My name is AJ Walden and I make music. More specifically, I rap (and sometimes try to sing). I put out my first song when I was 24, which is over-the-hill by "starting a rap career" standards. I spent about 10 years rapping and writing off mic before that, so now I'm making up for lost time.
I love making music. It's therapeutic. It helps me express different sides of myself. It gives me the opportunity to turn a negative into a positive (or lemons into lemonade, as they say).
Music is awesome because it can change or amplify your mood. Have you ever gotten goosebumps listening to a song? It's rad as hell. My workouts are dependent on having a good hype playlist. We've all cried along to an emotional song to let it all out. Couples have love songs that they call "their song." Music means a lot more to us that we give it credit for, and that love for music pushes me to make it.
Lately I have been focused on expanding my craft through collaboration and self-production. Those might seem counterintuitive, but they feed off of each other. Collaboration has given me a chance to learn about different workflows and see more production at work. With that knowledge, I can get more out of my self-production endeavors. Then that knowledge will help me add more in future collaborations. So, with that diatribe out of the way, what have I actually been doing?
I recently collaborated with Yon L.I. on a full album, titled The Download, a 14-track project that is reminiscent of your favorite mixtapes growing up. That is available on all platforms.
Since the calendar turned over to 2024, I have focused a lot on self-production. I have two of those songs out and one set to launch on 03/15/2024. I also have started live-streaming these sessions for all to see!
I have two other full albums (one of which has its own section below this) and several singles/EPs. While most of it is rap-centric, I've covered a wide gamut of sub-genres. Whether you want to party, chill, workout, or wallow in your sadness, I've got something for every mood... because I think of ideas in a variety of moods. So, go peruse through my singles, check out Half Crazy to hear some earlier work, and play Tired but I Keep Going to listen to some of my recent work that is doing well.
My most recent solo album is called Blue to Violet. It builds on the "Crazy" side of "Half Crazy," which was my first album I released in 2020. Almost all of my songs since that album have been upbeat or fun, so this project is a big turn in my discography. I spent a little under two years working on this alongside all of my other releases since my first album. I would usually record one song for the album and one song for a single release whenever I went to the studio, which turned into a running joke. Over the course of making my album, I was battling depression. At my worst, it was hard to even make any songs about what I was dealing with. As I started making my way out of that pit, I was able to put in more work on this album and open up about what was going on. All of that is what makes up Blue to Violet, so this is a deeply personal album. The title is a snippet of a lyric that goes "went from blue to violet, gave my cold heart a warmer climate." That felt like an appropriate overview of my journey so far: I started deep in a blue pit, but some warmth from myself and others has brought me to a shade of violet. There is still some blue, but there's enough red now to keep me going.
If you made it this far down the page, thank you! As far as what the future holds for my music, the only locked in guarantee is that I'll be streaming my sessions for the foreseable future. I guess I'll guarantee an album soon, too. I have a lot of ideas that I want to get out and it's tough to stick with one project sometimes, especially when it's based around a concept or a certain mood. I want to make a detailed concept album that mirrors Over the Garden Wall, but those beats are elusive to come across (even when I'm making them). Think along the lines of Watching Movies with the Sound Off. Speaking of Mac Miller, I also want to do something a bit lighter and more fun that is more reminiscent of his early work, so the spring/summertime may be the ideal stage to work on that. Anyway, welcome into my thought processes!
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