Sound Advice: Cautious Clay

Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Cautious Clay talks about being relentless in one’s artistry and building community

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Welcome to the latest installment of Sound Advice, a weekly interview series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers, and creatives are leaning into the many facets of Next Pro to reach their audience and grow their careers.

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Cautious Clay is a New York-based singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer known for heartfelt songwriting and a versatile sound that draws from pop, hip-hop, alternative R&B, indie rock, and jazz. Honing his craft since the age of seven when he first decided to learn the flute, Cautious has been steadily building a fan base since 2017, when he first shifted gears from producing for others to releasing music of his own. Over the years, Cautious has collaborated with artists such as John Mayer, Taylor Swift, and John Legend, among others.

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Most recently, Cautious released his debut jazz album for Blue Note, a 15-track collection that puts his multifaceted talents on full display, while weaving together audio recordings from his family members that offer intimate context into his childhood in Cleveland, Ohio. Before catching a flight to kick off his residency at the Blue Note in Tokyo, Cautious Clay joined us from his studio in Brooklyn to talk about how he's experienced growth on SoundCloud and share his best advice for artists seeking to build longevity.

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How has SoundCloud played a role in your career, especially in your work as a producer early on? 

I WAS ALWAYS ATTRACTED TO SOUNDCLOUD BECAUSE IT'S A PLATFORM FOR ARTISTS THAT FEELS VERY DIRECT IN TERMS OF HOW YOU CREATE MUSIC AND HOW YOU CONNECT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE. I credit it so much with being the platform that launched my career. It’s very much the beginnings of where I got inspired and how I started as a creative songwriter/producer. The first fans I made on SoundCloud know me from my production work and my flute work; before people knew me as a singer, I was still Cautious Clay but I was just doing tons of remixes. I did a Billie Eilish “Ocean Eyes” remix, which is actually still out there. I did some 50 Cent flips, a Zak Abel remix. The biggest launching off point was when I first put out my song “Cold War.” It kind of caught fire on SoundCloud, and that really drove a lot of the attention for me.

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How did “Cold War” take off and how did you capitalize on the momentum around it?

I always wanted to get No. 1 on the Hype Machine chart. I had a little bit of a fanbase from my remixes at the time and I remember putting out “Cold War” and wondering if I could get someone to post it on a website. Brightest Young Things heard the song and posted about it and it just went crazy from there, with a bunch of people posting about it. Maybe within that week, it became Number 1 on Hype Machine and then it didn’t come off the top spot for like three months. At the time, Spotify was looking at SoundCloud to see what’s going on, and then it started to catch fire on Spotify. Within those three months, I put out my next single, “Joshua Tree.” All of this was all happening in a simultaneous timeframe to Billie Eilish and Finn’s careers taking off. They were actually just fans of mine because of the remixes I had done. That remix of “Ocean Eyes” was blowing up, but it was also independent from their thing. Eventually, [the TV show] Insecure featured [“Cold War”] and then Olivia Wilde featured it in her movie Booksmart like a year later. In general, it was a SoundCloud smash. It was a very impactful moment for me. I was working as a back waiter at a Caribbean restaurant in Crown Heights at the time and it was like, ‘This might actually happen for me.’ After that, I got a really big licensing sync on “Joshua Tree,” which really just changed my life. I had that initial fan base on SoundCloud and it’s still just so important to me because of my experiences with it. There’s something that I just find so raw and creative about the platform.

Learn how to get started on SoundCloud

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Can you tell us how your latest album KARPEH came together?

I wanted to create an album of music that felt greater than music in some ways. I wanted it to feel historical and have context into my family history, but then also American history. [Generationally speaking], there were so many different stories and ideas that I wanted to bring to light, in conjunction with how I became a person that has agency. It’s a little bit of an outline with my experiences with intimacy and psychedelic drugs, [as well as with] personal growth as a person who has this individual identity, but then wants to express that to the people I love and care about, and [also] about who I am when nobody’s watching or who I am in my truest sense. I outline the album in three sections.

The recording process was very different from how I normally record, which is here in my studio. This time, I did it at more of a formal studio called Figure 8. I did a lot of the pre-recording here, but then I took those pre-recordings and had everyone play all of it live and that’s what ended up being sort of the essence of the album. It was really a fun process to record that way. Afterwards, I took the stems and refocused. I mix my own music, and so I took those mixes and messed around with them and made them into something I was happy with.

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How are you using SoundCloud today? Has using any features, such as DMs, ever led you to collaborate with anyone? 

I go to it a lot for mixes now. There’s a friend of mine named Budgie, who is actually a big producer now. He was on the Drake album and on Kanye’s album (a couple albums ago). I became homies with him on SoundCloud and he’d post these really sick mixes. I met Budgie through DMs and also Flacco, who’s a really good producer. I also met MNEK, who is a big UK artist I have worked with. In 2014, I sent them all of these flute harmonies that I had on private links. I was studying abroad in London at the time and we became friends. I did a flute solo on MNEK’s record “In Your Clouds,” which is still out there somewhere. I also met my number one video collaborator through SoundCloud, Haoyan of America. He’s a super incredible creative individual who doesn’t even have social media but he has SoundCloud.

Learn more about using DMs on Next Pro

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What advice do you have for up-and-coming artists?

NEVER STOP CREATING COMMUNITY AROUND WHAT YOU'RE DOING. Obviously, it’s important to be skilled, it’s important to be good at your craft, but I think community is actually the biggest thing that we have nowadays. It’s how people can connect. There’s such a strong individual mindset with how artists work today and I don’t think it’s a very sustainable thing. You can get quick success through viral moments, but I think the most important thing is to create community. Don’t be closed off to opportunities and ideas. You don’t always have to take whatever opportunity is given to you, but at least be open to it. I also think it’s important to be honest and connect and collaborate in a way that feels like, “Okay, this [collaboration] is real. This makes sense.” It doesn’t always have to be an instant success.

Learn how to enable monetization on SoundCloud For Artists

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You’ve had a handful of songs that have amassed impressive streaming numbers over the years. Especially for artists experiencing that attention for the first time, do you have any tips around how to leverage a moment when a song is gaining traction?

Just be relentless, but also be yourself. I’m not out here spamming the internet with my songs, but if there’s a moment where things are going well, you want to capitalize on it and tell people about it. But you also want to live outside of that.

You want to build a community around who you are, not just that one thing you’ve done. Having those friendships and connections with people and community will help you push through that.

I think touring is a big part of it and having a unique element to what you do is important. I think I’ve built up this reputation of playing a lot of instruments. People are like, ‘Oh, Cautious Clay, he’s the guy who plays the flute and sings and he plays guitar and saxophone.’ And so I think that element of JUST BEING RELENTLESS ABOUT WHO I AM, BUT THEN ALSO JUST PUTTING OUT GOOD MUSIC, IS A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS.

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