Melbourne artist Ijale has experienced his fair share of difficulties during the pandemic. Since his first release in 2017, Ijale's always created personal works that have channelled his personal experiences, and when the first set of lockdowns hit Melbourne, he was experiencing a sense of turmoil created by both personal and global factors.

His new project, OTTN, is an 18-track exploration of the last two years, capturing the personal and musical growth that Ijale has been pushing for throughout 2020 and 2021. The project weaves through genres like jazz, R&B and hip-hop, and it's his most accomplished work yet. It's a crystallisation of the experiences that he's had in recent times, including the bigger topics he's been working through, like connecting with his heritage and toxic masculinity.

We spoke to Ijale about OTTN, as well as what's changed for him through the process of creating the mixtape. The title alone shows that Ijale's already looking to the future, so read on to find out what that might look like for Ijale, as well as how personal growth can be brought on by adversity.

The project was created during lockdown – I’d love to know more about how you’ve spent the last 18 months, and how those experiences shaped OTTN?

When the first lockdowns hit, I was in a pretty bad place, having just gotten out of a relationship that wasn’t so healthy. When the isolation of everything set in, I started to really question myself and the people around me in ways that were a bit detrimental.

Globally, the Black Lives Matter movement was in peak visibility in the public sphere and that as a whole forced me to ponder my own relationship to my culture and how that was subdued and detached through my upbringing.

I had to look into new ways to manage my emotions and find self-worth, so there was a lot of reading and talking to friends and family about these issues. I started seeing a regular therapist for the first time, meditating, doing yoga and figuring out how to exercise without hurting myself, because I have some fairly gnarly back issues that get in the way sometimes. I was basically doing a lot of shadow work, trying to stare certain things in the face and go through it healthily rather than sidestep shit.

That's not to say that I didn’t spiral. Oh did I spiral [laughs]. I would have ups and downs where I felt like I'd made breakthroughs, followed by a period of going deep into the vices I'm known to lean on. After that cycle got old, I started to try and make sense of the mess through the music. Once it started to take shape, I was able to use that process to pull me out of things.

On that topic – the time off meant that artists could easily feel pressure to constantly create, as it’s “time off” (obviously, this wasn’t actually the case). Did you feel these pressures, and if so, how did you deal with them – were there any hobbies you picked up over the last couple of years?

Yeah definitely. I’ve always had problems with feeling unproductive or feeling like I should have accomplished more than I have. I think my work ethic might have come as a by-product of those fears in a small part, and lockdown exacerbated that. Not being able to play shows, being stuck with my own thoughts that weren’t so rosy and having less experiences to talk about in my work because the world got so much smaller... I was dealing with all of that and more. But I had to take the time away from music to redefine how I valued myself.

I tried a bunch of things during this time to round myself out a little. Like yoga and meditation as I mentioned, but also, I really enjoyed trying out the Wim Hof method (which I recommend to rappers trying to expand their breath control). I've made a conscious effort to read more, both fiction and non-fiction. I dove into video editing and colour grading, revisited animation and visual effects. Right now I'm obsessed with woodworking. I know I'm a person who needs to create things to stay sane, but I've been trying to see myself as more than just my work and how I express myself in my music. I'm much better at that now and much happier for it.

Songs like SPACE and SAGE are worlds apart in sound, but they both fit snugly on OTTN. Do you ever feel pressure to stick to a particular sound, or are you happiest when you’re experimenting?

I think people are still getting to know me, and I'm still getting to know myself through the process of making music, so that allows some freedom for me to just do whatever as long as I think it sounds good. OTTN was a representation of how intense the things I was feeling were to me, and the versatility on the project just came from giving space and context to everything I was going through as best I could. Not everything can be explained with trap hi-hats or synths or a chopped sample, so I try and do whatever the song calls for and let the feeling of things guide me.

I was uncomfortable during a lot of the process of making these songs because of how experimental I was being compared to what people may have already known me for, but I think that's always a good thing.

I feel like the term mixtape is being used more liberally these days – OTTN is a cohesive project, so I wanted to get a sense of your relationships with mixtapes growing up, as well as why you’ve used that label for OTTN?

I loved mixtapes growing up. And I love how people in the rap genre use the term mixtape to afford themselves a certain type of freedom. Lil Wayne’s Dedication series, T.I’s early stuff and Kid Cudi’s mixtape all really influenced me growing up. You could hear rappers trying on different hats and rapping over the beats of their peers, just trying new things. That’s exactly what I was doing on this one, so it felt right to call it a mixtape.

I think I was also a bit afraid that this project wasn’t going to sound cohesive enough because I was jumping all over the place, so I used the term mixtape to allow that disparity to make sense to me and to others. If I had an album in mind, I would probably approach it differently. I feel like it would have been too early for me to release an “Album”.

The project also talks about toxic masculinity, which I feel like is a topic that the Australian music industry is finally beginning to talk about, and how it feeds itself into the power imbalance that exists. I’d love to know more about your decision to write about those topics, and what the reaction has been like?

Well to be honest I was coming to terms with how toxic masculinity might live within me as this was also one of the topics that I was seeing more prominently during lockdown. I'd check Instagram and see accounts like that of Jaguar Jonze and her experience as an artist amongst the culture of sexual harassment that is prevalent in our industry, and I would see women I knew raising concerns about dangerous men in their orbit or sharing information about male artists to avoid that I had been following on the gram or heard about around the scene. That degree of separation was way too small for my liking.

I realised how close this kind of behaviour was to my life whilst also seeing that it was still so distant from my lived experience. That made me think about if I was doing enough to make sure the women in my life were safe and felt safe around me.  I'm really happy to have other guys reach out to me and tell me that those aspects of this project resonate with them. Some have hit me up and mentioned that the song where I do this most explicitly was their favorite. There's a lot of honest conversation that needs to happen for real change to take effect and I hope that my talking about it sparks it as much as possible.

Many of the sounds on OTTN draw from your Nigerian heritage, which I think is one of the reasons the project stands out sonically from other releases this year. You’ve spoken about looking up to other Australian artists that are being celebrated for their cultural heritage – what do you think’s shifted in Australia over the last few years that people are waking up to the diverse sounds being created by hip-hop/rap artists in Australia?

I think there has been a slow-moving shift in culture globally that is valuing blackness and diverse cultural identity in general more; higher than just commodity, entertainment or trend capital. More people are respecting culture in the right ways and are starting to value the work and genius that goes into the expression of it. There’s an extended trend recently of ethnically specific music like Afrobeats or Reggaeton becoming the trend in popular music because people are more interested in the point of difference that comes from other ways of life these days.

For Australian hop-hop in particular, I think the UK’s rise to global popularity was an indicator to some that America doesn’t have a monopoly in this game. With all of this and more, I think artists here started thinking more globally and so the sounds coming from here just levelled up in a really noticeable way.

In terms of the music you’re currently listening to, both Australian and overseas, what do you think have been some of the standout releases of the year?

To me, this year has just gotten started in terms of standout releases. Genesis Owusu’s Smiling With No Teeth was probably one of the first albums to enter the chat in this conversation for me. Also, Baby Keem’s Melodic Blue, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert by Little Simz, Sweetness by Obongjayar and Sarz, Dawn by Yebba, Mother by Cleo Sol, USEE4YOURSELF by IDK, Love Is War by PrettyBoyDO, Life of a Don by Don Toliver.

READ MORE: Happy Halloween, Here's A Spooky Remix Of Lizzo's 'Truth Hurts'

Finally, OTTN feels like a celebration – but the title hints at what the future has in store. What do you think you’ll be doing over the next 12 months, both personally and music-wise?

I’m already thinking about what the next body of work will be. If OTTN was me writing from a reactionary state being, then I'm excited to see what comes out of me when I have my proverbial shit together (laughs). I’m trying to get out there and work more with people on the production side of things, so I’ll spend a lot of time just making beats and collaborating.

I am always trying to up the quality of the sound of my work and I'm a massive nerd in that regard so I'll be trying to learn a lot. I’m hoping I can play a lot of shows and really introduce these new songs to audiences in a personal way. Right now, I'm the happiest I have been in an awfully long time, so I'm happy to just live life and take things as they come.