Sitting backstage at The Independent on San Francisco’s Divisadero Street on an icy September night, the Moreno Valley, California, musician, producer, rapper and singer, Asha Imuno, wears all black, two leather gloves, a shearling jacket, and sunglasses. After captivating the crowd on his second North American tour in one year, he decompresses with his team, reflecting on finally being back in his home state of California and concluding the journey of performing songs on stage around the country.
Earlier this year, he graced the same stage in April while opening for Berhana. In the five months since his first tour appearance, Asha’s impressive stage presence and performance ability had grown tremendously since his first San Francisco performance. At only 23 years old, he has already been in his musical career for ten years.
“I started as a composition nerd,” he said in a van driving to Canada during our initial interview. “It evolved from me going to a film school to following up with jazz and then following up with R&B.”
Asha is preparing to enter a new era of his music with the release of his forthcoming project, BLKSUGAR, which takes listeners out of the introspective sounds he presented on PINS & NEEDLES and into the future. BLKSUGAR will allow listeners who relate to Asha to have a chance to be seen in the concepts. From the visuals to the music and, ultimately, the future live performances, everything in his era of Asha will be accessible to everyone, but more importantly, to his listeners who look like him.
“I just want to capture Black life,” he said, thinking about what’s next.
When listening to Asha Imuno’s music, one senses a sonic amalgamation of all the things and people in his past and present life. As the youngest of three children, Asha got the best of both worlds from his older brother and sister. In his words, the sound waves in his home and behind the bedroom doors were filled with polarity.
From his brother, he heard the rapping styles that shaped generations of Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, and even N.E.R.D., which is how his older sister found her way onto the internet. She exposed him to more diverse music from all genres. “She’s probably the biggest influence on music in my life,” he recalls.
As his siblings were showing him the music that soundtracked their lives at the time, the rest of his family members were doing the same. While riding around with his dad, he began to understand the building blocks of hip hop.
Through the car speakers, his dad played everything from the golden era of hip hop to the music of Brazil, and everything flowed from the car speakers while he and his dad drove around. During this time, Asha learned about hip hop’s foundational building blocks, like the music from East Coast classics like Mobb Deep and A Tribe Called Quest, to the music of California that his son would eventually make. His dad was showing his son everything that filled his heyday with color. Asha was doing the same, showing his dad the music of today as they battled on the aux cord and showing his son what was popular today.
When he was with his mom, his ears were filled with everything R&B, from SWV to Brian McKnight. Throughout his music, the traditional components help make his production style and writing unique and comfortable for listeners. Still, there are also some lesser-heard surprises rarely found in music today, like gospel.
“The gospel aspect of my upbringing is such a big part, too,” he said. “My grandmother was a pianist, and she played at all the churches in San Diego. That’s how I learned piano.”
When gaining all of this inspiration from the different sources in his life, as the youngest sibling, he needed to make his way to music discovery independently. Since moving on from the foundational blocks of his early days of listening to music, he began listening to electronic music and jazz, aiding in his transformation as an artist.
When listening to his 2024 album PINS & NEEDLES, all of his influences become apparent, creating a new and immersive world for listeners. “I want to hear those chords that remind me of my family and choir rehearsal, but with rhythms that have some tempo to it,” he said. “And like just melting all these worlds together that for a lot of people felt were separate, that for me feel the same.” While making this project, it was integral for him to put all of his different influences in one central place for listeners.
As a kid, he would sneak into his brother’s room, read the booklet from N.E.R.D’s In Search Of, and store it in his musical memory bank. When going into his creative process, he rifles through that mental storage unit full of music to create something new. Asha did this within his sound by taking a note from the Virgil Abloh handbook of making one small change to an existing idea.
With his debut mixtape, Good News, in 2020, he dove into sounds that took listeners through Asha’s life and how he found himself transitioning into this new life phase. When pressing play, you are immersed in the world of sounds that will make anyone want to dance, but as you listen to the lyrics, he is baring his soul. From the opening song, “SIX PACK,” where he goes into detail about becoming more of a confident person, to “ANGLES,” where he mentions his work ethic and the impact that seeing people working hard will have on the next generation of young creative people.
With 2024 eyes and ears, when he gives Good News an updated listen, he hears his state of self-reflection, then with a sense of clarity. “When I listened to Good News sometime after it was released, I was like, ‘Yo, when I come back and do this again, I want to have something to say,’” he said.
After 19 years of living life and four years of working as an artist, he felt as if returning to releasing PINS & NEEDLES in 2024 was the proper time. Good News was Asha’s introduction to the world as an artist and musician. When he entered the creation process for his debut album, PINS & NEEDLES, he finally had something to say. In the four years since that initial release, he has reflected on having lived many lives, not only in the transition from adolescence into adulthood but also through his music. Today, on his musical journey, his music is ever-changing, and he believes he has gathered a rich array of experiences to incorporate into his songs.
During this time, he also moved from Moreno Valley to Los Angeles, not that far in distance, but compared to the desert-like city only an hour away, Los Angeles is a different world. This move helped him broaden his network of collaborators and the creative community around him. “I think that took me to a place where I was doing all the things that I wanted to do with this project,” he said while driving between the big rigs.
On PINS & NEEDLES, Asha collaborated with a wide range of artists who brought their perspectives to this already colorful album. Artists like bLAck pARty and WESTSIDE BOOGIE appeared on the album and created music that helped guide a generation of people like Asha through their adolescence. People like Wakai, Tempest and Rizz Capolatti made appearances to be what the more seasoned artists were for a new generation.
“It was a lot of me finding collaborators that I can trust on a human level,” he said. “So that we’re equally part of the music.”
When listening to songs like “PHONICS,’ which features both WESTSIDE BOOGIE and Tempest, the groovy beats make any listener’s ears perk up with interest and captivate the crowds at shows. The lyrics from the three of them make a perfect trio of vulnerability of the early stages in a relationship and a medley of all their respective genres, creating a song that encapsulates the different sounds of such a vast state like California.
“For us to do this song with all three of us, and on some West Coast shit is so fly,” Asha said. “For a while, there’s only a couple of flavors of Cali that get to travel through the airways like that.”
California has a diverse artist community, including generations of residents and newcomers trying to make a name for themselves. On PINS & NEEDLES, Asha brings both of those worlds together. He has made music with people who helped create the soundtrack to his life.
Asha’s music is an amalgamation of his life experiences and influences. Outside of collaborating with people whose music helped him get through life, he constantly dives into his mental Rolodex of music to find new ways to make his own music. In his song “DO u WANNA BE HIGH,” he created a rhythm that took him back to the Brazilian music he heard his father playing, but at the same time, the song channels the funkiness of the 1970s while incorporating the rap music of today. “I’m trying to move through these worlds,” he said. “It’s like I create mind maps from the stuff I was listening to as a kid.”
Much like going from childhood to adulthood, Asha’s music has served as a way for him to go from a boy to a man. When going through his discography, on one side, he reflects on the songs that sound like a shadow of himself. But on the other side of the same coin, he can feel the happiness in the early days of his music experimentation.
“When you look at old versions of yourself over time, I think there’s a thing where you’re so raw,” he said. “At one phase, you’re so raw that you enjoy everything. You’re a sponge. And then you kind of start to figure out a little bit who you want to be and what you’re doing.”
After two nationwide tours, Asha has finally gained a semblance of mastery of his craft, especially with his vocals. Through both of his mixtapes and on PINS & NEEDLES, he seamlessly blends the lines between his singing and rapping, doing both like an expert.
While performing all of the vocal work on both mixtapes, Ahsa also created all the beats. At the start of his production journey, he was inspired by producers like Knwledge, J. Dilla, and Q-Tip. Still, when making PINS & NEEDLES, he wanted to ensure that people would be listening to music they could enjoy, so he stepped away from the traditional hip-hop sounds he had always loved.
As he continues to grow as a producer, he often returns to the roots that helped him blossom into the artist he is today. On stage, back in September, he showed the creation process to a very active crowd. Engaging the crowd, he taps on his SP 404 sampler to recreate the beat for the new crowd of people to see his creation process for the first time.
“It’s not like a passive show. It’s very active,” Asha said. “I would say BLK ODYSSY’s crowd, I would say, is a little bit more rowdy, but they lock in when it’s time to lock in. So we’re testing moments, especially as we’re starting to do more live production on stage, we’re getting to test more moments where we can have an exchange with the crowd.”
Communicating with a new crowd is a skill that takes time for any performer. The smell of weed wafted through the air as Asha took the stage, and while on stage, Asha immediately charmed the minds, ears and eyes of everyone in the crowd.
Going from East to West, performing songs that chronicle his very California life, was not an easy feat. Music from California is often seen as hyper-regional music that is only made for the people who live in the Pacific Standard Time zone, but with nationwide tours, the music needs the ability to reach the masses. While being an opening act on both of his 2024 tours with Berhana and BLK ODYSSY, Asha showed how his music can translate to new audiences in new cities.
“Meeting crowds in new markets has been a trip, feeling like songs that hit more in certain places, less in others,” Asha said. “It feels like there’s something for everybody type thing.”
While Asha went on tour for the first time last year with the soulful R&B singer Berhana, he geared his setlist towards the grown and sexy crowd full of couples and women on a girls’ night out. Still, the crowd on those nights came out as fans of this new artist they heard for the first time.
With each upbeat song performed, Asha maintained his connection to the crowd by returning to show the more melodic side of his music. Either way, the crowd that night couldn’t take their eyes off him. The BLK ODYSSY crowd was there that night to experience louder music at the intersection of rock, R&B, and alternative music. Asha’s blend of rap and R&B made perfect sense for them.
On stage, Asha is accompanied by his long-time friend, Noah, and their chemistry is unmatched. They communicate with no words, just visual cues and music. On their second tour together, the stage performance begins to be muscle memory. “We had a little bit more of a rapport on stage,” Asha said, pointing over to Noah, sitting on the black leather couches in the green room. The exchange feels a little bit more genuine.”
Asha and Noah’s connection was the best introduction to the 28 cities that met them on both tours. Each show was a chance for them to experiment with changing the setlist every night to better reflect the city they were in while still representing where they are from.
This night in San Francisco was his second-to-last show on tour with BLK ODYSSY, and Asha was so excited to be back in California. It is exciting to perform songs that directly identify with the place they come from and have the crowd in their home state react to all of the references, even if they hear his music for the first time.
“I love the idea of people who have never heard our music before, who appreciate music under a similar umbrella,” Asha said. “Them finding us and getting to have that, ‘Oh okay, I just found you and I care now,’ moment.”
On the road, they are exposed to new experiences, including late nights. From the bus to soundcheck, the performance, the hotel, and finally back on the bus, touring is a never-ending cycle of what people dream of. But the reality of touring is a hectic months-long journey around the country, hoping people in all of these new places enjoy the work you made with all your blood, sweat, and tears.
Even with all the stressful parts of touring, there needs to be a time of peace within all the chaos. While Noah is on stage working the crowd and preparing them for the main act, Asha is backstage going through his pre-show ritual. In his performance practice, he recently cut the tea out and only drank hot water when available. Every night, he calls his mother for the mandatory pep talk that only moms can provide. He gets his body ready to run around on stage to entertain the crowd of new and seasoned fans.
Getting on stage, Asha enters his final form. A performer, he makes the crowd believe, not only through the music but through his actions. The music does its job by making people listen, while he goes from side to side, making the onlookers join in on the party he’s creating for the crowds. He connects with them in his post-performance ritual, building connections with his well-versed fans and possibly new ones.
“You could strive to be perfect,” he said. “Or you could focus on… just locking eyes with people, touching people’s hands or interacting with people at the show. Having an actual disarming human interaction… that, when it happens on stage, I’m trying to make something that they remember.”
Asha recounts the show experience in Detroit, where the show was fun for the watchers, the fans and even himself. There was a fan in the crowd rapping every song, word for word, as if they wrote the album. Asha brought them on stage, thinking that energy would translate on stage. When they got up on stage, they started freestyling, creating a new bond and experience between Asha and the Detroit crowd.
Tonight in San Francisco, his sunglasses shield him from the lights, the possible looks of unsure onlookers and the daily mental gymnastics of being an opening act.
Meeting new people and immersing yourself is difficult when you are in a new city every day, but it is essential to learn the lay of the land to change the people who’ve never heard of you from skeptics into believers. Each night, the skeptics in the crowd become fans once they hear Asha perform songs that channel his influences, like “Did I Call at a Bad Time?”, a song that channels the melodic, singsongy ways of an artist like Smino.
Each night on this tour, Asha is giving his all on stage, connecting with the fans and showcasing his different influences in a distinctly Asha way. From Earth, Wind, and Fire to Young Thug and Kendrick Lamar, Asha takes bits and pieces of each artist and mashes them up into one being and shows the world his music in that way.
“People like Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind and Fire is what I keep listening to, so we have to think about the chords and choruses and stuff like that,” Asha said. “There are a lot of alternative music influences in how I write my chords. All of my drums come from rhythms that have some kind of funk to them, even if I’m using trap sounds.”
When it comes to Asha’s forthcoming music, those same influences still make themselves apparent, but in new ways. Entering the BLKSUGAR era, Asha is stepping into his new sound with a new vision. Coming off his second album, PINS & NEEDLES, he is coming out of a state of self-discovery. His music reflects that now that he has found this new version of himself.
With the release of his forthcoming 2024 single “eXCiTING,” he described it as the most fun. “It’s like a party thing, and we’re having a good time, celebrating,” he said, fighting against the bass of BLK ODYSSY on stage. “I’m just super confident, there’s no moment to catch your breath, but a lot of the other songs create the dynamics [of the music.] I’m trying to help people think in a way that we haven’t got to do before, when I’m trying to tell this story in a specific way.”
Currently, Asha is in his rollout, preparing for the release of BLKSUGAR. He is three singles deep, with “eXCiTING,” “W.W.A,” and “eWay,” all of which transport listeners from the modern life of PINS & NEEDLES and into the future of what is in Asha’s mind.
His new music lives within Afrofuturism’s spirit, which becomes apparent in all parts. From the music and the cover art of the singles to how the music is received, Asha wants listeners to take the music for its pure essence, both topically and sonically. While he is still trying to include parts of himself and a message in his music, he is inserting it in a way that is like a Trojan horse, fun songs with a deeper meaning and feeling.
“We flash concepts that feel a little bit more forward-thinking,” he said. With his newfound confidence, he began to explore life beyond the messages in his music. With each new album he releases, the intent behind his music remains the same.
BLKSUGAR is coming sometime this year, and Asha is taking his new view on life with him. After this interview, he left the Bay and headed to Los Angeles for his homecoming show. After two tours and creating his second album, Asha is more comfortable with his career and where it will go.
“It’s really been a blessing,” he said. “I can feel how our feet have grown into the shoes we had to fill, and it makes me more excited for my headlining tour that’s coming up, and the events we’re planning, especially with new music. We get to have a new perspective on the old music as we get to take them on the road. So, that’s coming.”
