Photo courtesy of WATKK
Emcee Lt Headtrip and producer NorthernDraw combined their talents to create a new EP called “Novel Path.” Path is a bit of a departure from Headtrip’s normally raucous releases. Draw’s laid-back production allows Headtrip to relax on the tracks without sacrificing his lyrical dexterity.
Novel Path is an 8-song EP courtesy of WATKK. The project features appearances by Rob Sonic, LeoLex, Mostafa, Le Biscuit, Something Something Brax, and Evelina Lu.
Lt Headtrip and NorthernDraw spoke to The Real Hip-Hop about crossing geographic and language barriers musically, their 2025 North American tour, and their new EP, Novel Path.
TRHH: Why’d you call the new EP Novel Path?
Lt Headtrip: We wanted to call it something that illustrated that it’s the beginning of a journey. We went through a few iterations of how we could express that and we were like, “Do we wanna say the word journey? Do we wanna say the word map?” Path kind of seemed like a fun way to say that. You often think of a path as something that you walk on, but a path is a map, it’s like a guide. The double meaning and the word “novel” is fun to play with.
NorthernDraw: We have a three-part series because we wanted the initial first stage of three different EP’s to be about a journey. So, it’s kind of like the beginning of the path or journey.
Lt Headtrip: Yeah and this is a reveal, we haven’t told the world yet this. You got the exclusive, Sherron. Me and NorthernDraw made a bunch of songs in Portland while I lived there, and then I was like, “What if we like break them up into two EP’s?” and Draw was like, “What if we break them up into three EP’s?” and I was like, “Let’s get it!” We discussed ways to have like a theme of triptic EP’s that was already present in the topics of the songs that we were creating. Traveling and taking a journey was present in every other song, so that’s kind of how we came up with the overall theme.
TRHH: What was the process like creating those songs in Portland?
Lt Headtrip: So, Northern Draw and I met while he had just come back from Germany and I had gotten involved in a community radio station. The show “The Movement” on KBOO FM with our homie King Tim 33/3 and Soul Brother #1 Matt Funk. King Tim brought me in and by the time Draw got back he was already a part of the show. So, we started kicking it, he had a bunch of beats, we got along pretty well and I started writing to them. I feel like I blinked and me and Kip were spending a bunch of time in his studio right by the river in Portland just making tracks.
NorthernDraw: I kind of recall I had just made an album called “Crow Bref” with my friend in Germany, so, it’s half in German, half in English, while I was living in Munich. I cooked up during the pandemic a lot of beats — like hundreds and hundreds of loops. I was kind of shopping them out to him and what’s popular in Germany at the time was really like boom bap kind of sounds. I make an assortment of different kinds of beats. I’m really influenced by all kinds of music. I had kind of the leftovers from that that I kind of shopped around to some other people and Headtrip approached me and was like, “Hey we should do a West Coast tour,” and I’m like, “Well, it’s kind of hard to do a West Coast tour. It’s not like the East Coast because you have pockets.”
You have in the Northwest where you can hit maybe like Eugene, up to Vancouver, BC. We have this big gap between Eugene and the Bay Area. And then Patrick said, “We should do an East Coast tour and I’m like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” So, we kind of like pieced together a bunch of tracks of his and mine to make a set, and also made some songs together as well. A little tip, that was a great experience because we got the songs down before we even came back into the studio and recorded them. So, we already knew all the lines and stuff like that, we already performed them. We knew what would hit well, what intonations would be recorded on the song.
TRHH: Novel Path is a little more mellow than a lot of your other music, Headtrip. Was it a challenge to rhyme on those types of beats?
Lt Headtrip: You know, I definitely struggled to see myself on the final product of these beats as I approached them. So, instead of doing what I usually do, which is envision an end goal and work toward it, I just had fun with them. And that’s kind of what I promised myself I’d do, because I like making all kinds of music, I love listening to all kinds of music. My catalogue up until this point, except for a couple of tracks on EMBLEMS and like the first half of my album Dreamery have been pretty intense, as you’re very well aware. This is a far cry from the aggression of “Tap on the Glass.”
So, I just approached it with a different attitude. You know, when I first got out to the West Coast I was doing all of my heavy punk rock, get on stage and just jump off stuff, and the audience was like a little shocked. So, I was like, “Alright I need to build up to that in my set.” I think that being out West helped me find a more playful, relaxed version of my flow. It really helps that Draw is fun to hang out with. He brings a like levity and a funkiness and he studies this kind of music. He dug for all these samples, these aren’t just like plucked out of the internet. These are all vinyl samples that he found around the world. So, he has this connection to it, so, it was just fun.
NorthernDraw: Speaking of which, greetings from Osaka right now. I spent all day yesterday going to record shops and looking through all kinds of J-Pop, and weird Disco, and stuff that’s not even on the internet. That’s part of the process — hours and hours of digging through the vinyl and finding little loops and stuff like. Analog, I love it. I love to vinyl deejay, I also do Serato and all that stuff and just deejay in general. Patrick, his name is Lt Headtrip for a reason. He’s very intense, very thought out, versus I’m from the West Coast and from the Northwest where we kind of have a chiller vibe. I’m really influenced by funk and groove. In general, with my DJ sets I play a lot of rhythm and groove primarily. So, I think when we kind of came together it was kind of the mashup of those two things.
I’m also an emcee. I don’t like to claim it too much, but I do have a verse on this project and some background vocals. I think Headtrip was trying to say during our tour, “I’m still trying to figure out how you rap,” and then he’s like, “Oh, I kind of get it now.” Once we did some shows he was like, “You kind of like ride the rhythm and you kind of go with this kind of vibe of going with the flow of the party rather than just dropping intense lyrics for people to understand.” Maybe that’s a difference between areas in the States, or like versions of rap, or whatever’s popular in certain areas of the States.
Lt Headtrip: I feel that having played the Midwest, to the East Coast, and some of the South. There’s definitely a different flavor that’s pervasive in different parts of the country and in different venues specifically, of course. But New York, especially the city itself, Brooklyn, Manhattan, never really minded my intensity. Not nearly as much as Portland. I kind of just wanted to meet them where they were.
NorthernDraw helped me with some of my lyrics. I work shopped things, I bounced things off of him, he recorded my vocals, he gave me feedback after our sets and really helped me find a voice. I’m kind of rapping like I’m talking now on the album. This is how I conduct myself a lot of my day. So, it was kind of like finding the Patrick in Headtrip once again. A never-ending journey to find my voice in my voices.
TRHH: My favorite song on the EP is “That Awful Sound.” You said “Glad I planted seeds and grew my roots, ’cause things fall apart.” I loved that line! Take me into your writing process when it comes to lines with double meanings.
Lt Headtrip: So, I showed that song to Teddy Faley and he said, “That song has every punch line you’ve ever written.” I’m not really a punchline rapper like that. My double meanings show up in different ways usually. I had been listening to some Roots, I had been listening to some punchline Hip-Hop, I was listening to some Ghostface. I remember I brought back Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II, I ran that back and was like, “There’s so much heat on this album.” When I freestyle, I have bars on bars for days in notebooks and my phone, and a lot of those are more laid-back punchline battle raps that I just never really see as being part of songs.
So, frankly I saw a resurgence of punchline rap like that in underground Hip-Hop. People were really excited, and still are, starting like 3 years ago about just like punchline, punchline, punchline. I was like, “I can do that,” and I can do that better than a lot of these cats that are getting praised for it, so, I’m just going to bar out and see what happens. So, I find myself seeing the end goal and that might be the third bar, that might be the second bar, but I have a joke. I have a punchline and then I have to build a world around it. It has to rhyme, and it has to be relevant, and all the things have to connect the dots.
I’ll just spend a couple days thinking about things that not only rhyme multiple syllables, but also connects to the theme of a thing. I have alternative lines and alternative rhymes in the margin and whichever one ends up making the most connections and gets to the point the quickest, ends up winning out. So, my quatrains, my four bar segments on That Awful Sound all had probably six to eight bars that I rearranged until I fit the pieces together. That one took me a few days to write. I would touch it after work or on my way home from work. I wrote a lot of it in the car driving back and forth from Portland proper to where I lived kind of in the outskirts.
NorthernDraw: You wanted to say something about growing up in Kent?
Lt Headtrip: I found that it was important for me to talk about where I come from and to tell people kind of my path that I’ve been on in that song. We talked about this the last time we spoke, Sherron, I don’t own a gun. The song is about the sound of shots being fired. I came up with those first lines very quickly. I grew up in Kent, Ohio. May 4, 1970 four students were killed and many others were harmed when the National Guard opened fire on a group of peaceful protesters – students. I thought that was a good starting point, but then I came up with that hook and I was like, “Okay I’m going to tell my story.” I address it directly in the second verse, which I felt I needed to do.
Lamon actually told me to take out two words, “Weapon metaphors are evidently suitable/I tried to keep it safe before, It wasn’t getting through to y’all.” He was like, “Take out ‘to y’all’ and just like let that moment breathe.” I think that that’s kind of a decent thesis statement on that song. I’m here rapping in a way that I’m really good at, it’s not really normally how I spit, but this is how I’m trying to get through to people who might not be able to approach my more unique and sporadic flows.
NorthernDraw: It’s one of my favorite beats too, Sherron. I like that. It’s kind of this Roc Marciano looped up style. It’s a weird Russian record or something like that, I don’t even know what it is. I don’t know what it says, but I kind of pieced some parts together.
Lt Headtrip: It’s so good. It’s a great ender. After an album of funky vibes, it ends on kind of like a side eye like, “Is everything alright?” Then you gotta start it up again to get the good feelings back.
TRHH: So, Draw, what’s in your production workstation?
NorthernDraw: I use Ableton a lot, I use a 404 sampler for my sets and also sampling a lot. I used to have all kinds of equipment and maybe like five years ago I moved to Germany and I had to get rid of all of my studio when I moved. So, I kind of just prioritized the 404, a portable record player — in the box production. It kind of runs the gamut because I also run a small label called Thirsty City. I’ve been doing an event for 10 years in Portland called Thirsty City that puts on producers and people that make their own music. It started as just kind of like a instrumental beat event, but then we started bringing in rappers, and now we’re like everything. If you make ambient music, Drum and Bass, whatever, if you make your own music we kind of want to showcase it and not putting any limits on it.
So, I mean with that I produce all kinds of different stuff, and I love to work with other producers, too. You get a cool product out of having different minds come together and different processes coming together. Maybe one day I’ll be with a friend from the Bay or something, we’ll be making like a footwork track or something like that. Shout out my friend JM — Joe Mousepad, we have a couple albums out – it kind of runs the gamut. I also like love beats and I love vinyl — collecting vinyl, selling vinyl, playing vinyl, finding rare stuff, so, that fits really well with Hip-Hop and with rappers, right? So, when I have the time I’ll go make some loops and shop them out to people. I think I have two other EP’s I’m working on right now with some rappers.
Lt Headtrip: Draw will travel the world and stuff his carry-on with vinyl that he finds all over the place. This dude’s carry-on will weigh like 70 lbs. and he’s trying to put it in the overhead compartment [laughs].
NorthernDraw: This is my first time digging in Japan and I’m in trouble, dude. It’s like dumb cheap and like the craziest stuff. I’m like, “Oh my God!” So many records. I’m going to hook up with a DJ tomorrow and she’s gonna take me digging in Osaka to like all the spots, and there’s like a vinyl swap that only happens like a couple times a year, so, I’m like, “Oh dude, what the fuck!”
Lt Headtrip: And then he’ll bring it all back into the basement and just sit there at his turntable and listen to everything front to back, find a loop, throw it in the 404, and so it begins.
NorthernDraw: If people are into vinyl, if you want some advice I mean I’ll give them a tip. I can give them tips for production or whatever, too, but I got so many records and not enough to last my whole lifetime, so, I like to keep them if I’m going to play them in my set. Maybe if something is valuable I’ll sell some stuff, but if I have a record that I know I’ll never play out, it’s not worth some money, or something I just don’t wanna keep, I just rip a bunch of samples and then I’ll have a stack of records that I just get rid of. Because I’ll have the sample on my 404 and I know the records may be worth like 5 bucks or something I’m like, “Okay I’m never going to play that out, I got the sample I need.” Sometimes I’ll keep it, but I’ll kind of just process through stuff to keep my collection limited, because I already have such a big collection.
Lt Headtrip: Do you have Spotify?
NorthernDraw: I’m on Spotify, but I don’t have Spotify.
Lt Headtrip: You listen to music on Apple Music then?
NorthernDraw: No.
Lt Headtrip: What do you do? How do you listen to music?
NorthernDraw: Cassettes, vinyl.
Lt Headtrip: So, you spend all your time listening to music on your record player? You’re locked in to the thing that you’re using to produce.
NorthernDraw: Yeah. I don’t got internet at the house. Just got a tape player at the house, cassettes, studio, got the records going.
Lt Headtrip: All analog. So, you’re always tapped into the thing that you’re using to create. It’s not a step to the left in order to find a sample, you’re just already there.
NorthernDraw: Sure. I think that’s part of the process, part of the lifestyle, the flow. But there’s always a catch 22 that maybe I can be making some playlists on Spotify. I’m in Osaka right now for a dance battle and there’s all these dancers from all over the world. It’s specifically Tutting, it’s a version of popping and they were all sessioning at a subway station yesterday and I went checked them out and I’m like, “I brought my DJ stuff. I don’t know if you want me to deejay, but let me hear what they have to throw down.” It was just all different cultures and someone would put on the playlist like, “Oh, this is some Bay Area Turfing music or something.” And then a cat from Taiwan or something would play some other crazy EDM stuff. I don’t have this in my catalog, but it’s kind of the downside to it.
Lt Headtrip: But you have the stuff to make and to be the NorthernDraw that you are.
NorthernDraw: Sure, I guess it maybe gives me a little more of a unique flavor in an era that everything is digital to have the roots on the analog stuff. I’ve always been like that — always just dug records and made tapes so.
TRHH: On the song “It’s All Timing” you said “I wouldn’t feel normal if I never felt weird.” Explain that line.
Lt Headtrip: It’s this idea of everybody’s got their baseline, right? That baseline is what could be described as normal for them. But my baseline needs to be wavering in order for me to feel like myself. I need new experiences, I need to be shook out of my comfort zone, I need to be proven wrong and, I need to meet people that are smarter than me, I need to meet interesting people. I need to be shaking up my path in order to feel like I’m myself.
If I’m too content, if I’m too stable, I feel like I could just jump out of my skin. I suppose initially that line was, “I wouldn’t feel normal if I never got weird,” this ‘let’s get weird’ thing. But all the people who have said that to me a bunch are talking about that on a totally different level. So, I shifted it. I played with that word a bunch. Let’s just say feel twice, because it’s true. Why not just say something that’s true to me?
TRHH: You guys are going on tour this spring?
Lt Headtrip: Yes. We will be doing some shows in the Midwest and then in the DC area. We’re cooking up some stuff for the end of summer, too. We haven’t locked anything in completely yet, but we’re gonna hit the road a couple times a year as much as we can and moving forward. I like touring with this guy — solid tour partner. Really enjoyed our last tour last year.
Kip turns to one of the people that we encountered on the road and goes, “I think this guy likes touring with me because I’m not a fuckwad.” The exact quote [laughs]. I was like, “Yeah it’s pretty true.” He drives, he’s polite, he works his ass off, he’s fun and he knows when it’s time to just take our take our moments in separate rooms. It could be wild being on the road.
NorthernDraw: I don’t drink anymore, too. So, that’s another thing.
Lt Headtrip: Oh yeah, that’s beautiful. You drive and don’t drink? My dude, tour forever!
TRHH: What do you hope to achieve with Novel Path?
Lt Headtrip: When I first started kicking it with Draw and he had just dropped Crow Bref I was so excited. I speak some German, I’m fascinated by the world that is not my immediate world, and here’s this guy that makes dope music who has just been all over the place and he’s putting out this bilingual album. Draw is not really completely fluent in German, he just really enjoys meeting new people and making music.
NorthernDraw: Most of those people are like my homies, too. I’ve known them for years.
Lt Headtrip: Frankly, I was like, “I’m making music with this guy already, if we could get some other people on the album from different countries then I could be collaborating with people from other countries, and that begins the door opening to me playing shows in those other countries. That’s a really good in to internationally tour. We talked about it and it just became part of the projects conceit that we would reach beyond Portland. So, it’s an album made in Portland, we got Portland features on there on every EP, and then it’s the rest of the world.
I find that right now it’s more important than ever to cross borders, and to breakdown boundaries, and to collaborate with people that speak different languages that come from different backgrounds, that look different than you. Frankly, I hope to inspire people and show them that as humans we are totally capable of reaching out and calling people that we’ve never met our neighbors, and using music to connect across these very rigid borders that the powers that be are trying to construct, and trying to fortify with all of their power and authority. We’re here to say, “Fuck that.” We are all neighbors, we’re all humans, let’s hop on a track together, let’s talk about some shit together.
Let’s all agree that we like funk, let’s all agree that we like Hip-Hop, let’s say, “That’s not my style. I dig it, I see you doing your thing.” I think that it’s a great connector. I see Draw doing this all over the place. I see a lot of our homies back in Portland, King Tim, connecting humans with music. So, that’s a huge goal of mine with this project and I hope people can see that without me having to spell it out too much. I’m also glad to elaborate on that and to talk my shit around that.
NorthernDraw: I think it also fits with the idea of the EP of like a journey. We’re going through a journey, we’re all here. I said to my friend Conrad when we’re traveling through the Tokyo subway station, at the main station the other day there was just so many thousands and thousands of people, you’re just like dodging through them, “It’s one of the most populated cities in the world and all these people have all these paths. We all led to this one point together just for a split second. We’re all going to keep on going on our own ways of our lives.” And that’s it, for that one moment we’re all in this room just walking by each other [laughs]. Never to happen ever again.
Traveling really makes you have a lot of insight and learning about your own self and your own journey and stuff like that. Have compassion, don’t judge people until you walk in their shoes, and stuff like that. I don’t speak any Japanese. There are just some basic words I’ve learned here. I told my friend, Conrad, “Oh, we’re those guys now. We like only speak 3 words, and just have cameras, and are taking photos of everything and just stumbling around the city.” How many times have you seen that in the States with someone that’s like a foreigner and they’re just so like wide eyed and capturing everything and you’re like, “Alright, you newb.” Now we know what it feels like.
So, I feel like the intent of this album and the ones to come is definitely to bridge those gaps hopefully. Maybe people will listen to it, and like some of it in another country, and make some music with it. Because the world is not that big of a place when you’re into subcultures like rap, Hip-Hop, or whatever kinds of music. Showcased here where I’m in the dance world are some of the best Tuttors in the world. People from the Philippines, from Taiwan, China, from the Bay Area, from all over the place, they’re all here just sharing their culture together.
Lt Headtrip: I’m very excited — not a single feature on this album is somebody that I’ve worked with before. So, not only did I explore a new sound and unlock some different flows in myself and my writing, but I made some new connections, I made some new friends. Rob Sonic’s on the album.
I’ve been listening to Rob since I 16 years old. I connected with him when I moved to Portland and we hit it off. Draw was like, “We’re going to get your boy Bobby on a track, right?” and I was like, “Of course!” Frankly, I was a little nervous. Even though it’s my dude, he’s a legend. But we got him on the record and he’s psyched about it.
NorthernDraw: The track is sick.
Lt Headtrip: The track is sick, right? That’s my favorite track right now.
NorthernDraw: Can I just say that, that track I made it with just the internal mic on the computer and beat boxing.
Lt Headtrip: Yep! That’s just him making noises with his mouth! I love it, I’m playing that shit tomorrow. Evelina Lu, a Swedish singer-songwriter that’s on “Om Jag Var” I’m very excited to connect with her. That’s one of Draw’s friends. My partner is Swedish and we visit here and there, and I’m really excited to link up with her next time I visit Sweden.
NorthernDraw: We’ve got a second track with her too.
Lt Headtrip: Yeah, we got another one coming out on probably the third EP. LeoLex is the other half of Crow Bref — he’s the dude that spits in German. The Mostafa Interlude, he has a full feature on our next EP, so you can look forward to hearing him spit. Just to connect with these people I’ve already accomplished most of my goals with this, which was work on an album that is a different sound than I’ve done before, push myself, take risks, and connect with other humans. There’s still a lot of work to do and pushing the album out, and I’m excited to play these songs live, but I’ve already accomplished a lot. Thanks for making this record with me, Draw, I really appreciate it.
NorthernDraw: Salute.
Purchase: Lt Headtrip and NorthernDraw: Novel Path