“Right after that show, we caught an Uber to the studio,” recalls Holiday, age eighteen. Both separately already had plans to hit mutual friend Trippy Moe’s studio, and ended up recording three songs together that night.
“It was fate,” says Cart3r, 25. “We just linked up, built a connection and made some really good music.”
Their partnership continued to grow, and now the two have recorded an entire collaborative EP together, The Sky Is on Fire, due in July. The first single from the project, “NeEd mY LuV,” dropped in early April, and the pair plans to tease another song or two this Saturday, May 27, at the Black Buzzard. Both artists are scheduled to perform alongside DNA Picasso, Christian Angelo, Malcolm Whyz3 and U.T.I.C.A. The audience can expect to hear at least one unreleased track from the project, as well as the new single.
“That was a complete accident, too,” says Cart3r of the joint project. “On Thanksgiving, [HOLiDAY] posted him singing the first half of ‘NeEd mY LuV,’ the song that we just dropped. It didn’t even sound like how it sounds now. I [commented], ‘I’m on the way.’ At first I was just kidding, but obviously I thought the song was fire, and he was like, ‘Pull up.’ So I pulled up to the studio, we recorded ‘NeEd mY LuV,’ and then we made the rest of the EP that night. We weren’t trying to make an EP; we just did.”
Like their initial connection, their working relationship felt instinctual. “None of this was intentional. Everything, even our friendship, has been pretty natural. It was honestly one of the dopest creative experiences I’ve had, and I’ve worked with a decent amount of people, big and small,” says Cart3r, who moved to Denver in early 2022.
Chris Cart3r is originally from Louisville, Kentucky, but moved to Denver to pursue music.
Trey Karson
As the son of musician Azma Holiday (who has played with Rebel Tongue, U.S. Pipe and Parliament Funkadelic), Holiday has been involved with music his whole life, and started developing his own sound and production style at age ten.
“I did grow up around Bootsy Collins and a couple of the actual members of Funkadelic, which was pretty cool. I was really young, so I wasn’t able to understand a lot of what was going on, but as far as the vibrations of certain things they would play on the bass or me being attracted to sound, it definitely carried through,” recalls Holiday, who lives in Aurora. “I didn’t really listen to a lot of mainstream artists. That was one thing my dad was super serious about, was for me to play with sound and experience it more before listening to people, because they can have a serious impact on how you go about your work.”
HOLiDAY may only be eighteen, but he’s got music in his blood.
Morbid Megan
Once he established a solid skill set of his own, Holiday began studying how such hitmakers as Kanye West, Alchemist and Kenny Beats adapted to producing for a diverse roster of musicians.
“Working with a certain type of person will give me inspiration to go make a certain type of beat,” he explains. “Like, Lil Uzi Vert dropped ‘I Just Wanna Rock,’ and then Chris had that type of beat for a single. Even though Uzi did it, if I didn’t hear somebody closer to me testing the waters and playing with it, it’s not something that as a producer I would have been comfortable with exploring.”
Cart3r agrees that they have been able to inspire each other throughout this process. “HOLiDAY is a big influence to me. It makes me feel like I’m working with a young Pharrell or something,” he says. “It’s weird to be in a room with someone who is so talented. It makes you want to be better. His beats bring that out of me. It blows my mind, really, because he’s eighteen. I wish I’d had that amount of skill in my pinkie when I was eighteen.”
Cart3r says that once he heard HOLiDAY’s instrumentals, he vowed never to go looking for beats on YouTube again.
Trey Karson
The Sky Is on Fire is an impressive display of both Cart3r and Holiday’s musical chops, as the two take turns spitting bars and crooning choruses. Holiday’s playful production uses elements such as arcade-style synths, growling bass lines and vocal-layering techniques to curate a distinct atmosphere on each of the six tracks. Considering that the project was inspired by the concept of a multiverse, it makes sense that each song makes listeners feel transported to a different world.
“At the time, I was just really into the Spider-Verse, and I thought that it would be really cool to play on that,” says Cart3r. Holiday adds that all the songs are basically following the same story, but each one presents an alternate timeline. “It made sense for the collective of songs and the way that they flowed. After listening to them back to back, the story that we both picked up on was the same type of situation, but seeing it play out in a bunch of different multiverses,” he says.
As a call-back to the multiverse theme, the duo originally wanted to have animated music videos in different art styles for each track, but the prohibitive cost of animation pushed Cart3r and Holiday to consider live action instead. “Now I want to take it in a more cinematic direction,” says Cart3r, who will direct the videos. “We can still do things we wanted to do with the cartoons, but just make it more real and have it really hit home and connect with people. But I also just want to have fun with this rollout, because it is in different universes, so we can really do whatever we want. In some of these universes, we’re already famous, so we’re going to do TMZ-style clips of funny moments, and we can really play with that idea. This will be my first real rollout, so I’m giving it my all, and I think it’ll be dope.”
Chris Cart3r (left) and HOLiDAY have a collaborative EP coming this July, titled The Sky Is on Fire.
Dirtsworld
DNA Picasso with Chris Cart3r, HOLiDAY, Christian Angelo, Malcolm Whyz3 and U.T.I.C.A. feat. RSKWARED, 8 p.m., Saturday, May 27, The Black Buzzard at Oskar Blues Grill & Brew, 1624 Market Street. Tickets are $20.