My "Degen Z" Diary

the story of how it took me 4 years to become an overnight sensation.
Well... of how I will be in 3 months when the album releases. 
 the story of how I made it too big to fail.

 

Releasing everywhere December 12th, 2025!
START WITH THE ALBUM TEASER BELOW:

PRE-SAVE "DEGEN Z" SINGLES NOW!

What does it take to make an album?

It's easy to comment at me or DM me saying "drop the album"
but let me tell you why there is never a good time to "drop the album"
I could have "dropped" the album whenever...
But those few extra years of patience, testing, and hard work
WILL be what changes my life.

In my entire 8 year career as an artist, I've written well over 5,000 songs... 
I've made a dozen mixtapes, a 73 song concept album, and plenty of EPs under plenty of artist names I had. I know musically, it would be easy for me to pump out 8 songs and make a cover art. However, back throughout 2021 and into 2022 I had just finished my "Icarus" EP, so there wasn't much reason to think of an album. That was also back when I thought "if I could just get a record deal" it would fix everything. 
I was bouncing from manager to manager. They all dropped me or stopped responding. People were waiting because I had been hyping up this "EP" for a year or two. Thankfully the best-worst thing that could have happened to me, did. 

I "dropped" the EP, and it flopped miserably. Years of work building up audience suspense just to send them the link to a four song let down. And to make matters worse, It was a let down with no lead up or buzz. Rightfully so I lost thousands of followers, I lost my confidence in what I was doing, and to top it all off I switched distributors incorrectly and it broke all my artist profiles...
All of my songs and millions of streams just *poof*   
"well, fuck."


I was always raised with the saying: 

"If you're going to do something, do it right."


"Okay... So I have to start over... Again..."
As a one man team I have to wear a lot of hats to get things done in a timely and financially responsible way. That doesn't mean I have to cut corners and lose quality hoping I get lucky. Quite the opposite, I need to start refining, acknowledging where are my strengths that I can save, and where are the places I need to make time to learn? I realized the only reason I ever wanted a record deal was solely for marketing money. It's not like I need tens of thousands of dollars to burn through studio time and engineers.. I'm an RIAA Gold certified engineer, time to show it. I don't need to pay for songwriters because why the fuck would I? I already manage myself, built all my own ad pixels and cross platform digital merch stores. I have over a decade of design experience , I built this website myself. I taught myself how to A/B ads, run different types of campaigns and market my music.

that is when I had my breakthrough moment... There is nothing a major artist or label has that I don't already do for myself and help do for others..

"I haven't made something worth getting the money for"

that was it... I had never made something good enough to take the risk myself.

So I went all in.

Let's start with my bedroom studio over the past 8 years:

Making your debut album independently in your bedroom and trying to compete on the charts with Major Label backed artists can seem a bit overwhelming.

But,
I just did it...

What I used to make "Degen Z"

How to make Bedroom Hits with RIAA CERTIFIED Gold Engineer James Laurent 

First and foremost a good attitu- nah that'd be stupid as fuck lmao, I did not have a good attitude for most of the project. I had short bursts of creative inspiration, long droughts of just waiting and doing nothing trying to pay off what I already spent so I could afford some type of release plan. And when you sit on songs for years you also have enough time to doubt and second guess. Which only makes a lot of the doubt worse, which is probably why I changed the track list 4 or 5 times, changed the cover 3 times, and changed the whole Album name one last time.

FOR RECORDING:

My recording chain is a Neumann TLM-103 microphone with double pop filters and a Se Electronics reflection shield
My TLM-103 goes into the bottom of my double NEVE 1073spx Pre-amp & EQs where I add my phantom power, tweak my high pass and shelves and then give it a moderate gain, I record quiet.
The output of the bottom Neve pre-amp is feeding the input of my TubeTech CL1-b compressor. I aim for a medium attack & release and about 1-5dB of Gain Reduction.
The compressed signal is then sent out of the CL1-b into Mic Input 1 on my audio interface - I have a Universal Audio Apollo x8p connected over thunderbolt to my M1 Mac Studio
Finally the finishing touch is my all white Audio-technica closed back studio headphones.

Most important here is your interface, you can have the $15,000 recording chain like me but if I put my final chain output into a focusrite scarlett as the A to D converter & clock into the DAW, it's still going to sound like shit. Get a $200 Rode NT1-A and put that extra $1200 towards your interface and not towards the top level microphones.

 

FOR MIXING:

DISCLAIMER: mixing is an art form as well as a mathematical science, you do not need expensive plugins and thousand dollar software to be a good mixer. I could do everything I did on this album with free stock plugins, I don't do that because it takes too much time to achieve the same sound with stock.

The 3 most important things for a good mix:
1. A well treated room, tuned speakers that you know the sound of
2. patience and practice as well as the passion to always keep learning
3. using reference mixes & listening back in your car.


Now for the Tools I use:

I am a completely in-the-box mixer so all of my mixing is digital. I do recommend Sonarworks room tuning DAW software, it is a mind blowing difference. Even in my room which I hand treated, I didn't realize the sound was THAT far off. I am a 5 times certified expert in Avid Pro Tools which is my main DAW of choice for everything audio. My Speakers are Yamaha HS-8s on isolation foam & stands.

MY GO-TO Mixing Plugins:

Synchro Arts - Vocalign Ultra
Sonarworks - Sound Reference ID
Cradle - The God Particle
Fabfilter - Total Bundle
Antares -  Auto-tune & Auto-Key, 
Waves - SSL G Bus Comp, SSL E Channel, Rvox, Ovox, Puigtec EQs, Berzerk Distortion, Kramer Tape, J37, H Delay, CLA-2A, CLA-76, Center
iZotope - Nectar 4, RX 7, Insight 2
Soundtoys - complete bundle
Brainworx - Black Box Analog Design HG-2MS, bx_console Focusrite sc,
Black Box Analog Design HG2, Maag EQ4 MS, bx_digital v3
Universal Audio -  LA-2A Legacy, Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, Distressor

THE SECRET MIXING SAUCE:

The secret to a good mix is incredibly simple, It is the most effective thing I do to get any of my tracks ready to transition from Rough or DEMO mixes into Final Vocal & Final mixes.

It all lies in the amount of time and care you put into your PREMIX. 

At first it is going to feel like it takes forever, and trust me, it never gets any more fun, I sit alone in the dark in my bedroom mumbling like an old man about how it's a job for interns, and that's because it is mindless boring work, but It transforms absolutely everything about your song before you even start the mix. 
Here's my order of operations that allows me to make radio ready music in my bedroom...

1. "Save as" a copy of your finished recording session with the tag PREMIX
   (always create "save as" when moving from recording to premix to mix)
2. Separate your vocals into their different mix groups, for me personally that's
   Verse Leads, Verse Doubles, Adlibs, Hook leads, Hook harm, Hook Hi, Hook Low, Hook stabs, BGV
3. After all your tracks are separated, organize the session, color coordinate groups, Assign the track outputs to the mix bus aux tracks, prep a loose gain stage of volume, Color and label everything.
4. Start at the top and work your way down, start with the group at the top, for me it's always verse leads, and just go through every single recording and manually cut out the breaths and silence. Add Fades to to clip ends, every single sibilance or pop, manually de-ess it, select just that area split the clip into it's own, lower it -3 to -9dB depending on stereo positioning. and do that across the whole group for every single clip. When you finish that, start the next group until you've manually de-essed and popped the whole song, as well as removed breaths and added fades for easy transitioning.
5. Graph and Tune all the vocals. In this section I once again go left to right, top to bottom, and I graph all the auto-tune notes so I can have full control over the amount of tuning, whether note transitions need to smooth or happen a little earlier or later, maybe one of your layer had two words that were a note flat, bump em up!. Graphing takes up a lot of processing so to combat this, I record the graphed auto to a new track in the group and then hide and make the tuning track inactive in case I want to change something later.
6. After all tracks are manually cleaned, tuned to your liking, and organized by color & group, I use VocalignUltra by Synchro Arts because a lot of my songs are very heavy on vocal layering of chords and harmonies. Vocalign will retime and align your vocals for you and even match pitch from one track to another, match the timing for any layers and stacks.
   
7. Create a "Save As" and now you can start your vocal Mix!

 

"it's fine" is never fine

I've been working on this album for 4 years, and I listened to the demos, or final mixes I was doing thousands of times. It used to be that If I heard something that sounded off whether it was maybe a slight timing issue, or a flat note, or maybe my layers weren't quite right that I would just say "it's fine"
Not this time, not on my album. If this was going to my big splash then I couldn't have ANY gut feelings, or "oh, maybe i shou--" everything needed to be redone, and redone again until I was 100% confident that it was objectively good. I re-recorded the original outro song 4 different times through 11 different mix versions, for the song to ultimately get cut from the album anyways. Most of the songs on the album other than Midnight Speeding had some lengthy amount of remixing getting up to mix versions 18+ and I still didn't like how something was. I wrote new verses for Degen Z 11 times in 4 days until I was confident it was being portrayed the way I wanted, and would have the impact it needed to.

Party Time Over
Welcome to the new Degeneration

 

How "Pity Party" became "Degen Z"

three months before it's release.

For over two years this was the album's title and cover art. It was also a 10 song album with an entirely different tracklist, order, and feeling. At some point in 2024 I Cut two songs from Pity Party and had a pretty solid feel to it.

It wasn't until July of 2025 this year when I signed my distribution agreement with Symphonic and my A&R Abir said we should get the album out this year, All the years of complacency or self doubt came rushing back. I was faced with the reality that this was really going to come out after years of work and waiting, and I wasn't confident in it. I created This idea in 2023 when I was 22-23 years old and now I'm going to turn 26 the day after the lead single releases to start the the rollout. I don't feel the way I did then anymore, my life isn't the same as it was and my timeframe to tell that story was over. I knew time was running out to make a whole lot of changes, but I knew my issue was a gut feeling that the ending wasn't strong enough.

I DM'd Moxas (who I had never spoken to before) and explained my situation to him and how I felt the ending wasn't where I needed it to be. I reached out initially not knowing if he would even open this absolute novel I just left in his inbox, but within 20 minutes he responded and said he do a feature. I felt like I just found the missing piece to the puzzle of my album, I would have a complete and full fleshed out project. 

Except I didn't have a song written and ready to send him, so I had about 72 hours to send him a pack of Demos with open verses to keep my timeline. 48 hours later, I had what would be the new title track "Degen Z" and had sent Moxas the Demos for "Weaponized Tears" and "Friends Money Love" and then I scrambled to make sure I could secure the exclusive rights to the instrumentals and making sure everything was cleared. I didn't know which song Moxas would choose and I needed to have the one he didn't choose ready for the album so I created second verses for both tracks. As I started final mixing process for all three songs I felt more connected to them and felt they were better showcases of my current level of artistry. I knew Pity Party was a great song, but I didn't think it could have the impact I wanted to as the introduction title track to my album. That is when I made the album title change and I got on Photoshop and started toying with new cover arts. Everyone in my corner unanimously agreed that Friends Money Love should go for Moxas, so I rewrote my second verse for Weaponized Tears again and finalized my mix.

One DM I sent on a gut feeling had lead to me figuring out and solving everything I had ever felt was off about it. My debut album felt complete, it was complete. I could close the chapter on 4 years of these songs and move to the next phase of me as an artist.

Which leads me to here, when the album is done, is when the work begins.

IT'S ONLY 15% MUSIC

My full time job at FX, I average working 60 hour weeks and often we have to do 24/7 shifts when big shows are coming out, there are only 6 of us engineers to keep 1,000 people and all the machines working all the time and also having things we have to maintain and test and upgrade and move the technology forward.. I also commute like an hour and a half each way everyday and usually work weekends, Which is the only way I can afford to put out my music and pay for PR and pay my producers and buy merch But I’m a one man team so I built and run this website, all my socials, all my artist profiles, and all my advertising campaigns.
I have to record, mix, master the music myself, then create all graphics, content, cover arts, stuff to promote, set up marketing, for my album I’ve also had to deal with a lot of legal stuff so I’ve spent about $25,000 just making the album fully owned by me and have all the legal and exclusive music and copyright laws and then I have to create a full album rollout of graphics and content and make a calendar and pay for all of that, I also have spent $7,000 for a whole PR company campaign, I have another 5-10k in other campaigns and I have to do all the merch, change banners, make alternate versions of songs and posts, and keep buzz going.

I'm averaging 8-12 hours of sleep a week, but I have some of the most amazing people reach out to me and share their stories of the impact of my music. Support like that let's me know I have something special here, I've already changed lives, supported and helped start dreams. I'm doing what I can to inspire and teach, and at the end of the day whether my album does wonders or not....
I've connected with you, I've been the comfort for some when they had no other, I've been an open and welcoming place where anybody can reach out to me and ask questions or for help and I will make them a priority. 

---
Those that have taken the time to speak with me know the deep passion and respect I hold for every aspect of my art.

Degen Z