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070 Shake invites you to a night at the ballet with her latest album Petrichor. The rapper and singer’s junior album hit streaming services last week, but not before some listeners got a chance to experience the music in a totally unique way. Audience members arrived to the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles on November 7 in formal attire for a ballet performance accompanied by the music of Petrichor. Those who attended might recognize the pianist from that night as Johan Lenox, an artist and composer who was a primary collaborator on the album. In between studio sessions and flying to Thailand with A$AP Rocky, Johan let us in on a little bit of the behind-the-scenes from the ballet, his work on the album, and what folks can expect to hear on the upcoming Petrichor tour.

OnesToWatch: How did the ballet come together? What was your role in that?

Johan Lenox: Shake mentioned wanting to do a ballet for this as long as maybe a year ago. Having done a lot with live theater, opera, and some ballet music in my life, I let her know I really wanted to help with that. I just love big theatrical productions. Ultimately I took on sort of a music director role in it, helping arrange the song sequence, placing the interludes, and ultimately performing them. Some of the interludes were written just by me, while others were a collaboration between me and Shake. Some of them were based on stuff we’re working on for the future.

I saw your post about the ballet production being the closest thing you’ve gotten to your dream of putting classical music back into the center of our culture. Can you tell us a little more about that? What are some other goals/dreams you’re working toward and how else has this album helped you realize that vision?

I’ve been pretty interested in this since high school. I came up within the world of classical music since I was like 12 and as I got deeper and deeper into that community I got increasingly frustrated with how much it felt like they had retreated from influencing or even interacting with mainstream culture, compared to the impact that music clearly had 100 or so years before. I’m always looking for opportunities to bridge that gap. Obviously when I do string arrangements for other artists that at least brings my worlds together a bit but when I can really get an audience to sit and pay attention to just these large scale immersive pieces of music that don’t lean on vocalists or song structure at all I’m at my happiest. I have a ton of projects that came out of this idea but one particularly ambitious one is the album isomonstrosity which I did with a few friends in 2022. 

Will we see some ballet on tour? Any parallels between that event and the upcoming live shows?

We’ve talked about trying to bring the ballet idea to other cities, but I’ll leave it open as to when or how that happens. I am going to do a set of my own vocal music on the tour, but later in the night I’m also going to do an extended interlude of modern classical music, probably with live strings, which will definitely build on a lot of the interludes we did for the ballet.

How involved was the writing process? Were you sending loops or creating things on the spot?

It varies a lot from song to song. Sometimes I’ll meet up with her and she’ll play me something she started with Dave Hamelin or another collaborator and I’ll add a ton of vocals or strings or synths to it. Other times she’ll play me a phone memo of an idea she’s been working on at the piano, or even perform the idea for me live and then I’ll help build that into something bigger. Other times I’ll just pull up a synth sound or something and start playing until we find something we both love. Lately we’ve been starting a lot of ideas with just her and my vocals together.

I’ve noticed Shake’s production lives in a specific world. How do you approach writing and producing music that is so specific to another artist?

I kind of look at it the opposite way. With some artists I have to kind of adapt to their world, but I work mainly with Shake now because her sound is the exact stuff I already love. Of any contemporary artist I think her music gets the closest to the monumentality of the symphonic music that I was raised on and builds on it in the coolest way. I’ve worked with a ton of people but I keep coming back to her because of that. And what’s nice is we both bring ideas to the table that the other isn’t always expecting but help build on that shared vision. Her music inspires mine easily as much as mine inspires hers. I think if you listen to my solo stuff and my classical work it’s clear we’ve been working in the same world, it just took me a few years to find someone else who was as drawn to this sound. 

Who is on the background vocals on “Vagabond”?

I think that one’s pretty much all Shake but if you want to hear my voice you can hear me doing the crazy rhythmic chanting in Pieces of You. That idea came from an upcoming film score I’m working on that I had shown to Shake, but I had no idea it would fit that song so well until we tried it. Coming up with that “huh. hah. huh. hah” idea and absolutely bellowing layer after layer of it into the mic was probably my favorite moment of working on this album, and certainly the funniest.

I know you’ve worked with Shake for a few years. How did this album differ from other projects you’ve collaborated on? How has your working relationship evolved?

I don’t want to speak for her but personally I feel like it’s been a continuous evolution from her starting out as basically an indie rap star to growing as a singer and now being a borderline classical composer in my eyes. Each project has moved further in that direction and we have ideas for the future that go even further. I wanna write symphonies with her, operas, musicals, etc. I think the whole ballet experience was just the beginning of that.

How was working with the other collaborators on the album?

Fantastic. I owe Dave Hamelin my life for introducing us, he’s really the exec producer behind her projects and he had to trust me before she would haha. I’m just happy to be in there bringing the compositional angle Patrick Krief is a fantastic guitarist who has a lot of interesting ideas that I as a non-guitarist could never even think of, let alone execute. Vinny who does a lot of her visual content is someone I’ve enjoyed working with on my own projects, including a video I’m dropping next week and the visual this past spring from my acoustic version of I Guess We’ll Find Out. We have a lot more planned for my album next year. Lastly Shake’s recording engineer Jenna always holds it down when the rest of us are going insane.

What’s your favorite off the album?

Different every week but right now it’s Song to the Siren. That thing is insane.

It already feels like this album is going to translate well in a live setting but I’m curious if there’s anything special you’re doing on tour to bring the album to live audiences.

For that you will have to come see it…

What are you most looking forward to on tour?

Honestly every part of it. I love road tripping, I love performing, I love hanging with Shake and the rest of her crew. Hopefully we can work on some new music when we’re not onstage. I’m definitely looking forward to figuring out that classical set, and I have a ton of new solo music I’ve been wanting to sing live as well so that’ll be fun.