MAJOR LEAGUE

Biography
•"I don't want to make the same record over and over again. I not only want to represent lyrically where I'm at as a person today, but stylistically I want to represent the time that I'm in. I'm 31, which is different than 21, and which is different than 25. It's a much different time in my life and I wanted the new record to reflect that. Phone Call doesn't sound like anything I've done before, and I think that's important."
•Given Myster X's stature as one of modern music's most compelling Songwriter, Producers for well over a decade – between Cityboyz Muzik/ J-Records, his solo work, and his various collaborations with iconic artists like Keyshia Cole and Keri Hilson, his tally now stands at more than 20 million albums sold worldwide – it's easy to let the charts and numbers overshadow the essential reason he's come so far in the first place. As he says with typical understatement, "I'm a guy who hears songs in his head, and I have to write them down, and I have to get them out. I'm just lucky enough that I can make it my life's work."
•Arguably the most accomplished singer/songwriter of his generation, for X it all comes back to the creative source. "I have to separate the idea of what I do for a living versus what I do. Songwriting is the only thing that makes sense to me. Years of doing it helps, but the truth is that the reason you do it for years is because it's what you do. It's the only thing that I have that kind of shorthand on… I don't know cars, I don't know sports, and I'm not a math whiz. This is something that I look at and it just makes sense to me."
•Making sense of his musical inspiration is what Myster X does at an exceptionally high level. "It's a two-part process – there's inspiration and craft. The inspiration is the part that's completely magical and you have no responsibility over. The inspiration is when you're sitting in your car or in a room and you hear a melody. You love it, it sounds great, and then you realize that it doesn't exist yet in the world, that it's a melody you just came up with. That's a process that you can't be responsible for. The minute you start to claim ownership of it, you lose it. To paraphrase a quote from Quincy Jones, 'the moment that success leads you to say, "I'll take it from here, God," that's when God walks out of the room.'"
•And as for the craft? "You have those moments when you are in full service of the feeling and you carry it as far as it takes you. And when that feeling stops, you put it away and at some point you have to go back and work on it. You say, 'OK, this is where the inspiration took me, now what was it I was trying to say, where was it I was going? It's this unbelievable process that when you're done with it, every time you do it, for a second you feel like the most unbelievably creative person in the world, and then it goes away and you feel like you're never going to do it again… and you have to start all over again. So you keep trying to get that feel, that high off of creating, that place that carries you from a blank page where nothing existed to a song that people are singing back to you at Madison Square Garden, if you're lucky. That's where the magic is."
•"I like musical hybrids," says X about the direction of Phone Call. "Like, 'What would it sound like if we took London Philharmonic players and mixed him with really amazing Alternative guitar players?' I like to take everyone just left of their comfort zone and record it." One early point of reference was Ushers seminal "OMG (Oh My God)." "I wanted to find a new way to do something that felt like it had an urgency to the groove."
•The result is an Emo-Pop record that pulses with passion and energy. Vibrant Horns collide on songs such as "Answers In The Club" and the Boards of Canada inspired "Dawn Chorus," African Rhythms bolster the bouncy " Don't Shoot," while electronic programming propels the dynamic "Out of Time." The title track is the sole ballad on an otherwise up-tempo set. "'Phone Call' is in there because it's really a mellow tune," says X. "It's kind of a 'calm down, everything is going to be all right' song.
•Many of the tunes on Planet X examine the frail and often evanescent nature of relationships. "I think that human relations, not just romantic but otherwise, are always at the heart of my songs," says X. "They're about how people interact with each other, how people treat each other at their best times and their worst times; that's always a thread."
•In "Answers in The Club," a couple decides that happiness comes in falling apart, not staying together. The up-tempo beat belies the fact that "there's nothing happy about that one at all," X says. Similarly, the piano-based "Don't Take it Personal" finds lovers hoping for a time when their tribulations cease. Rarely has doubt been encased in such a melodic, layered, and lush production
1.
•It's a world he views with boundless optimism and, despite the occasionally discouraging lyric, X infuses that same spirit into Planet X. "I'm not a mopey person; I don't get satisfaction in heartache and despair. With the exception of a few things that start dark and stay dark, there's usually a hopefulness at the end of each song," he says. "There has to be; it's the hopeful part that makes you want to share them with people. It's the hopeful part that says you found some secret in the pain and maybe some other people will, too."
2.
•I think that's the reason why you're drawn to writing songs in the first place, and I think it's the reason why no matter how hard it gets, and no matter whether you have success or not, you still think it's the greatest thing in the world… because it is. It's not a great thing because of the material rewards you get from it; it's great already, and the rewards are gravy on top of that."