Photo by Tyler Smith
After seven years away, Choker is back with a new album and still fighting to stay true to himself in the era of social media, AI slop, and a tumultuous music industry. He’s doing it all on his own terms.
February 19, 2026
BY Jacob Moore
A vast majority of the stuff that I make really isn't even intended to be shared. I'm making it because I need to make things to survive.
There are people out there who listen to Prince or D’Angelo and they’re like, “Eh, not for me.” I’m just like, we see things way too differently for me to try to bridge the gap here.
I met Choker for the first time in 2017. I discovered his album Peak by complete chance and told anyone who would listen that they needed to check out this artist, but not to make any assumptions because of his name. I got in touch with him, we talked on the phone, and I interviewed him for Pigeons & Planes.
That happened with a lot of artists. As someone who has been running a music platform for over 15 years, I’ve done it hundreds of times. But Choker was different.
At the time, he was making DIY music from a basement in the Detroit suburb of Garden City, Michigan. His songs were kinetic, but in talking to him I realized quickly that it was more than that—there was a low-burning intensity and a gravitational pull. After one conversation, it was obvious that Choker wasn’t built to be a pedestrian, that he was wired to be an artist. It’s in the way he speaks, the words he chooses, and it hums just below the surface.
Soon after that phone conversation, Choker flew to New York City. I wanted to help however I could, and even though I had never managed an artist and had no desire to be a manager, I did whatever I could. I introduced him to people in the industry, I talked to him about music, record labels, publishing, and potential collaborators.
Eventually, Choker figured out his next steps, gained some momentum, and I wasn’t involved beyond that for very long. Throughout the following years, I’d get updates from his manager and check in on text every now and then, but we didn’t stay very close. Choker doesn’t stay very close with a lot of people.
Talking to him through a video call almost a decade after our first conversation, right before the release of his long-awaited new album Heaven Ain’t Sold, I felt that same intensity. He’s wiser and more confident now, plus he lives in Los Angeles and seems more at peace with himself, but there’s still a certain gravity to a conversation with Choker.
I don’t think Choker knows that he has that quality. He’s soft-spoken and down to earth, and he doesn’t project an ego—he even lets off self-deprecating jokes about being a Z-list celebrity—but he does know that he’s different. Growing up in Detroit, he saw the blue collar grind of factory workers first-hand and knew that he could never do that. “Not to be morbid, but I wouldn’t survive,” he says. He still can’t believe that he’s a full-time artist, but he also can’t imagine a life where he’s not making music full-time. Even after all these years, he doesn’t take it for granted.
At the same time, his creativity sounds like it can be a burden. It’s constant. “Even in social situations, it can be hard for me to be fully present,” he says. “Maybe I’m 90% in the room because I’m actively talking to someone, but 10% of my brain is just shitting out random melody ideas and whatnot.”
It’s been over seven years since his last release and Choker has been relatively quiet, but throughout that time, the gears haven’t stopped turning. He’s made (and scrapped) multiple albums, and he’s always relentlessly making music or thinking about making music. It’s his own creative factory, and he’s finally ready to show people what he’s been building.
Photo by Tyler Smith
Photo by Tyler Smith
Photo by Tyler Smith
This is an annoying question and I'm sorry, but I have to ask. What took so long? So many great artists take time to release music, but it’s hard to know how much of that is getting the music right, sorting out the business, or getting into the right mindset. What was it for you?
Initially, I wanted to be patient. I wanted to have my craft catch up with my vision. I wanted to feel like the next thing that I was making was a really big step, and I was making a lot of music that just didn't feel like that much of an advancement for me. At a certain point, it kind of spiraled out of control. It got beyond the point of intentionally being patient and trying to grow, and started being me struggling to actually enjoy the stuff that I was making.
I would finish a project and then I wouldn't feel strongly about it, so I would scrap that project and I'd start another thing. That happened a couple times. I was grasping at straws for years, and things didn’t snap into focus until 2022 or 2023. There was a lot of self-discovery that I had to do and a lot of reclaiming of my identity, not only through my music, but also in my personal life. It wasn't until I felt like I had found grounding that I started to make things that eventually became this project.
When you’re making music, how much of it is about the process and the journey versus actually releasing and sharing? During the time you were away, did you feel rewarded by simply creating things, or was there any frustration leading up to the point of sharing it?
I think 99% of it really is in the journey and in the making. A vast majority of the stuff that I make really isn't even intended to be shared. I'm making it because I need to make things to survive, really. I need that context for my expression to feel like what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling is valid. My form of self validation is my art.
But with this project specifically, I had that goal of making an album in my head the entire time. So it was definitely really, really, really frustrating feeling like I wasn't meeting that goal. A lot of my art isn’t made to be shared, but this specific thing was such a weight on me.
Now that you're so close to releasing it, how do you feel going into this album’s release compared to when you released Honeybloom in 2018?
I feel a lot more prepared now. When you release something and there is a certain level of public response to it, there's a lot to deal with, both positive and negative.
Prior to Honeybloom, I had only experienced the digital side of releasing something when I had released Peak and it had gained a little bit of traction. I'm online and I'm seeing people respond to it, but then I didn't tour or do much press after that. When I was working on Honeybloom, I still felt like I was in my cocoon. When I was getting ready to release it, I didn't have any sense of what to look forward to once it came out. Once that came out, I actually went on tour and I lived a decent amount of life. Now that I'm releasing Heaven Ain’t Sold, I have a much better understanding of what to expect and how to lean into being more vulnerable, because I want to see how it feels when I'm a little less guarded. I feel a lot more equipped for this release.
So much happened during the time between your last album and this one. What was the COVID lockdown like for you? What kind of mindstate were you in during that period?
For a lot of people, I think it was a big moment of incubation, a big check-in point where we were all forced to sit with ourselves, deal with ourselves, and not lean on a lot of the crutches that we have outside of our home that allow us to not dwell on our sense of self.
So yeah, it really encouraged me to face a lot of the identity issues that I was dealing with at the time. I think if COVID hadn't happened, I probably would've felt more inclined to put out some of those things that I had scratched before. But COVID happening just kind of brought everything to a halt, and it was a worldwide halt so I didn't feel as much pressure to be outward with the things that I was discovering about myself.
As terrible as that time was, I think it was very necessary for me. Looking back, I honestly cherish the time that I had to just search. I was very, very lost at the time.
I caught up with your manager recently, and from what she said it sounds like you're still very DIY. You have a small team that you work with closely, and you're releasing the project independently. Is that how you prefer to work?
Staying independent would be the dream, for sure. If I could stay completely independent for the entirety of my career and never have to answer to a higher-up or have outside pressures, I would. Oftentimes with artists, their labels ask them to do things that aren't really in line with what they actually believe in or are passionate about. So yeah, I would love to stay independent.
In 2026, an independent artist just performed at the Super Bowl, so I don’t think there are many limitations to what you can do independently. Me personally, I’m not aiming to perform at the Super Bowl, but I think that speaks to the tiers that you can reach as an independent artist if you stay very focused on what you’re attempting to accomplish.
Would you say you have a general distrust of the music industry overall, or is it more about how to prefer to move?
I don't know if I would use the word distrust. I think that might imply that I'm being told something, and then something else is happening. In most of the interactions that I've had with record labels, they're pretty forthcoming in terms of what they expect, and it’s just not how I'm trying to move. That's just not really how I wish to handle my career.
When it comes to streaming and how things are structured, it's very understood that it’s not particularly in favor of artists at this point in time. And I don’t think that record labels will ever do something that’s more in favor of artists than it is in favor of their corporate desires. A long-term partnership with a record label probably wouldn’t make much sense for me, because it’s not going to serve what I’m trying to do.
When I first listened to Heaven Ain’t Sold, one line on “Blue Sole” jumped out at me: “I know how to disappear.” In the context of the song, what does that line mean to you?
That song is about me feeling, to put it very plainly, somewhat inhuman because of my depression and my anxiety and my dissociative tendencies that take me out the mix. When those things are all piling up on top of me, I tend to hide away. I seek solitude and deal with things on my own. I'll go long periods of time where I'm not really checking in with friends or doing things that would maybe potentially make me feel more alive or get me out of that funk, because I often struggle with the classic thing of not wanting to feel like you're a burden to the people around you. So then you try to deal with things yourself.I'm definitely not encouraging anyone to do that. That's not really a healthy thing. But what I'm getting at in “Blue Sole” is that I recognize that I'm probably too good at doing that. It's kind of second nature, where it takes much more for me to actually reach out to someone than it takes for me to just kind of disappear.
I can relate to that, but it sounds like during COVID lockdown you came to some realizations about yourself. I had an almost opposite thing where I was too comfortable being isolated. I didn’t realize until way later on, “Oh, maybe that did some irreversible damage.” That kind of isolating behavior compounds into this negative, lingering feeling.
For sure, for sure. It was such a long period of time where you are somewhat forced to disappear in a sense, unless you were doing the digital thing where you're keeping up with people and being very much online. There are all of these new technological ways of being in the room with people. Then coming out of that, trying to get back in the flow of being around people... I feel like for years, up until maybe very recently, I was struggling to reintegrate.
What do you think about those digital methods of connection? You’re not all over social media, but what’s your philosophy on it? Do you think it’s a bigger issue with our culture today, or just a personal choice?
I mean, with everything in life, too much of anything is bad. I think we’re at the point where there's way too much of it and there's way too much of a dependency on it. I'm wary of being too dependent on any one tool, and I think that's all it is. At its best and most pure, social media is a tool to connect with other people, but it can be very overwhelming if you’re doing it too much. It can fry your brain if you're getting most, if not all, of your connection from social media, which is where I think a lot of people are at with it right now. You can be in a room with 20 people and everyone's just staring at their phones. Everyone is constantly somewhere else.
Oftentimes you're having a conversation with someone and they're also having five different conversations with other people. They could be having a conversation with someone in Brazil, so maybe 15% of their consciousness is in Brazil communicating with this person. It's a lot for our brains to try to keep up with.
It’s pretty undeniable to me that it's shifting how we think and what we expect of one another. I'm sure people have different levels of what they can take in. Personally, I have a pretty low level. That's not me knocking anyone else, but me? I feel wild if I’m on it too much.
I heard you went live on TikTok for the first time recently. What was that like? Did you realize it’s not for you, or did you walk away feeling like that was an interesting new experience?
I walked away from it feeling like this isn't for me. I don’t want to be closed-minded, and I don’t ever want to assume that something is trash without trying it. I just don’t think I’m the kind of dude who's trying to hop on live, just be on there yapping and whatnot. That's not me knocking anyone who's a streamer or who loves going live and talking to people for an hour or whatever.
It’s really not for me, but with this whole release, I’ve been trying to be more open to what people suggest and see what works for me. I’m not forced to do anything, so I'm very grateful that I'm in a position where I can see what feels natural and then adjust from there.
It’s cool to see how engaged your fans still are, even after so much time away. Was there any uncertainty or fear that you’ve been away for so long and maybe people have moved on?
Yeah, 100%. I don't have any expectations of anyone. I don’t place too much weight on the idea that since I’m doing this thing, I’m deserving of this other thing. There are a lot of things being thrown at people all the time, and for me to have not thrown anything into the stream for over half of a decade and to come back and to have people who are very much still tapped in and very receptive to what I'm doing? Yeah, it's a big surprise. It's a pleasant surprise, and I'm very, very grateful for that. But for sure, I was super anxious about saying, “Yeah, so I finished this thing,” and people being like, “Alright, whatever. I’ve long since found other shiny new toys to play with.” So yeah, it’s great and I don’t take it for granted at all.
Just from hearing you explain things, it’s clear that your gap between albums wasn’t a strategy or some attempt to conjure up this image of mystery. But do you think that does make people more curious about you, because you’ve always kept some distance? That’s pretty rare for an artist today.
Sure. I’m just trying to be true to myself. The whole mysterious thing? Sometimes when I would talk to people, they’d bring it up as a branding sort of thing—like, “It’s cool that you’re doing that for your brand,” as if it’s not actually just that I’m a somewhat quiet, somewhat shy person. I’m not the loudest in any room I go into.
To go into what you’re saying about how that may potentially drum up more interest, I think that’s just human nature. If a person whispers something, maybe it encourages someone to lean in a bit more to hear what they’re saying. Others may be like, “Oh, I didn’t hear that, so I’ll just move on.” They don’t care. They gravitate toward louder people or people who are more forthcoming.
That’s something that I’ve been trying to actively work on because I would like to be more forthcoming, and I would like to be less guarded. Those aren’t things that serve me that much in my personal life. I don’t know, the whole mystery thing isn’t some kind of agenda I’m trying to push. It’s just kind of how I am.
When I first met you, it was so early, I think you were living in Detroit and it seemed like you really just wanted to figure out how to make music professionally. Now that you're doing that, has the goalpost moved? Did you realize you wanted more than just that?
I was living in Garden city, a suburb of Detroit. I probably don’t say enough how much the suburbs of Michigan deeply influenced me. For a vast majority of my upbringing, I lived in Detroit, but I would go to school in the suburbs because the Detroit school system was really buns. My mom was like, “Yo, it's slightly better in the suburbs, so I'm going to have you go to school out there, and we'll do the longer commute in the morning.”
But yeah, I think the goalposts have definitely moved. If I were to compare it to something, let’s say you’re an upcoming basketball player and you’re fighting your whole life to make it into the NBA. When you actually get into the NBA, then it becomes honing your craft and getting a certain feeling of day-to-day growth in what you're doing.
Once you reach one of those goals, it almost feels like you made it. But now I’ve just been trying to hone my craft and feel like I’m fully in service to music. Not to get too woo woo with it, but having the opportunity to work with one of the core influential things in our lives—which is just literally vibrations and how you configure vibrations to bring reactions out of people...The fact that I get a chance to do that every day, I’m still dumbfounded that I am allowed to only focus on that. I really, really, really, really, really take a lot of pride in trying to do it in a way that feels worthwhile. I always want to feel like I’m serving music, never taking my opportunity for granted, and hopefully I’m pushing things forward, throwing new things into the fold. To me, it’s about trying to serve.
I wanted to talk more about Michigan. I’ve heard you describe your childhood as being a little isolated, being from a family of immigrants. Can you describe what you were like as a kid? Were you quiet and creative as a kid?
Yeah, I was super quiet, super, super, super quiet.
My mom was very involved in the immigrant community in Detroit, specifically the Caribbean community. I would often go to these gatherings of people, these functions that she would organize. She's a really outgoing person and a leader, so I think naturally some of those things trickle down to me. But also, I would be in those spaces and I'd very much be like, “Okay, I'm not the one talking here. I'm not the leader here. I'm the child of that person, so I'm in the shadows. I'm hanging, I'm chilling, I'm doing my thing.”
And I was definitely very creative as a kid. I made my little fake comic books and whatnot, and was super into drawing, and from a really early age was into music. I didn't know that early on that I actually was trying to make music. I was still in my head like, “Oh yeah, I'm going to grow up. I'm going to be six foot six. I'm going to play in the NBA” and all this shit. I was very much in that head space with it.
Growing up in Michigan, I saw a lot of the adults in my life go through the whole blue collar grind that strips them of their dreams, stripping anything outside of just, “I got my union, I got my fallbacks, I’m financially secure enough to hold it down.” When you ask about rebellion, that’s what I was rebelling against.
I didn’t want to work in a factory. I didn’t want to be paving roads and whatnot. And again, that’s not to knock anyone who was doing that. I have a very deep respect for those people, and I recognize 100% what the thinking is when you’re in those situations and those are the jobs you’re working. But I’m a super sensitive dude, and I know if I ended up in that sort of scenario—not to be morbid or anything—I wouldn’t last that long as a person.
I fought like hell to find something outside of that, to be not only my career, but my focus in life.
Can you tell me about the album title, Heaven Ain't Sold?
The whole project is an accumulation of trials and tribulations, and it’s somewhat of a loose coming-of-age sort of story. The idea was that Heaven Ain’t Sold works both as me recognizing that in order to reach any sort of contentment or nirvana or any of these concepts, it’s not something that you can just buy. You have to work at it. You have to go through life and learn about yourself and your desires to reach some sort of peace in your life. It’s not something that fits within the confines of capitalism.
And then also, Heaven being this place that you want to reach, they’re not sold on you as a person. Maybe you’re not ready for Heaven yet. You’re still going through life, hoping that when it comes time for the “judgment” or whatever, then they’ll be accepting of you. But at this point, you’re still just doing your thing, living your life.
Photo by Tyler Smith
Photo by Tyler Smith
Photo by Tyler Smith
The whole mysterious thing? Sometimes when I would talk to people, they’d bring it up as a branding sort of thing—like, “It’s cool that you’re doing that for your brand,” as if it’s not actually just that I’m a somewhat quiet, somewhat shy person. I’m not the loudest in any room I go into.
At what point did you feel like an album was taking shape? Or I guess this album specifically, since you said you’ve scrapped a couple of projects.
I'd say this specific album started to take shape probably in 2022, but the entire time that I was working, the big goal was to make an album. Even when I was working on prior things, I would get maybe 75% done with them in my head, and I wasn’t like, “Oh man, I’m about to scrap this.” I was like, “Okay, this feels like the album that I’m trying to get off right now.”
But I had my doubts, and eventually those worries and doubts outweighed what I was attempting to convey. It was a whole lot of ups and downs, where I’d make something, then feel a little spark, then make something else. It wasn’t until 2022 when it felt like I actually had some sort of momentum.
You mentioned waiting for your skills to catch up to your vision. Is some of that also just your own tastes changing too? Have your personal tastes changed a lot over the years of building up to this album?
Yeah, my personal tastes have definitely shifted. I wanted a lot more clarity, because I worked from a very unfocused, murky place for a long period of time and I would lean into that sensibility. And then to speak to me wanting my skills catch up to my vision, I wasn’t able to do that for a long time. For a song like “Uneven,” for example, I just wanted to write a ballad and have it be pretty stripped back, not too many bells and whistles, not too many tricks and magic in production wizardry and whatnot. But I just didn’t have that in my bag. I had to get better as a songwriter. I had to get better as a producer too.
I wanted to talk to you about the craft. I think that’s especially interesting right now because we’re seeing so much AI slop, and it seems like one reaction to that is fans wanting to know that the music they’re listening to has some skill put into it, whether that’s playing an instrument, production, the ability to sing really well. Maybe there’s more value being placed on that right now, because so much music is automated. But I think some artists still feel like the goal is to make the best thing, and they don’t care how it gets done. Where do you stand on that? How important is it to actually make the thing versus just getting the result?
It is the most important thing. There's no other desire in my body. I don't have a bone in me that wants to just hit a button and be like, “Alright, it's done.” To me, the whole point of being an artist is going through the steps and learning from those steps and missteps, and at times being able to turn a misstep into the thing that makes something really dope.
I’d be lying if I said every single thing on this album was something that I fully intended, and that's why I love it. There's a lot of stuff that just came about because I was aiming for something and I fell a little bit short. Then I listen a couple weeks later, and I realize I didn’t exactly reach the thing that I was aiming for, but that's what makes it personal.
I think it's really important to lean into the human achievement aspect of it. So like you’re saying, I do think there are a lot of people who specifically want to get that sense of humanity out of the art. To me, that's the most important thing. That's the whole point of what I'm doing.
Can you talk about choosing “Proof” as the lead single.? With the new jack swing elements, that was a pretty surprising way to return. Was that intentional, or what went into choosing that one to go out first?
That song just gave me so much excitement when I was making this album. It was one of the things that actually came easiest, one of the few songs I didn’t have a billion different versions for. It was such an immediate thing for me, and I was hoping that feeling of immediacy would come across. And I wanted to give people a chance to hear a new side of what I was doing, and get a little bit of me touching on my childhood inspiration with this project. It felt like an important first thing to get out there.
It was also cool to hear “Rae Town” with some dub influence. Going into the project, did you know you want to try out new jack swing or dub, or is that just how it comes out and you’re like oh, this makes sense?
With “Rae Town,” I definitely had a desire to make a dub-inspired song, I just knew it wouldn't be a straightforward dub song. I knew that it would have a lot of twists and turns and get into an almost weird, ambient space.
Up until that point, I’ve never dove hard into my Jamaican roots. My family’s Jamaican, and I felt like if I did a one-to-one dub sort of thing, I wouldn’t feel like I’m making any sort of advancement. That’s always what I’m trying to do when I’m pulling from something specific. I want to honor it, but I also want to feel like I’m bringing something new to the table.
“Rae Town” is the town where my family in Jamaica is from, so I wanted something that feels representative of this place that’s very important to me, and I want to also bring my current perspective to it.
You've mentioned imposter syndrome before. Do you think that holds you back, or is it a motivating force at all? Does it kind of force you to hold yourself to higher standards?
I'd say a bit of both. Luckily, lately it’s felt more like the latter. When I feel like an imposter, I just have to go harder. I have to be that much more, I have to research much more, I have to get better at piano and bass, I have to learn more Ableton shortcuts. [Laughs] I’ve been trying to use that feeling as fuel to improve versus just being like, “Oh man, I’m very undeserving of what’s happening, I’m going to get found out. Everyone’s going to know I’m a fraud.”
I try to make sure that anything I’m doing is also stuff that can be recreated. I can prove it, in a sense. I have the blueprint. So yeah, I think now I’m trying to use any imposter syndrome as fuel, for sure.
When you're deciding what makes the final cut, how much do you think about the audience?
To varying degrees. I mean, on the spectrum, probably not that much. But with this project I was definitely thinking about how songs would potentially work in a live setting, which plays into how something is going to be received by people. There were periods of time throughout the process where I actually did get kind of lost in thinking too much about how something may be perceived. At a certain point I learned that I can't work that way.
There's just too much to account for. Too many different tastes, too many different ears. There are people out there who listen to Prince or D’Angelo and they’re like, “Eh, not for me.” I’m just like, we see things way too differently for me to try to bridge the gap here. So for the most part, I really try to go off of what I’m feeling and what I’m trying to hear, and if it can fall in line with what someone else is into, cool.
I’ve seen firsthand that there are die-hard Choker fans, and it's always interesting to see those kinds of fan bases. They can start to collectively move a certain way, whether it's how they dress or how they act at shows. Have you noticed anything consistent with Choker fans?
Attention to detail. They can be meticulous people. I'd say very art-inclined, creative people. I think it goes back to what we were talking about with the AI boom. I would imagine that people who are really into what I’m doing probably share similar ideas about that, and are leaning into all of the intricacies of human expression, and all of the weird, jagged edges that come with that. That seems to be the general vibe, in my approximation. I don’t know, I try not to read too much into that, but that’s just based off what I’ve seen or conversations I’ve had.
I think you’re right, and I think it comes from you putting care into all the details. You seem really observant, always taking things in. Do you have a hard time turning that off? Are you always in artist mode, or do you have ways to be like, “I'm going to go walk in the woods and I'm not even going to think about being inspired creatively?”
My ways of turning that off are pretty much all physical. If I go for a walk, I’m going to think so much, and my brain is going to go in so many different directions. I’ll go to the park and shoot around. I’ll play basketball, or I’m really into soccer. Those really visceral physical sensations, where I’m focused on something that is second nature to me, that actually allows my brain to turn off for a bit.
Otherwise, no, it’s really, really... my shit is firing at all times, bro. It can be very overwhelming and exhausting. Even in social situations, it can be hard for me to be fully present. Referring back to what we were saying before about social media, I feel like I have the old school version of that. Maybe I’m 90% in the room because I’m actively talking to someone, but 10% of my brain is just shitting out random melody ideas and whatnot. Or thinking about some random movie I saw a week ago and how I would score that scene. It’s definitely a constant thing that I’m trying to figure out how to push down when necessary. I wish I could save it for times where it actually makes sense for me to be searching my mind for all kinds of creative nonsense.
Damn, maybe that’s the headline: Choker is shitting out melodies.
[Laughs] For sure, for sure.
When do you start thinking about what’s next? Is there a chance we’ll have to wait another 7 years for the next project?
No? [He says this in a way that sounds more like a question than an answer.] I’m always thinking about what’s next. I’m thinking about what’s next right now. I’m hoping to release more music this year, not just this one project. But it could take many forms. Maybe it won’t be under the Choker mantle. Maybe it’s another project, maybe it’s with a friend. I also want to write and produce more for other artists, so hopefully there’s more of that. But will we have to wait seven years? No. [This time, he sounds more sure.]
Photo by Tyler Smith