Harry Mack: ‘Contents Under Pressure’
Rhyming “off top”, is one of the historic elements of Hip Hop which set apart some of its earliest heroes from the proverbial crowd. In this day and age, the skill may be most associated with the “battle rap” scene, however, still represents one of the more admired disciplines within the culture. Freestyle rap, executed well, tends to wow and amaze even the most experienced within the industry. One of the exploding stars of the game, Harry Mack may be a familiar face and voice if you watch commercial television, his recent “test drive freestyle” commercials with Mitsubishi were among the most entertaining of the season as the brand’s unique campaign ushered in the new Eclipse Cross model. Mack wowed potential customers with his rap prowess as he presented the car manufacturer’s new offering via rhyme.
Mack has also wowed live audiences on television and radio with his off the cuff rhymes, taking words thrown at him and delivering flows that have earned him the respect of industry vets like Joey Bada$$ and Kendrick Lamar after matching wits with them on The Cruz Show at Los Angeles Hip Hop station Power 106.
Kendrick went on the record saying that Mack inspired him as well:
Beginning his rap career in the sixth grade going by the moniker of “MC Wunder”, Harry Mack’s fire for music and hip hop has been fanned from an early age growing up in Portland, he explains:
Oh Man, when I was young I sort of fell in love with the music, just in a really organic way. I have an older sister, she’s three years older than me so when we were growing up in Portland, she sort of turned me on to Jamin 95.5, which was the hip hop station in Portland at the time. I didn’t really know who I was listening to. I didn’t know any of the artists’ names or anything like that, but I knew that I was really feeling the music. I just loved the way it sounded and the way it made me feel. I was already kind of a young budding musician at that point. I started playing violin when I was seven and, I started playing the drums in fourth or fifth grade. So I was already really getting into music. So, once my sister turned me on to Jamin 95.5 and I started hearing all the hip hop music that was being played on the radio at the time, it just sort of took off from there. I knew that I wanted to try my hand at it and see what I could come up with.
By the time he got to high school, what he came up with was a crew called State of Mind which consisted of himself, his buddy Brady B who was learning to DJ, Elan (Mighty Misc) another MC and a budding DJ/ Producer Jack Baars (DJ Malfunktion). The team, around their sophomore year in high school executed the hustle and grind of creating and selling their homemade CDs with titles written in sharpie, earning and saving enough money to begin producing their own live events:
Mack shared a bit about that early move saying,
So now we were a four-man crew and we went by State Of Mind. That was a really exciting time because that’s when we actually started trying to really produce our own shows in a more official way. I remember one show, in particular, we rented a spot in Portland called Hawthorne Theater, which is still operating now and at the time you could rent it for like, $600. And so we had been selling our CD, at school and everything, we were selling them for $5 a pop and they were just very unofficial CDRs with the title in Sharpie,
And so when it came time to do a show, we went over to Hawthorne Theater and we made the payment of $600 to rent the venue in cash and we didn’t even think to go get bigger bills. So we literally handed the guy a wad of fives and ones from selling our CDs and, he was pissed. He was like, wow, are you guys really giving me $600 in fives and ones right now, you know, like, what kind of amateur hour performance is this?!
I think he was kind of bitter and he started kinda trying to underhandedly cut us down a little bit. He was talking like, this is good, you know, this is a good move. Probably lose money on it, probably don’t get too many people out for your first show, but you know, you gotta try, you gotta do something. And so we’re sitting there quiet, feeling all bad about ourselves and as it turned out, the show was popping! Man, we sold it out, it was packed and it was good. It was a super lit show, it was amazing. You know, the thing was we were in high school, so the fact that we had rented a venue and all the high schoolers could come out there and party and they knew, it’s no parents, that we’re out there doing our thing, we were able to really blow it up, not just at our high school but at other schools as well. We doubled our money on it or something like that. So it was a huge success for us and just a lot of fun and, and really inspiring for us to know that like, okay, we kind of have a buzz and we have a little bit of a scene that we’re building here. So yeah, that was the vibe.
Harry Mack (Artist Submitted)
Those early experiences transferred themselves over to Mack’s college career as well. He attended USC, entering the Jazz Studies program, studying to be a jazz drummer. It was during that period he began to further develop his freestyle skills, relating it to the improvisation within jazz music, he tells us:
Coming up in middle school and high school we would freestyle for fun, but it was more just sort of an exercise and the main practice for us was writing lyrics, and songwriting. So I wasn’t really focused on freestyling and the way that I came to focus on it later when I got to college, as you mentioned, I was in the jazz studies program. I was playing the drums. So I was really, really focused in, on rhythmic improvisation. And as a result, I started diving really deep into freestyling and exploring the potential of what can be done with freestyle if you really dive in and, and try to develop it.
So when I was in college, I started really practicing freestyling a lot, like two or three-hour freestyle sessions almost every night and really working on it and testing myself, with little challenges. I’d have my friends throw out random words to me or I’d have my friends hold up random objects or we would go online to word randomizers and just try to test myself to see how quick and how sharp I could be with it. I think that there’s a lot of parallels. I kind of look at freestyling almost as like a drum solo, but with words, you know, because it’s very much a rhythmic improvisation and a lot of times, if I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say next, I just focus on the cadence and I focus on the rhythm and in that sense it’s directly related to the way I think about playing an improvised drum solo, in a jazz context. So I think both things, my freestyling and my jazz drumming were influencing each other in a really cyclical way, which was cool.
Harry Mack’s freestyle stardom has of course given him entree onto some of the biggest platforms in the world including Red Bull Music and Ellen and sparked the questions, can he write a song, can he deliver a written project? The answer is hell yes! Mack is set to make his full-length project debut January 18th, 2019. We got an advance listen to his upcoming project, “Contents Under Pressure” which is a complete ride through and could very well cement Mack as one of the hottest breakout artists of the year as he takes listeners on a journey via a slate of essential cuts which showcase just how versatile and disciplined he is as an artist.
“Contents Under Pressure” is bursting with a full spectrum of hip hop sonics with a bit of vocalist thrown in for good measure, and the production, about 80% attributed to Mack himself, co-mingled with his lyrical creativity delivers a varied experience of smooth and energetic perfectly synched. There are moments which bring in that De La Soul super cool vibe and then more aggressive joints which tend to energize, what DIDN’T happen for me was hitting the skip button. We got Mack to break the album experience down for us and describe what this debut stands for to him:
With regard to the record, Contents Under Pressure, I’m so excited to get this out, I’m mostly known for freestyling and for the viral videos that I’ve had and that’s been amazing. Obviously, that’s a huge blessing and it’s really elevated my platform as an artist. And so for that, I’m very thankful, but this is sort of an opportunity, with this album, it’s almost like a second debut, if the Venice Beach freestyle video was sort of my official debut, as an artist, then this record is kind of like my second debut, as a songwriter and where I really get to showcase sort of a wider skill set. And I think a lot of people have been wondering, okay, this guy can obviously improvise. Can he write a song, Can he make a record? And of course, I know the answer is yes. And, I’m just very excited to show people that.
Asked if he had to pick one joint from Contents Under Pressure, as the first introduction, for a first- time listener to say “this is Harry Mack”, what joint he thought he might choose, it was understandably difficult, as stated earlier, they could all be considered essential joints. Mack says,
Man, that’s a hard question because I feel like the whole entire project is needed, I feel like for them to really understand all the sides of me, they almost have to sit down for the whole 40 minutes and listen to all of it. But if I had to pick one song to really represent me, at this moment in time, I think that the song called “Next Gear” represents me really well at this moment in time. It basically runs everybody through the resume of what I’ve done so far and it sort of informs everybody that you know, at this point I’m ready to literally take things up to the “Next Gear,” and like I said, show people that I’m not only a viral freestyle sensation, I’m here to have longevity in the game. I’m here to become respected as, a legitimate artist within the hip hop space. And, I’m ready to make that happen with the release of this album.
If given an editor’s pick from the project it would be Go For Mine which is a declaration that ” I’m taking my shot and you know, bump all the naysayers and people who doubted my capabilities, my skill set and doubted, my intestinal fortitude, whether I would stick with it…Like man, I’m ready for the opportunity and I’m getting ready to smash.” Nobody asked for my two cents though but trust I’ve got my reasons!!!
The project’s lead single Napoleon Hill is a hot joint with attention to the tiniest detail in sonics, so much detail it led to the question of whether Mack had added his drum hand to the track:
I definitely participated heavily in the production. I actually, produced Napoleon Hill myself and I produced most of the songs on the record, myself. A couple of the songs had some additional production added by my guys, Casper and B, they’re really dope production team here in LA, and “Next Gear”, was produced by my homies Gabe Steiner and David Emmanuel and then Casper and B added on and Go For Mine was produced by Sam Barsh. So there are some other contributors along the way, but the majority I would say 80 percent of the music, if not more, the production was handled by me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to really incorporate live drumming into this project. I fully intend to do that, but just because, I’m completely independent and it’s all sort of being done here in my home studio, it requires a lot of resources to be able to really get a good sounding, live drum recording. So that’s something that I wasn’t able to incorporate at this point, but I did program all the drums myself [aside from Next Gear and Go For Mine] and obviously, my live drumming career has a huge influence on my production style. So the fact that you, heard Napoleon Hill and wondered if it might have been live drums is a huge compliment to me bro, because that’s kind of my goal in the production is to sort of have that organic, live musicianship element to it.
Napoleon Hill is the lead single from “Contents Under Pressure” and here’s a first look at the video:
We wanted to see how his outlook had changed from the time of MC Wunder to Harry Mack making this exciting leap to mainstream:
Well, first and foremost, I’m a musician and I have been my whole life. I’m a rapper, I’m a producer, I’m a drummer, I’m a songwriter, I’m an improviser. But I think most importantly and above all else, I’m just a lover of good music and, you know, I’m a fan and I’m someone who genuinely wants to contribute in a positive way but at the end of the day, I’m just somebody who loves music, even just as a listener and I always have. So that’s what I’m about.
With as many sounds and songs as he hears, it begged to question if he is still able to just listen to music as a consumer? Just like, for fun?
That’s a great question. I love listening to music and sometimes, you know, when you’re trying to do this professionally and you’re really making a push to have a career in music, sometimes you start to get a little disconnected from how it felt to just throw on a great record and listen to it just because you want to feel great. So I sometimes do have to remind myself like, Yo, let’s just, listen to some great music right now. Like, let’s throw on some Roy Ayers, let’s throw on Illmatic, you know, let’s just listen to some dope classical music or whatever it is, I mean, I like all kinds of music and, to answer your question, I do try to get back as often as possible to just, making time to listen to music because it’s what I love to do and because it makes me feel good. But, you know, sometimes we’re so focused on trying to get over all these hurdles of being an independent artist and trying to figure out how to navigate the industry and how you’re going to make your career and albums and artwork and tours and etc. etc. You know, you can start to get a little overwhelmed and, disconnected. But I’m always trying to counteract that because at the end of the day if I didn’t have a career in music and nobody knew who Harry Mack was, I would still be completely obsessed with music and in love with it. It’s just, in my opinion, the coolest thing on earth.
What has been the greatest challenge thus far that he feels he’s overcome in creating a sound that is distinctively Harry Mack?
Yeah, that’s a great question too. I think for me one of the big challenges was just, you know because I’m a fan of so many different kinds of music, and I’m a fan of everything from, like you mentioned, the golden era 90s stuff- That’s definitely my heart, you know, and that’s probably had the heaviest influence on my personal sound from a hip hop standpoint- But, I also love a lot of the new artists, I’ve listened to, mainstream sh*t, trap sh*t, whatever, I listen to that and I like a lot of it, I love jazz, obviously. I love instrumental music and I love singers. I wish I was a singer. I’m actually singing on a lot of songs on the record, doing my best. I’m influenced by singers as well so I think the hard part for me was recognizing that just because I’m a fan of something doesn’t mean that I necessarily want to sound that way or that it sounds organic coming from me.
So in the beginning when I started working on the record [Contents Under Pressure], it was kind of like I want to do everything, I was just so excited to be able to make this record and have this debut. I kind of wanted to do everything, you know, let me sing on this joint, let me do a trap sounding joint, let me do da da da, whatever. And I was trying to wear too many hats I think. I had to sort of let go of that and realized like, look, yes, I’m influenced by a lot of different kinds of music, but at the end of the day, it has to be organic and it has to be my voice and it has to be something that comes out of me that’s not forced.
I think, freestyling really helped with that because in freestyling nothing is forced, I feel like it’s the most genuine voice that I could have because it’s literally just my thoughts and feelings flowing out of me at the moment on the spot. And so once I realized that, and that’s kind of what made my freestyling so appealing, I started basically applying that to the songwriting and just trying to hone in on what comes up naturally, you know, what flows out of me on its own and let’s have that be the starting point for my sound.
Want to know more about Harry Mack? Tune into the full conversation below and stay tuned for his debut album release “Contents Under Pressure” coming January 18, 2019.
Want to see more right now?! Check out his YouTube channel and join the millions who enjoy and celebrate the mastery of freestyle as one of the key elements in hip hop!
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About the Author
Dr. Jerry Doby Editor-in-Chief of The Hype Magazine, Media and SEO Consultant, Journalist, Ph.D. and retired combat vet. 2023 recipient of The President's Lifetime Achievement Award. Partner at THM Media Group. Member of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, the United States Press Agency and ForbesBLK.
