If the newest season of creative retreat-turned-digital series Flow State makes anything clear, it’s that spaces for boundless creativity are more important than they’ve ever been. Produced in collaboration with audio equipment giant Focusrite, producers from across the country joined the creative retreat, spending five days in Chicago finding creativity and community that played to each of their individual strengths at once.
“A continuous conversation [I have] is about what it looks like for art to actually just live and be and not be art for hire,” explains Raney Antoine Jr., a New Orleans-born producer and professor at Loyola University who leads the retreat alongside Dr. Pyar Seth, founder of HipHopRX, a research lab focused on what health and justice can look like through the lens of Black and Brown music. “So the thought was like, what if we got the folks that are actually doing the work and carrying a heavy load and created a space for them?” Four other producers, Spiff Sinatra, Ashilee Ashilee, LEALE, and Benji, round out the cast as they lived, worked, and explored Chicago for five days, each bringing their individual and collective experiences back to daily jam sessions.
It’s a sense of connection Dr. Seth says was largely lost in a post-COVID world, when 2020 saw studios and coffee shops largely close. “It's estimated that there's like 20 to 40% less human interaction today than there was five, six years ago,” Dr. Seth explained. “So I think that's what's actually really dope about this space is that people actually get to come together.” The group trades in their individual grinds for a shared one, searching for creative calm through sometimes chaotic daily lives. “I had so much going on at home. So I was like, okay, I have to relax and chill to really just actually be a musician again,” said Ashilee Ashilee, a Detroit-born producer and multi-instrumentalist based in Atlanta. She spent years as first-chair viola before turning to production, and landing 3 chart-topping credits in the process. “My favorite place in Chicago was the backyard of the house with a fire pit, a basketball court, a grill, and a swing set. Most of my family's in Michigan, so it was refreshing to just be there, feel like family, and just be able to play.”
For Atlanta-based producer and engineer LEALE, the Chicago retreat was a return to his hometown and the scene that jump-started his career, with many of his biggest credits being alongside late rapper Juice WRLD. “My life was a little hectic at the time, so it was like a nice oasis in my summer: to get with folks I love and do a thing I love in a restful week of creation and fellowship,” he explained. That fellowship’s held across two retreats so far, and saw the group click from the very first day. “The first day in New Orleans, everybody's already playing instruments, but we just fell in line; that was our communication,” added Benji, a Pittsburgh-born producer, bassist and member of Atlanta collective Spillage Village. “When we came back together in Chicago, now we're catching up. The way we work is seamless, as if we've known each other for 20-plus years.”
While each producer brings something different to the room, knowing your lane doesn’t always mean staying in it. Half the fun, the group says, is watching each other wander out of theirs. “You find out everybody's specialist traits, but we get charged up by the next person because they're doing something on the instrument that they don't even play,” Spiff Sinatra explained. With production credits for 21 Savage and Summer Walker under his belt, the New Orleans-born producer runs his own label and emerging artist roster. “And it inspires you to be like, you know what? I don't play the guitar, but let me pick it up. It teaches you to always be a student of the game.”
In a city as musically rich as Chicago, from soul icons like Curtis Mayfield and Donny Hathaway to the birth of house, the retreat leaned into it, connecting with spaces like Studio Shapes where they spoke to other young artists from across the city. “You can't separate the music from the context in which it's created, so I think there's this inevitable kind of immersion,” Dr. Seth added. “I think all of that is just kind of a part of what makes the art that we love, art.
Parts of that instinctive shift followed the producers back home, working their way into their lives and new creative processes, and manifesting as patience, making room for more collaboration and prioritizing joy in the creative process. “I’m always pretty much asking myself, am I having fun while I'm doing this?” Benji said. “If not, something needs to change. You know what I mean? If I'm not having fun, then this song's not going to be good. I can promise you that.”
