Frank Leone

The one-man-band that is Frank Leone caught our eye with his magnificent EnterWILD album earlier this year, and he hasn't slowed down since. Leone produces and records all his own music, and the resulting swarm of effects and dampened percussion sound like something Leone stumbled upon accidentally, and would be hard-pressed to replicate.

But track after track, he continues to deliver. It's a unique blend of hip-hop and instrumentals, capable of flipping from stoned, meandering ripples in the water to gun-toting wordplay in a matter of seconds (see: "BUMP in the NIGHT"). And while Leone's raps are far more than passable, it's his production that steals the show. He manages to unpack continual surprises throughout EnterWILD, and with his debut album now behind him, we can only guess what else this all-in-one talent has up his sleeve. - Pigeons and Planes

Frank Leone
Age: 19

Out of the woods comes Frank Leone, a rapper/producer with fully formed visions flowing from his fingertips. The artist, originally from downstate Illinois, started picking up speed after the release of the fantastic enterWILD album, and things have continued to accelerate with "River Beat" and a Donnie Trumpet feature on "Rapture."

Part of the reason for his popularity is because Frank knows how to set the mood. enterWILD is a concept album, complete with motifs, atmospheric samples, and narrative themes. This kid isn't just spitting bars—he's telling stories. - Pigeons and Planes

Last night 19-year-old rapper Frank Leone released his debut full-length, Enter Wild; it's free, like most mixtapes today (except Drake's latest), and it's got the same lush, immersive quality that makes the best mixtapes resemble studio albums. But Leone calls Enter Wild an album, and the spirit and dynamics fit the definition. Leone produced all of Enter Wild on a laptop, recorded his vocals with a cheap microphone, and sought vocal contributions from artists overseas and in Chicago—local MCs Monster Mike and Saba show up, as does poet and activist Malcolm London.
Leone moved to town last year from downstate Illinois. Chicago hangs in the shadows on Enter Wild, but the strongest presence and influence on Leone's album is Allerton Park, a nice plot of nature that sits a stone's throw away from where the MC grew up. Leone embraces the earth on Enter Wild, which he describes as a journey through the forest.

I got an early preview of the album when I met up with Leone a few weeks ago at a studio run by local producer Professor Fox. After listening to key cuts such as "Toad Vision" and "Redeye(s)" I asked Leone about his new work, living in Chicago, and becoming a lone rap wolf in a small town.

Leor Galil: You described Enter Wild as an action-adventure [album]. Why?

Frank Leone: I want to set that tone for the listener. It's more of an album because it's all original production; it's a full-length. And I want people to experience some wild things that they've never heard before.

How long have you been working on this?

The first beat I made for it was in July of 2012.

And you started working on it before you came to Chicago?

Yeah, I came to Chicago in August of last year.

What's the name of the town you grew up in?

It's Monticello, aka "the 'Cell."

What was your experience starting as a rapper-producer in this particular town before coming to Chicago? What was your environment like and how did it affect your work?

It was bizarre, I think. Because no one I knew, growing up, would expect a rapper to come out of a 5,000-person farm town in the middle of nowhere. But I think a cool thing that came out of that was most of my friends didn't listen to—don't listen to—rap.

There was a decent amount of people at school who did, but it made the first people to listen to my music pretty heavy critics of it. They were pretty harsh because they aren't gonna like it unless it really stands out as something else. So it kind of helped give me a good audience initially that was like, "Well, if you're gonna do this, you'd better do a pretty good job because it's coming out of the middle of nowhere and it's not very likely you're gonna make it."

What kind of music were your friends listening to?

FL: Man, they have terrible taste—no I'm kidding. I don't know, they vary. A lot of them just listen to the standard radio stuff like Coldplay and junk like that. Coldplay is good [laughs]; in fact, there's a Coldplay sample on this album. But they listened to stuff like that and Pink Floyd. Generic teenage rock music.

Kid Cudi was popular in my town though, so that was cool. And I like to think I introduced the Chicago side of hip-hop to the 'Cell as well.

At what point did you start to develop your own interest in hip-hop and exploring that as a musician?

That was Kanye. I was working at a summer camp the year of 2010 and I had asked my friend to put me on some rap because I was interested in it. He told me, "The College Dropout", and I kind of fell in love with it that summer. It just so happened that Kanye's first GOOD Friday series happened after that, which is my favorite Kanye of all time. Then My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy dropped, which is one of the biggest influences on my sound ever. It was like, a month after that that I started rapping.

Why did you seek out rap? Were you like, "Yeah, this is something that I'm making the decision that I want to listen to now."

I liked the storytelling—I thought it was interesting. I liked the techniques and just the sound and the flow of people's voices. The intricacies of it were really interesting to me. There's not really, I guess, a reason. It just gives a certain feeling, when people hit the flow just right.

At what point did you find that you were able to hit your flow just right and carve out what is now your voice?

Immediately I thought I was hot at what I was doing when I was not. I was working on it a lot but I really didn't start taking it seriously until like . . . I think it was late summer of 2011 when I ran into Vic Mensa at a Lupe show down there. He was in Kids These Days at the time and I had just discovered them.

I was like, very excited to see him because I had just been listening to their music all summer. And I went up to him. I had actually rapped over one of their songs, "Be," and sort of remixed it. I got his e-mail, I sent it to him, and he hit me back pretty quickly. He said like, "This is cool, you've got a lot of skill." That was the moment when I started thinking, "Maybe I should try this for real."

As you've grown, how has he influenced your style?

Early on Kids These Days as a whole really influenced my sound—just the way they could blend all these genres that you don't normally hear together but, when you do hear it together, it just sounds right almost . . . to me at least.

My biggest influences have been Odd Future—like Tyler, the Creator is my number one favorite artist ever. So I really look up to just the things he was bold enough to say, and just the style of music±the jazz chords and everything—just hit me very poignantly at a very nice time. Lauryn Hill had a big influence. Nas.

I think the biggest influence was early on with Kids These Days, Tyler, Earl Sweatshirt . . . Earl Sweatshirt is the reason I started to try rapping above-average. And Lupe, Kanye, people like that.

You mentioned Kids These Days in your premixtape mix. You've got Kids These Days on there, you've got Tyler, you've got Phantom of the Opera.

Phantom of the Opera was a huge influence on Enter Wild. I got really lucky that we took a school trip there for band, I think, freshman year of high school. And we saw them live on Broadway and it just changed my world. If I hadn't see that, I probably wouldn't have made this album.

Why's that?

The grandiose nature of it; the music just hit me really nicely. Especially that opening overture, just the way the organs played out; just this epic, dark, and mysterious feel. I don't know, it just hit me right. A very important experience to have, I think.

You sample Les Miserables on the album. How has your interest in theater expanded since that breakthrough? How has it worked its way into your music?

I'll be honest, I was interested in theater before music. I was doing that stuff in high school. I think just because of that it wasn't a stretch for me just trying to pick something new—I just genuinely enjoyed it. I think that's why it works so well weaving into the music I make now.

You mentioned Lupe, you mentioned Kanye, you mentioned Kids These Days—all Chicago artists. What is your relationship to this city—especially coming from a downstate town and moving up here—how has your relationship to it changed as you worked on this album?

It's a love-hate relationship, that's for sure. The love part of it would say—even just working remotely from my own hometown—just the culture. And the amount of interest not only in the musicians, but also in the people who want the musicians to be heard. If it weren't for them . . . like, I'm from Monticello, and I know everyone. Every blog will say . . . I make sure to put I'm from the woods near Chicago . . . they peg me as a Chicago rapper. I'm not a Chicago rapper, but it's because of Chicago that if this ever really takes off, that's why.

So the scene itself is so competitive and there's so much good music, and daring and original things coming out of the city. It just pushes you to be as "you" as possible, because otherwise you're gonna get lost.

I don't like living in the city though. I don't like all the buildings and the lack of stars and trees. But I think that the culture surrounding the city is just unreal. It's really cool.

At the end of the album, "Redeye(s)," you have Malcolm London naming off people who were killed in November 2014—that was almost every homicide?

Yeah. It's a touchy subject for someone who hasn't personally been around it. I've only witnessed Chicago's violence a couple of times and I hope to never witness it again. But all of my friends up here, there are just too many stories of people who have just become numb to it happening around them—to their families, to their brothers and sisters.

I don't think just because you aren't there doesn't mean you shouldn't voice your support, as long as you're not speaking on it like, "This is what's happening to me." Because it's not happening to me and I'm very grateful for that. But it's happening to so many people I know that it wouldn't feel right not to at least say, "This sucks."

What other ways do you approach that in, not only your music, but just your livelihood being here and working on your music up here?

Well, you know where not to go. From a musical perspective, you need to make it clear that it's what you know from others, and what you hear and the people around you, and just to focus on that. Just be true [about] how it's affecting you. It's affecting those around me, so that's what I'll be speaking about and I phrase it like that.

People just have a different attitude in Chicago. You can't be a loudmouth. There are certain types of artists that come from different areas of the country that couldn't have come from Chicago because there's a certain level of cautiousness in what you say and who you talk about just for a matter of safety. It's still a dangerous city. If I ever get big or whatever, I don't want people coming to me asking about Chicago violence because I'm not the right person, you know? I'm just the bystander who understands it's a bad situation. - Chicago Reader

Frank Leone’s “Loser” unfolds like a four-minute short film. Dates don’t show. Boys and girls spend sunsets alone. The spine-tingling aura of clenched hands is palpable enough to cloud the fact that this love story is nothing but a memory of parting ways. Adolescence casts a golden glow over misfortune.

An earnest storyteller, the Illinois singer-rapper-producer pulls out all the stops to tell his tale. Rap is used sparingly, expertly, adding punch to soft and youthful melodies. Bubbling synths and shimming keys mesh with the orchestral enlistment of live instrumentation—a score that says as much as any verse. Win or lose, young love makes for a great piece of art.

“I went to school with everyone on the record,” Frank writes over email. “Guitar was my roommate [Grant Wu], opera singer [Madeline Whitesell] lives a block away, and Aaron [Gamalinda, trumpet player from Zaramela] worked on EnterWILD with me.”

Singing as smoothly as he ever has, Leone rejects all semblances of convention. Love has temporarily snaked into the forests of EnterWILD, a mystical realm where darkness bests light and creatures stalk the grounds.

“I made the beat and hook for Jon Waltz’s new shit, but then his project headed a different way,” Frank said of the song’s origins. “I heard someone passed it to D.R.A.M. and he might be interested but I ended up making it my own. Came together really naturally. Something light to counter the dark that’s coming.”

Stream “Loser” below. Expect more to come from the multitalented 20-year-old in the coming months. Read our Daily Discovery feature on Leone here. - Pigeons and Planes

The youth may have found a voice, or at least some fresh new vibes, in the form of Chicago's Frank Leone. The 19 year old musician brings a creativity and vision to his music far surpassing most of his peers, and exudes a certain sense of enlightenment that belies his tender age. Leone's EnterWILD EP, released just over a month ago, is an amazing work of art, and well worth a listen. However, today I'm here to write about his latest drop, the separately exceptional River Beat.

Put together in just 24 hours, River Beat has a feel akin to a mushroom induced trip, overflowing with colorful wordplay, an almost spiritual attachment to nature, and some lush instrumentation. Leone's writing is beautifully abstract and imaginative, and lays on top of a tranquil self-produced soundscape. The record is in a way, a brief escape into the wild, a soundtrack to a sunny day spent laying beneath a canopy of trees.

In the brief two and a half minutes of the track, the young Chicagoan both effortlessly shuttles between cadences and displays an innate feel for melody. The hook is simply flawless "And when the water falls, I leap through a puddle of youth / Cause some drop before they end up dead, but I'll never be one like you", and ties together this harmonious sonic adventure.

I can only hope we are blessed with much more from Frank Leone soon, but until then River Beat will live on in steady rotation. Charles Bukowski has a quote which I find fitting for this record "To be young is the only religion", so take some time today to celebrate your youth, nature, and music. - College Of Music

Moody, growling beats? Check. Morbid self-confidence? Check. Spooky hooded figures with only the eyes lit up? Check. Three surface-level, sprawling similarities? Check, but Frank Leone and Earl Sweatshirt are cut from some similar cloth.

Leone's latest release, enterWILD is a sprawling, experimental encyclopedia of new age hip-hop. He's taking the kind of chances that Earl and Odd Future championed in their early days, though I wouldn't hold your breath waiting to see Leone's version of "Loiter Squad." - Pigeons & Planes

Frank Leone's debut project, #EnterWILD, has a chance to truly make waves in the game this year. The 19-year-old artist has been working on his project for the last three years (He started when he was just 16 years old) and today, we're premiering "Toad Vision," one of the very first songs he started working on for #EnterWILD. His self-produced track features Chicago rapper Saba and samples Yeasayer's "Sunrise," too. "I wanted it to sound like Kendrick Lamar's 'Rigamortis' if he'd stumbled through my forest licking toads before he wrote it," Leone told Complex over email. "Toad Vision" is an exhausting few verses from the two that will literally make you feel like you're high and drunk stumbling around through the wilderness—so, goal accomplished.

Leone lives in Chicago but is from the woods of Monticello and he's crafting #EnterWILD to be an "action/adventure album" set around the forest where he was raised. This is the last song that will be released before the project, and if you missed it, catch up with "BUMP in the NIGHT" and "WAR," before you stream "Toad Vision" below: - Complex Magazine

EnterWILD, for all intents and purposes, is just that. It’s an adventure, and whether the wild is the literal wild—like the vast forest two hours south of Chicago in which 19-year-old Frank Leone grew up—or the figurative wild that lies somewhere within the depths of each of our souls, there’s something valuable to be discovered through Leone’s proper debut project.

Without getting too deep, EnterWILD is a special body of work. It’s produced entirely by Leone (or King Supertramp) himself, and there’s a certain revolutionary spirit, albeit tastefully subtle, that backs the entire album from start to finish. Described by Leone as an action-adventure album meant “for kids my age who need to be reminded that we can be the most in tune and open minded generation to ever walk this earth,” the 16-track project has been three years in the making, and upon one listen through, it’s not difficult to understand why. In a sense, it feels like a journey through adolescence—highs coupled with lows, moments of glowing inspiration coupled with deep pockets of darkness, but most importantly, a youthful energy with which Leone (and at one point, each one of us) approaches it all.

Appearances from Saba, Vic Mensa, Monster Mike and the Fighting Illini Drumline act as colorful illustrations, but it’s truly Leone’s voice—both its sound and its depth—that make EnterWILD the HD experience it is. He comes off daring, wide-eyed and sharp-tongued throughout; whether the composition of the album or his technical rapping ability, it’s clear Leone is fast approaching his grand potential, and he’s just getting started.

On “Nightcaps,” perhaps my personal favorite track alongside the ensuing “Bump in the Night,” he softly chants over somber chimes: “We the kids in America, we the kids in America, we the kids in America cause y’all never took care of us.” The chant arrives late enough in the album to loosely grasp its purpose, but upon the closing note, it becomes ever meaningful. Frank–or anyone in a similar place in life—knows relatively little about all that’s going on in the moment, nevermind the potential of all that could lie ahead. He’s self-aware and old enough to know, though, that regardless of all that’s come before him, all the supposed leaders or role models, it’s on him—on us—to determine how we’re going to move forward. We may not be prepared to enter the unknown, the WILD, but we’re going to anyway. Stream the album in its entirety below, and download directly HERE.

“If you can listen to the album in the woods or mountains please do, the weather got warm this week for a reason.” – Frank Leone - Pigeons & Planes

After a year of often snarled, sometimes sung raps, Frank Leone has yet to pay any beat a visit without locked-and-loaded artillery or radiant grace. The road ahead, lengthy and filled with obstacles, doesn’t scare the Illinois artist. His forthcoming project, EnterWILD, is true to its title, an expansive piece that leverages his teenage perspective and inspired mind against any challenge, and everything unknown.

150 miles south of Chicago, the 19-year-old struggled to establish a strong offline following in his hometown. Online, he’s compiled a promising resume; Leone has racked up over 100,000 SoundCloud plays and received looks from the likes of Mass Appeal, DJ Booth, Hypetrak, and P&P, too. Small victories have begun to add up beyond the browser. He’s collaborated with Vic Mensa and spit over Thelonious Martin production (in addition to his own). He’s sold out shows and opened for Ab-Soul. And to top it all off, he recently moved to Chicago.

Leone is not far from taking major steps beyond the internet’s shadow, and he linked with us to give some insight into his world and some information about the upcoming EnterWILD. If you haven’t heard of Frank yet, get familiar. EnterWILD drops this month. - Pigeons & Planes

Treehome95 is a lovely slow-burner, tucked into the last three songs of Tyler, The Creator’s 2013 album Wolf. It’s the most tranquil, jazz-influenced track on the project, featuring added vocals from Coco O of Quadron and Erykah Badhu, singing about a love that’s grown stale and repetitive. Chicago-based rapper Frank Leone took it and expanded on it, added a few more keys, and a few more “Isn’t it fun to think so” type lyrics – lamenting that this love has grown stale just like the original, but also wishfully thinking of the days when this love was new.

Then things take an extremely sharp left turn into an extremely dramatic skit, meant to be a setup for his next project, picking up where his amazing debut project EnterWILD left off. – MP - USA Today