A CONVERSATION WITH... GOGO
Gogo talks us through his journey as a music artist, and new EP Rewind.
On a cold night, somewhere between studio hours and sleepless introspection, Gogo made a beat that changed everything.
That moment of creative ignition would become the genesis of Rewind, a self-produced, genre-defiant EP that refuses to sit still—or be silenced. It didn’t start with clarity. In fact, it started with a collapse.
“I was mixing what I thought was going to be my debut EP,” Gogo recalls, “and I realised the music wasn’t me. Hearing it finished was like being introduced to a stranger pretending to be me. It was hollow. A failure. I was devastated.”
Instead of burying that disappointment, Gogo used it as fuel. What followed wasn’t a course correction—it was a complete restart. A reinvention. The result is Rewind: a project unbound by genre, expectation, or compromise. It’s alternative pop, R&B, soul, rock—and none of those things. It’s exactly Gogo.
Rewind doesn’t just sound different—it feels different. There’s a palpable sense of urgency, as if the songs had to happen, or the artist might implode. That intensity comes from Gogo’s commitment to making music on his own terms.
“You shouldn't make anything conventional—just hit record and use your taste. There are no rules,” he says. “Music is free. Genres were created to categorise it. I just let it be whatever feels right.”
From shimmering soul hooks to gritty rock textures and lush alt-pop flourishes, Rewind plays like a collage of a person—flawed, raw, but magnetic. And every choice, he insists, is intentional. Every sound, handcrafted.
“This project is zero compromise,” he says. “It’s me. All of it. I had to hustle, live in the studio, work weird jobs, and rely on friends just to make it happen. But I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”
A central theme in Rewind is escape—not just from physical places, but from fear, from identity constructs, from the noise of an industry obsessed with algorithms.
“When you're creating for metrics, you lose meaning,” Gogo warns. “You might as well let AI do it. People care about people. About perspective. That’s what moves culture.”
For Gogo, escape is both survival and liberation. It bleeds through the songs, the visuals, and now, the film he’s directing to accompany the album. The cinematic thread was always there—he just didn’t realize it at first.
“I’m not a big movie guy,” he admits. “But every time I write, I see a scene in my head. It’s like each song is a different piece of a film. And now, I’m putting those pieces together.”
The full-length visual project will tie together seven music videos with interwoven scenes, building a narrative arc around the album’s emotional core. “It gives more depth to the theme of escape. It shows you the bigger picture,” he says.
The rebellious spirit behind Rewind is deeply personal. Gogo’s journey—from Stockholm to brothels in New York, through Moroccan deserts and sleepless studio nights—is not just about physical travel. It’s about transformation.
“I used to be afraid to not know,” he says. “Now I just follow where the music wants to go.”
And while Gogo counts icons like D’Angelo and Lauryn Hill as sonic touchstones, he’s not here to replicate. He’s here to create space. “Art changes when someone dares to be different. That’s the vibe I chase.”
What does zero compromise look like in practice? For Gogo, it means sacrifice—but also liberation.
“I’ve had to compromise my life to not compromise the music,” he says. “But I feel successful already. My dream was to make music that sounds like me. And I did it.”
Beyond an adoration for jazz and pop, Lusaint was spending her time crafting ballads with a lot of other writers and producers. “I didn’t really know my sense of identity as an artist, and that went on for about a year and a half. One day, I just thought to myself:
‘I need to do this for myself and not for somebody else.’”
She started compiling the voice notes she collected in her phone, notes from her inspirations and other music she liked, to put in the effort to be and have her own project.
Still, ambition burns bright. Gogo wants the whole world to hear Rewind, not for fame, but to show what’s possible. “I want people to know you can just do it. You can make art without losing yourself.”
That’s the message at the heart of Rewind—a record born not from perfection, but from burning everything down to get to the truth.
“When I make a song I love, I feel endlessly successful,” Gogo shares.
