. Even sonically, we just like a lot of the same shit, so I was like, you know what, for this next one, I’m gonna tick something off the music bucket list. I think what we came up with speaks to one, our brotherhood, but then also our synchronicity sonically, like the way we’re connected and inspire each other.

Can you tell me more about being in your production bag for this project?

I’ve always had a hand in the production side of things, but in terms of actually like making the beats, I’ve just picked it up along the way, and that’s thanks to OGK and working closely with him. I just kind of studied how he did things, and he gave me a couple of pointers and I just picked it up kinda naturally. On this project there’s seven songs, and he and I made the beat together on five of the songs, and two were fully produced by OGK. It’s just been hella fun.

Lord Apex is featured on “Bet That.” Tell me the story of how that came about? It’s a crazy story. I met him in Japan in 2023, it was super random, I met him at a gig. I recognised him. It was hella random, he was just like dancing to the music and stuff. Anyways, come the next day, I went to his show, and then when I was walking out he was at the front and he was pointing at me—he remembered me from the night before. And so yeah, we just chopped it up and I was super lit, and I was just like “Let me spit some shit to you,” and he was like “Alright, go then.” And then I was like “Oh, what, right here?” and he was like “Yeah, you said it.” And so I just started spitting to him. I still have the video, it’s pretty funny, I kinda fucked up. Anyways, that was that, and I told him that if he ever came to Melbourne, I would show him around. He came here to tour at the end of last year, and so we chopped it up again. Fast forward to this year, we made “Bet That” and I wanted a second verse and the beat. I just heard him on it in my head, so I just thought I’d shoot my shot. And then yeah he got back to me, and then we just made it happen.

You released You Only Die Once last year, which was a highly conceptual project. At your listening party, you described As It Stands as “less conceptual” and more just a project you were having fun with.

I’m curious to hear how you feel your music has evolved between the two projects, especially with As It Stands being more spontaneous in its creation.

With As It Stands, I honestly just really wanted to flex my pen on this one and make sure that people don’t forget that’s the cloth I’m cut from. That’s where my roots are, in my penmanship and my lyrical ability.

I’m always concerned with lyricism, but You Only Die Once was so concept-heavy. Which again, doesn’t mean I wasn’t concerned with lyricism, but not as much as on this project. On You Only Die Once, it was really coming from the heart, you know? I was speaking more of my emotions and letting them do the talking. Whereas on As It Stands, I just really wanted to dive back into lyricism and not have as dense storytelling. So yeah, between the two projects, I think my pen has definitely gotten sharper.

How did you go about sharpening your pen?

It was a lot of sitting down and reviewing my lines and thinking about how I could make things a bit more intricate. You definitely need to set the intention with it and be like “I’m going to take a little bit more time with it.” Because I think previously, when I’ve been in the studio, I’ve just wanted to get ideas out quick, and then I’d come back to them later and fix them up. I think “Trust Issues” is a good example of how my songwriting has grown because I’m telling a story from start to finish. Me and my two friends got arrested in Dandenong for no reason. It was mistaken identities, we looked nothing like the people they were looking for. Wrong place, wrong time. That was a traumatic experience. We got rushed, there were like three cars and seven officers. But yeah I tell that story vividly on “Trust Issues.”

Can you talk a bit about your decision to remain independent? You’ve been making music for close to 10 years now and would’ve had opportunities to sign.

I think for me it’s just it’s just being my own boss, like, you know. Not having to answer to anyone. And also just being able to do shows when I want, to release music when I want to, and having 100% creative freedom. I think in the long run it’ll pay off. And also I think we’re living in a day age where you actually don’t need a label. I think that’s very empowering, so people should really lean into that. I think obviously the biggest thing you get from a label is resources and the financial aspect. And obviously it’s harder for an independent artist, but who’s to say that you can’t go to the bank and fork out a loan to invest in marketing or invest in your next album. Being independent, it’s definitely a longer time, it takes more energy and finances. But if things work out for you, you’ll have the last laugh.

What do you hope the future holds? I just want to keep cementing everything that I’ve built—I just really hope for it to blossom even more. I just really hope that the vision that I have for myself really comes to life. I see my music reaching all corners of the globe.

Is there anything that I’ve kind of missed that you want me to know, people to know? Just anything else you really want to say? Love yourself, love your journey. Embrace who you are. I think artists here are starting to embrace their identity. We definitely need to do more of that if we want to be recognised more globally. I think I’ll leave it on this note: as humans, we possess an unfathomable amount of potential. So if you’re reading this, just know that anything you envision, you can actually manifest. So just keep going, keep cooking.