Visited Tom Bombadil (Conor Smalakis), at his home located in Van Nuys, CA. He recently just released Unreleased Vol. 3, keeping consistent with his love for making beats and sampling. His space consisted mostly of his living room, surrounding him with family heirlooms and nostalgia, making for a more interesting exploration.

What is your most cherished item in your space?

Tom Bombadil: Other than this couch… I really enjoy my T.V., honestly. I think the T.V. and um… the xbox is probably the worst part because I will procrastinate for many hours a day due to an NBA 2K addiction that I used to have, but yeah as for as this space, this couch and this T.V. is all I need as far as this room.

What do you prefer, Inner Space or Outer Space?

TB: Inner Space or Outer Space? ohh um… funny enough I would say outer space, because as far as my creative environment, the necessity to create for me, as far as the production form, came from wanting to break out of the inner space. If I had to summarize the past 4 years of my life, it is the need to break out of the inner space, which is why I am in this room now. All of my music used to be made in my room. My room is one of the worst places to create, but also one of the best places to create. There is this painting on the wall that my brother made of my family before I was born, so there is this constant idea of my family without me. So I would be locked in my room, with my anxiety disorder, and this painting. So yeah it was the worst and greatest places to create.

Where do you find inspiration?

TB: As far as production, my inspiration comes from consuming massive amounts of media. When I’m about to make an album, production wise, I usually binge on shows and manga and books. Each album is inspired by a specific thing.

What can we expect from you next?

TB: Rap Album. That is my next thing. Hopefully by July.

What is your favorite space?

TB: My favorite space in the world is a basketball court, easily.

You grew up playing basketball?

Today we visit Vader, a talented rapper and prominent member of Strange Friends. He lives in Panorama City where he makes music and tries to escape reality. You can find his music at VADER and read what he has to say about his music and his space.

On average how much time do you spend in your space?

V: Probably a good half a day, unless I’m creating, then most of the day.

How much do you create in your space? Do you find creativity outside of your space?

V: Fuck yeah man, I do my best to create in other spaces to kinda get out of my comfort zone, kinda get inspired by new shit basically.

What can we expect next from Vader?

V: So there’s like a lot of shit I want to do! I want to get this tape going called Crowe, C-R-O-W-E, and that's supposed to deal with a lot of racial issues, not just like black people but for all people, you know? And um, it’s basically supposed to be my biggest shit ever! Except I don’t know if I want to release a Vader EP first. So yeah, me and Connor (Tom Bombadil) are working on that.

When do you think that will come?

V: Haha I don’t know, I don’t want people to get too hype hahahahaha…. but um, maybe March.

Tell us the story of your album “Alias” and why it was never completely released?

V: Alias (ponders off into space), man Alias was my child. I started working on Alias during the middle of my senior year, that was who I was as an artist. I wanted to make songs that mirrored comic book characters, I was really into comic books, and that was basically my tape, the whole thing. But I sort of like lagged, but I don’t want to say I lagged because I was more so just growing as an artist at the time, finding who I was. I look back on it a couple months and was like “this is great!” and it was good in its own sense, but it wasn’t who I was as an artist anymore. So now I want to make a tape called Crowe, where I am actually skilled enough to talk about shit that actually happened to me. So I decided I’m not going to release Alias, but I still wanted to redefine some of the stuff that was on it.

If you could make art in any space possible, where would it be?

V: I watched this movie called Jumper, there was this scene where he teleported, he was a teleporter, so he teleported onto this pyramid and it was this really good shot. I thought, what if I was on top of that pyramid. So yeah, on top of that pyramid.

What is important about this space?