What happens when you blend Dungeons & Dragons and hip hop? You get the magic of Naethan Apollo’s music. Apollo’s music has been taking social media by storm, amassing a supportive army of fans on TikTok and music streaming services alike. With his ability to build worlds through verses and vignettes over a diverse array of instrumentals, there is no one making tunes quite like him right now. I spoke with Apollo about his upcoming album, Tales from Cazilor: Wyldflowers , taking the superhero route into anime, and taking inspiration from 12-episode anime to know what to leave in and what to leave out of his albums. How was it getting stuck in and making a whole world with this album? Naethan Apollo : Oh, man, I mean it's nothing new to me. I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons for a while, and I'm a dungeon master as well. So making a whole fantasy world is something I love to do. That's my bread and butter. But it was different doing it for an album, I suppose. The making of the world was the easy part. Figuring out how to make it into an album was this sort of fun, creative challenge. Being able to dive in and really go for it has been incredibly fun. Was anime involved in the process of you building this world? Apollo : That's the end goal for the story. Create interest in this world and these characters and bridge the gap and get to my very own animated series or movie. I don't discriminate! I love anime, though. I'm fairly new to it. I got into anime when I started college. I didn't watch it when I was a kid, so I’m a bit behind. But everything I've seen is just fantastic and certainly an inspiration. RELATED: Speed's Aaron Siow: I Would Love For People To Make AMVs With Our Music Talk me through your path. I'm curious where you started around that age, because being an adult opens up so many different starting points. Apollo : So when I wanted to get into it, the first thing everyone told me was don't watch Attack on Titan or Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood first because it's only going to be downhill from there. You need to watch other things to build up your palate. What I grew up with was like Marvel movies and stuff like that. So my bridge for that gap was, OK, are there any superhero anime? Because that's what I'm used to, right? I think my very first anime was One Punch Man , which was fantastic. I love it. And then from there I went to My Hero Academia , which is also one I really love. My Hero Academia had that aspect where it's like, OK, this is a little simple sometimes, but it also hits on very big themes a lot of the time as well. From there I got the bug. I was watching everything, not just shonen anime but drama and the occasional slice-of-life too, just trying to see it all. Do you still love everything or do you have a preferred genre now? Apollo : I do still love everything, and there are so many I haven’t watched that I think I will be this way for a while. One of my favorite sci-fi anime was STEINS;GATE . And I watched one more metaphysical one literally in a day, Death Parade . JUJUTSU KAISEN is a recent one that I finished. I mean, just amazing. But yeah, finally after I felt like I had watched enough, I did start Attack on Titan . And of course it's legendary. The fact that I started it so late, and was still having to wait years for it to finish. I felt like I was in there with the people. But yeah, that's kind of how I branched the gap first with superheroes, because that's what I knew best, and then from there I was just like, well, let's just try everything. Let's just see what sticks. What have you been watching lately? Apollo : I wish I was watching more lately. I'm not gonna lie to you. I've been so busy with my own stuff that I haven't been able to watch. What I'm fascinated with somewhat recently are those 12-13 episode self-contained stories. So stuff like Devilman Crybaby and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners , where they just get one season, I guess Edgerunners now technically has two but the point still stands. They tell a complete story. I feel like, especially in regard to fantasy, because I'm watching a lot of fantasy media too, that most fantasy movies, like films not anime, are kind of underwhelming? Like they don't really do very fleshed out fantasy. Anime is able to take fantasy to a new level because you can do so much more with animation than you could ever with like CGI. That's been very fascinating to me as well as I’ve been building out my own fantasy world. The hardest part is making sure I don’t rip anything directly from these fantasy anime that I’m watching. Image via Netflix As someone who loves those short, self-contained stories, did you find yourself appreciating their mastery a bit more as you made your own story? It can be just as important to know what to leave out as to know what to leave in. Apollo : You've nailed it dude. That's the entire game for me is, how do I give the audience something worth listening to while leaving out as much as possible, so I have more paths to go forward. The last thing you want to do is write yourself into a corner. I'm trying to give so much, but not give too much. As much as I would like to say that I know exactly how everything is going to go, I don't know exactly so I don't want to plant a seed that ends up being a bad one later on, and we just ignore it. That always feels bad when that happens in a show: something was hinted at and then you never get the payoff. I want to avoid that, which is an ambitious goal, because retconning is very common. So with this album, Wyldflowers , it’s super weird to think about it like this, because the albums are all that exist, but I view the albums as extra. This is all the stuff that you wouldn't get to see in a show, because we wouldn't have time. All the little moments, all the character moments. That's what I really have the opportunity to build out in these albums. Because when we get to like a show or a movie, we're gonna have to move. So that's what I'm showing a lot in that regard about personalities and sort of societal structure. Because we're still really early on. This is just the beginning. RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Saint Blonde Drop New Single, Talk Learning Musical Language from Anime How did you find your musical style? Does it pose any challenges to telling a narrative? Apollo : I have been told many times that nobody has heard songs like mine. I've come to learn that people either love it or they hate it, and that's fine. But those who love it are obsessed, and I think that's special. My origins are in rap and hip hop. I grew up in the Midwest. I grew up in Iowa, listening to Eminem and Tech N9ne, and all these lyrical rappers. I started writing my own songs and those influences helped me find my own style. Now I'm here and I like rapping over all kinds of instrumentals, not just your stereotypical hip hop instrumentals, but Arctic Monkeys or Gorillaz style instrumentals, or a sea shanty. I don't know, it sounds so dumb. I hate saying stuff like this, but I can tell when it works.That's what happened with the sea shanty. I was like, this is kind of crazy, but it works. I just try to have fun. Listen to Apollo’s new album, Tales From Cazilor: Wyldflowers. Follow Naethan Apollo . Catch Naethan on tour .
