Titan by Mazzi Brave | LP Release

The Origin Story

Mazzi Brave formed in 2023 as an artist project fronted by Los Angeles based Cam Carmichael. In collaboration with music producer Spencer Riley Alfonso, Carmichael began work on the debut album: Titan with Ildefonso, Inc. The roots of the project began as the two collaborators started writing and recording together. Alfonso and Carmichael fused rap, hip-hop, and rock. Inspired by bands like Run the Jewels, Rage Against the Machine, and Nine Inch Nails, Mazzi Brave’s kinetic energy rallies bombastic lyrics over pounding drums, howling guitars, and prominent bass lines.

Conversation Edited for Clarity

“So we met in 2011, right? College. That was a wild time.
It's crazy see the evolution because this happens with a lot of artists where it feels like we're just getting started and then you look back at how long it takes to get to the starting point.
Twelve years we've been going back and forth, sending emails. I was in L.A. then you moved to my hometown then I moved out of L.A. and now we've kind of found the perfect geography to make a project happen. Mazzi Brave started recording last year 2022.”
- Spencer Riley Alfonso

Insights Behind Each Track From Artist Cameron Carmichael and Producer Spencer Riley Alfonso

Apex - “I was working on another song at the time, I’m always working on another song, and I felt like it [track by Alfonso] fit really well. It was sonically something that was unique for me, but not something that was completely out of the wheelhouse. And so looking at the reference tracks and taking in what I was listening to and writing at the time, it all was sort of this perfect fusion that ultimately led to the track that we have now.” - Carmichael

Titan - “I think that that was one of the cool things where collaboration really worked well together because, you would write the hook, and then I wrote the verse then you had redone the hook as soon as I got home, which I have like an hour drive, and it had already melded with what I was talking about. We were sort of playing ping pong back and forth with that one to where it worked really, really well together.” - Carmichael

The Storm - “I think that the mix of how that song was ultimately was created was a mix of Devil May Cry, Virgil, the character. He’s really cool, but he also can be a little campy. And I feel like Virgil would say something like “I am the storm that’s coming”. And then Rage Against the Machine has these sentence long hooks that they repeat and then will change something up with it. I think that’s where the hook came from.” - Carmichael

Underground - “It evolved into this Bonnie and Clyde story. It was coming off of “Desperados” and so it felt like they're thematically cousins. But I wanted to get a little bit more specific. Who lives in this world? What is their life like? Very cyberpunk feel, but still calls back to those roots of where it comes from. We’re just doing another hip hop Bonnie and Clyde song.” - Carmichael

Desperados - “I also was reading a biography of young Stalin, weirdly enough, which I got from watching Andor, where they reference that book. That book talks about this world of revolutionaries that are operating multiple different types of gangs, in first century Russia. In my brain, I'm always thinking about the future so I'm like, what would that look like in sort of a cyberpunk world.” - Carmichael

Titan Album Artwork

Now We Multiply - “This probably has my favorite opening line from a song “this is the sound of prisoners buried below the jail.” It sounds so visceral. And that's another song that has a coherent story to it.” - Carmichael

The Forgotten - “I remember my first initial thought of this beat was Miles Morales walking down a darker street. As I wrote more and more I was able to incorporate that vibe into the story of Mazzi Brave. For instance, in “Underground”, you'll hear at the very end, I say, “born a forgotten child, raised in the underground”, is deeply related to the last track where it's a dystopian, cyberpunk hellscape. And then it gives the villain the last laugh here. That spoken word again is spoken from the perspective of the villain.” - Carmichael