words and photos by Sean Bendon

Watch the interview above or read it and check out the photos below.

I’m gonna start this off with a quote from one of your songs “No matter how tall it is, I’m dropping in”

Bruh, true. Doesn’t matter how tall it is. Did you just listen to that? Wow, you’re paying attention. That’s for any skatepark, any ramp, life, whatever. Fuck it, just drop in, you know what it is! It’s also just a part of not being scared. I love you Sean, I’m glad you listened to that shit. No matter how tall it is you should drop in. You’ll get to flat eventually.

I saw you recently put out some music online, how has stepping into that world been? Can you draw any similarities between making music and skating?

I feel like one always supplements the other for me. If I’m tired from skating, I wanna go make tracks. I’ve been making tracks forever. Then I finally plugged in the mic and started singing into it. With the autotune it was freeing, and I just got super into it. It’s like when I first got into skating, now there’s a tiny pressure to film, do this, that, and the other, but no one’s listening to my music. Besides you, shoutout! So it’s like I can do, say, make it sound however, it’s really freeing. It’s like that OG skate feel. There’s no pressure for me. I’ll put out a track and it’ll get 13 views and I’m like, sick I’ll put out another.

It changes your motivation, knowing no one is paying attention gives you freedom to do more.

There’s the freedom part of it, but also just like in both instances, I’m still doing the shit I wanna do on the board. What I’m skating is how I wanna be skating but after the fun part of finding the spot and filming, then you think about people perceiving it. But with music, I don’t think about people perceiving it too much cause there are less eyes on it. With the autotune it’s hella freeing, and it’s a little bit less me. It’s one hundred percent me but since there’s some type of veil of effects, delays, autotune – all that type of shit, it’s not being one hundred percent perceived as me so it’s a little easier to throw it out there. I don’t feel comfortable putting just any skate clip in a part, but just about any track I make, I’ll post it. With music, I like seeing it as a catalog.

I know you were jamming a bit with Genny, have you taken any influence from him? I see some similarities in your music.

The shit that you’re into, you’ll attract. I was listening to a lot of Genny and 454 before I was even making the type of music I am now or even playing music with Genny. First seeing him with the autotuner and him keying it was dope. I love seeing how he interacts with his own music versus when he’s in a group. It’s the same as skating, you see homies that are better than you at doing something or have more developed ideas and then you’re inspired to find what you want to develop. But for sure Genny on the production side. I love how he chops up samples.

How was growing up in Midland, Texas? Did it shape your approach to skating?

It had to, even if I didn’t want it to. West Texas is alright, the people there are good. It’s such a bubble. Four hours from Dallas, and five hours from Austin. It was only founded because there was oil there, so you’re only gonna be there if you work in the oil field and if you have any other job it’s totally supplemented by the oil field. My brother has an oil job, my dad does managerial shit in the oil industry. It’s all oil barons basically. In terms of skating there, the scene was kinda lit in the early 2000s. There’s this guy named (Kris) Stansbery and he was around for that little golden era of Midland skating, but then right when I got into skating it died and no one was going to the park. For years and years, it was just me and a couple of homies, trying to go downtown, trying to find spots so bad. My first existential crisis was in 8th grade like “We ain’t got no cars, we don’t support ourselves, we got no spots, all we can do is skate the park.” I love the homies that I grew up skating with though. Shoutout Kris, Nathan, and Blake. All of them ended up being music related friendships later on. If I didn’t skate I don’t know what in the world I would have been doing in West Texas.

So how did you get out of West Texas?

From Midland I moved to the Dallas area, technically Arlington, and I was going to school there. My mom wanted me to do school to get out of Midland. I was looking at Austin but I didn’t really like the vibe there, maybe cause I was judgmental and younger. I eventually moved to Austin a year later. That’s when I met Nico, Pankus, Travis, and Paul Kim, shout out Paul Kim. He rented me a dope little living room set up. I got to skate so much with Nico and all of them and I got hyped on street skating and filming cause I’d never really filmed.

Best skater from West Texas?

Oh good question. West Texas is so wide… I think Darrell Stanton is from Lubbock, I think that’s considered West Texas. I did a presentation in 7th grade on that guy. A slideshow with some dope photos of him. But that’s off the cuff, maybe from Midland the homie Stansberry I was talking about.

I noticed you and the Texas homies are always rocking the massive LATENITESTARS sticker on your boards, is that a crew? A brand?

You know what it is mane. It’s crew. I like to look at it like the Screwed Up Click. It’s not just rappers, it’s all these artists that came together and no one knows exactly what the roster is. But how it originally started was Trung doing his graff thing. He got a dope graff crew then he started doing his skate thing. It’s Zak (Anders) too, a lot of the art and the mind behind it. It morphed itself and then they made a board sticker that’s hilarious. It looks so dope, I want it on every board. I don’t think anyone wants to really define it cause it gets annoying and people ask when boards are coming and then it’s a board brand.

In this day and age it feels like every crew gets branded or packaged.

I feel like naturally we’re getting packaged, but we shine brighter together bro. We skate together, we all hang out, we all work, we’re doing it cause we fuck with it even when it’s hard. Honestly just a good group of dudes, I can talk to them about shit, real dogs. They’re all a little older than me too. It’s always been good with those homies. I’m so glad I got to morph into the crew.

You just got back from an ASICS trip with all those homies, how did that go?

The trip was epic. Basically, just them reaching out to shops. Saying what’s up, what the vibe of the brand is, trying to show their ethos, and all that. Got to meet Rob Sissi and Kaspar. It seems like they want everybody to be skating together and know each other. There was a day we went out skating as a huge crew and Mr. Chase (Walker) pulled up filming everybody all day like a beast, on the hottest day too. We definitely got some stuff in the works and right now we’re workin on a video that we want to be an Asics video, but it’s always gonna be a Latenitestars video, it’s always gonna be a Chase video. Seems like they’re down to let us do what we wanna do and we just wanna go out and keep skating and traveling.

Does traveling stress you out?

Dude I think it does, you’re like, “I gotta get what I can get while I’m here.” I might just like being home. So when I get out I can be ornery because I’m out of place. I’m trying to get better with it, I hope the dawgs see me trying to get better with it.

You’re working on yourself.

I’m trying. Trying and failing but trying. My shorty told me that’s progress. Shit gets better. I’m excited for the next trip and to put into practice what I’ve learned.

Do you have any upcoming goals or plans?

Be less hard on myself. That’s with life. With skating, it’s also to be less hard on myself because I’ll get so
mad and so angry because I’ll have such expectations that I set forth. Me and skating have been tugging
and pulling, ebbing and flowing, so that’s a part of it. In terms of actual clippage, trying to push myself and not let the fear take over, cause that shit’s real, and skating is scary sometimes. With music, I wanna put out some more projects. I wanna do a project that’s way more obvious hip hop and then do a project with no drums or samples. In general not being so hard on yourself is a big one. It can get dark, you gotta love yourself, all the cliche shit is kinda true.

Shoutouts?

Shout out to my moms, she’s been helping me a lot lately… And my whole life haha. Fuck it that’s it, shoutout my moms. I love my moms, I miss you.