As an up-and-coming artist, versatility and diversity is ultimately what separates good artists from great artists. Scott Kerns, mainly known as “Squibs,” would say, “I have dipped my foot in all of it." The 24-year-old Kansas City, Missouri, native grew up making dubstep beats in his bedroom and now works with talented, established artists like Chris Patrick, Mere Raj, Baby Phace, and many more. Squibs produces music, works with digital design, creats cover art and canvases, and is also dabbling in the NFT world. Squibs is creating his own lane for his journey as an artist and it has ultimate potential. This Thursday, Squibs will have his second NFT drop as a project with Hadji Gaviota at 12:00 PM ET. The new project with Hadji Gaviota is a piece that is able to be bought through cryptocurrency, also known as an NFT (non-fungible token). An artist like Scott Kerns will go a long way; not just because of his talent, but his work ethic and different ways of finding how to monetize his art.
This past week I had the chance to sit down with Squibs and speak to him about past work, influences such as MF DOOM, NFT’s, and future work.
Nick: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Squibs: I'm a 24-year-old producer, artist from Kansas City, Missouri. I've been making music and producing for people like Chris Patrick, and a lot of the Fashionably Early crew for the past four years. Then, recently this year, I've been diving a lot into the visual arts stuff.
Nick: How is the Kansas City music scene? You know, where did this all come from?
Squibs: There's a little bit here. For a while before the pandemic, I would DJ shows. I was in this circle, if there were shows and they needed a DJ, they would hit me up. So, that was pretty cool. But yeah, I mean, like Tech N9ne is from Kansas City. So there's that, but that's really the extent of any major music scene going on here. But, there's definitely a good independent scene.
Nick: Where did this name "Squibs" come from?
Squibs: Yeah, I get that a lot. So, it was funny enough; actually, I used to be hella into graffiti and stuff. I would always be in the search for a graffiti name. I would kind of draw something different every day. And my name is Scott. So like, there's the S bar and the Q sound. But yeah, one day, I was just drawing that for graffiti and it's symmetrical, like with two s's on the front. But, yeah, on some, like, weird next-level shit; I think it's called an anagram or something. And then at the same time, I was making music, like putting up my shitty dubstep on SoundCloud. And I was like, "That's fucking perfect," and really liked it. That was when I was a sophomore in high school. So, all my friends started calling me Squibs. And like, if you're around me, you'll probably hear that more than you'd hear like, Scott or something.
Nick: Talk to me about the graphic that you sold, you know, what are you doing there?
Squibs: Yeah, so, I'm sure maybe some people have heard the word NFT or crypto art; it's kind of a buzzword right now. Basically, it is a way to have the ownership of an item or a collectible coded into the item. So, it's always yours and the transactions are coded into it, as well. But the way I like to think about it is if you really like an artist, and you want to invest in them. Like, you could have bought my first piece, and if you believe in me as an artist and expect me to grow with time, then the value of that piece can go up. And so what I sold yesterday was called "American Expressionism," and it's a digital scan of Mark Cuban's plasmon ExpressCard. I guess I did that because he's been kind of getting into this space. For his piece, he just did a GIF of him dancing or like walking out of some entrance. It was just so corny, so I kind of did a little backlash at that.
Nick: Any upcoming projects you have coming up? Anything you want to promote or give a shoutout to?
Squibs: I definitely can see a lot more visual work in projects coming out branded as "Squibs" this year, for sure. For one, I'm working on an NFT with Hadji Gaviota. We haven't got all the details sorted out, but it'll basically be a piece you can buy and then it'll come with this remix. You'll get that, you'll be able to own that remix. You have to buy that physical piece to be able to listen to the remix.
Nick: Dude, thank you so much for hopping on. I really appreciate it, and Burbs appreciates you.
Squibs: Thank you for having me. For sure. This was fun.
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