You don’t have to go to Texas if you want to see Austin.
Woodlawn High School senior Austin Johnson, also known as Wakai, is not only a rapper, but also a designer and soon-to-be film major at Loyola University New Orleans.
Baton Rouge native Johnson has performed at the House of Blues in New Orleans and other local venues. He said he hopes to release his newest album, “Colors,” at Mid City Ballroom on the day he graduates, May 15, 2018.
Johnson said the album is inspired by his infatuation with bright colors and how everyone has a color attached to their individual personas.
“I’ve always loved colors. They define us but don’t limit us,” Johnson said. “You have colors with race, gang colors and colors that we associate with certain feelings.”
Johnson said he has been interested in bright colors since he was young and would wear different clothing that made him stand out. He saw everyone was wearing the same thing, and he didn’t want to conform to what the people around him were doing. However, the clothing he wanted was expensive and not unique, so he decided to take the game into his own hands.
“I decided to make my own clothes when I was about 14, Johnson said. “I decided to sell some of them and now my clothing company, ‘Uper Kut,’ sells the clothes that I love.”
His clothing line makes t-shirts, bags, pants and hoodies. He keeps his clothing versatile so people can keep it casual or spruce it up for a night out. His goal, he said, is to create fun, colorful clothes that make people feel good.
Johnson said “Colors” is an embodiment of his appreciation for the correlation between colors and feelings. When he has his album release show, he hopes to have his clothing line out to sell as he performs. His bright clothing will match the spirit of “Colors” and what his passions mean to him.
Johnson’s music career began at a young age. He is the youngest of 2 siblings, and he said the age gap between him and the rest of his family gave him an appreciation for older music. He grew up listening to music from the ‘70s and ‘80s, and his siblings showed him popular music from the early 2000s.
Johnson said Kanye West’s “All Falls Down” was one of the first music videos he ever saw. Made in 2004, the music has a different flow than West’s current music – this gave Johnson a sense of awareness of how musicians progress over time.
“I want to evolve too,” Johnson said. “I see these rappers out here doing the same type of music and rapping about the same type of things, and I didn’t want to do that.”
Johnson’s music delves into current political issues, such as police brutality. “A.S.”, one of the songs off Johnson’s album, describes the events surrounding the shooting of Alton Sterling. Johnson said he made the song to raise awareness about the situation.
Johnson finds that people respond better to more subtle political raps. The more you let people think and decide on their own, the more they agree with you. He tries to implement this into his raps.
“I don’t want to shove my beliefs down people’s throats,” Johnson said. “I’ve learned that with some things, you have to just state the facts and let people come to their own decisions.”
Johnson said he puts his passion into everything he does whether it’s his music, his clothing line or his love for film. He said one of his dreams is to make short films and score them all with his own music. He plans on making short films when he gets to Loyola in the fall.
Johnson said he just wants to make Baton Rouge a more open-minded place to live. He says Baton Rouge has all the potential in the world to be an even greater city if its people would just show more love to each other.
“I hope that Baton Rouge will become more open minded,”Johnson said, “I just wish that people down here could learn to respect other people’s opinions and cherish the diversity.”
