Mayzin's music journey has been complicated. Same as his love life.
"Is my lovin' just not enough for you, baby?" he asks on "Wasting Time," a song off the "Things Left Unsaid" EP, which he released last month through Golden State Entertainment, the media division of the NBA's Golden State Warriors.
The project is an exploration of the ups and downs of love, from initial attraction and desire in the snappy "Hot Coffee" and the flirty island vibes of "Wagwan" to facing the decision of commitment on the groovy "Try." The idea for the six-song EP exemplifies the collaborative process between Mayzin and GSE, including the Warriors' Chief Business Officer David Kelly, who helms the company.
Making music is therapeutic for Mayzin, who started writing songs more than a decade ago when he was 14 years old. He grew jaded with the music industry due to frustrations with past record labels before joining the branch of his hometown basketball team. His music, including "Wheels Up," a high-energy collaboration with K-Pop star BamBam, has been played at the Chase Center powering the Warriors during games. Mayzin's voice will continue to be part of the community's soundtrack as the franchise welcomes its WNBA team in 2025.
Even though the songs on "Things Left Unsaid" were initially written a few years ago, they found fresh life in helping someone close to Mayzin through heartbreak. And offering that encouragement is his ultimate goal.
Kick The Concrete spoke with Mayzin about piecing together "Things Left Unsaid," how love reflects life and how signing with Golden State Entertainment was, well, amazing.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Kick The Concrete: What was the inspiration for the "Things Left Unsaid" EP?
Mayzin: That’s kind of a difficult question, surprisingly. It seems very straightforward. I definitely have been working on all different music and subject matters and everything that I just had a very strong collection of songs. I felt the only way to kinda like encapsulate that and make it come together was to really round these songs up. A lot of them were done maybe even as much as two years ago, but they just weren’t in the right place yet. So I think what inspired it was just noticing how many songs that I have that tell a story in the regards of love that I wanted to put into a body of work. And then once we were able to hone in on what songs and figure out the features and do everything, it just made a lot of sense to do the project the way that we did it.
KTC: Was the process you saw the common thread in the songs and were like, "Oh it makes sense to do this love project" or was love something that you wanted to express and you wanted to piece together the songs?
M: Initially, it actually wasn’t my idea, so I can’t take the credit. The songs were a lot of my idea, but I think it was moreso between me, Caroline Kimiko (of Santa Anna Records/Sony Music) and David Kelly at Golden State that were really listening to the songs over and over and over. They were the ones that came to me like, "Hey, what would you think about doing a love project? Here’s potentially 12 songs that really would fit into a great story." That’s when I sat down and I was like, hm, that’s a great idea. I could actually tell a story through this. And that inspired me to keep working on the songs, refine the verses, refine the beats, whatever I needed to do to capture this story. There’s so many songs that just didn’t make the cut, which is super interesting about how music is made. But yeah, that’s really what inspired it all, their words and then me having the realization of, oh, that’s a very good idea. How can I make this my own now?
KTC: That’s cool! That’s evidence of how Golden State’s collaborative creative process works.
M: Absolutely. Yes, for sure. That’s been Golden State’s role in this as far as the music selection process. We’re always having these conversations about how to make these ideas into full-fledged motions, not just ideas. All the songs are just ideas. To me, a song is never done. So when I’m set on the plan of it all and it makes sense, that’s the process that Golden State brought to the table and helped me come up with this project.
KTC: Sometimes I can relate to Kanye when he kept changing "The Life of Pablo" after it was released. I was like I know how he feels! My work never feels "finished."
M: Me and you both. I’ll have a song that comes out and I’ll be like, man, I wish I would have wrote this little piece a bit different. I can’t do anything about it now, but you have to be at peace with it and that’s it.
KTC: On the song, “Try,” the topic is potential versus reality and committing through that battle. How have you learned to manage that in your life, whether through relationships or life situations?
M: To be truthfully honest, I would say that I don’t think that process really ends for anybody. I don’t think it does. That song is really about, you hit it on the nose, you’ve listened to the song, clearly. I think this life is all about trying new things and like you said, it goes a lot deeper than just the relationship aspect because the song was about a relationship, but it goes for anything. We never know what we can be or how far we can go unless we try, unless we literally just sit down and give it our best efforts. That’s kinda how the song came about. It’s just I wrote the hook and then I got with Tyler Lauren and we sat down and we just talked about everything and came up with the whole song. Yeah, how can anything work if you don’t give it your best or try? It works out sometimes, but in the long run, it’s not gonna be sustainable if you don’t give it your best and that’s all it is.
KTC: Yeah, totally. It’s what effort you put out is what you get in return.
M: Exactly.
KTC: The song “Wasting Time” wrestles with not feeling enough. How do those moments feel and what were those moments like when you were writing that song? How have you learned to work through those moments?
M: An interesting thing, and I’m sorry, you can stop me at any time if I’m just going off on a tangent, but I feel like it adds context what I’m about to say. “Wasting Time,” not a lot of people know this, but “Wasting Time” is the only song on the project that is not a love song. The whole song actually is just about my life journey, my life journey within music at least. The opening line of the verse is, “We’re 12 years deep, but it isn’t enough/Back in the day, I was a kid with attentions to rush.” The whole verse, if you listen from start to finish and put it into perspective that it’s not about a relationship, you’ll hear the story of how I feel about my journey in music. It always has felt like all the hard work that I’m putting in just literally isn’t enough. It’s not. Nothing. Am I wasting my time? That’s the whole thing. So that song is super personal to me. So the process of writing it was very, very in depth. I did it all in one day, surprisingly. But that’s one where I really had to dig deep and like soul search a bit because I wanted to write a song that sounded like a love song, but was a metaphor for the way that I’m feeling about my musical career, whether it was now or whether it was back then or 10 years ago, however, this is how I was feeling. So yeah, that one’s an interesting one. I don’t know if that answers the question, I kind of went off on a tangent, but if there’s anything else I can expand on with that song, I will.
KTC: No, I think a lot of things in life are related to love, they can translate back and forth, so that makes sense. That feeling you wrote in one day, but it fit into this love project.
M: Absolutely. And I thought that song was super necessary to put in there because it was one of the first songs that I’d written a song that was metaphorically speaking in that way about a deeper issue than an actual relationship. So I’m super proud of that one.
KTC: The project ends without a clear happy bow on it, a happily ever after. What was your intention with that?
M: I didn’t want it to be a longform project. I wanted it to kinda feel like the story wasn’t over. The last song is “Whatever She Wants” and it’s really like an open-ended song. "She can have whatever she wants as long as she don’t lie to my face." That’s how I wanted to literally just end it on kind of a cliffhanger. I don’t know if there will be a part two to this or anything like that, but I think the whole story of the project was supposed to encapsulate the ups and downs of a relationship and I felt like leaving it on that cliffhanger. ‘Cause I could have ended it with “Try” or a happier feeling song, or even “Wasting Time” feels happy, although it’s not really the happiest song. But I thought it ended best on like almost a neutral ending, like there’s no ultimatum to it. It’s just it is what it is and if we’re gonna work this out, then I guess we’ll find out on the next story or maybe we’ll never find out. But I wanted to leave a little cliffhanger. I went back and forth about this too. I went back and forth about making the project longer than six songs. I did have a group of maybe even like 14 songs that I could have done. But I just felt that was the best way to kind of go about the way that the project should feel.
KTC: That is real life.
M: Doesn’t always end happy or sad. Sometimes things are just in limbo and it just is what it is.
KTC: I know signing with Golden State was a dream come true in a different way than becoming a professional basketball player. What was your journey through basketball and how did that inform who you are as an artist?
M: I grew up playing basketball my whole life. Since I was born, I had a ball in my hand. And in high school, I played three sports all four years, basketball, football and track. I think when it comes to sports, I think sports is so much bigger than just playing. There’s so much that goes into it, whether it be work ethic or learning how to work well with others and responsibility and all these different things. I definitely think basketball and just sports in general definitely made me a better human, for sure. It gave me people skills, how to handle tough situations, how to handle losing. Losing and not being the best. I remember growing up, I was one of the best kids in the city. I was really good at basketball. But then once I got to high school, I was like, oh, I am not that good. I have a lot more work to put in. So it gave me that kind of realization and I feel like that just transferred into music. There’s not many differences between music and sports and that’s why I thought that the whole Golden State venture was such an interesting thing because those two things are more aligned than what people think, especially when it comes down to like dedication and working with others and all the extras. Now there’s the business side of it all that has nothing to do with sports, but all the other things are definitely aligned with it. I think sports in general definitely one hundred percent helped me get to the point that I’m at. Super grateful that things didn’t work out in basketball because I probably never would have been able to go all in on this dream. If I’m gonna be quite honest, I was never going to the NBA. I’m barely 6-foot. The chances for me to go were super slim. So to do it in this way is just, I hate saying it’s amazing because it’s such a pun, but it’s been literally amazing. I couldn’t have asked for any other way to be involved with my hometown basketball team in the NBA. It’s pretty incredible.
KTC: Have their been any standout moments recently in partnership with the Golden State Warriors?
M: The newest development, well I guess two new developments, is that obviously, they’re out of the playoffs, unfortunately. What did happen a few weeks before the season ended is my song, “Hot Coffee,” they actually played it with a Peet’s Coffee promotion and they dropped the coffee cups from the sky and whoever could catch them gets a free Peet’s Coffee or something like that. So that was pretty cool. They played a cool edit of “Hot Coffee” that was like a faster version we made. I thought that was so cool. I drink Peet’s Coffee. Super creative. So that was the latest development. Now that we’re offseason, the biggest focus now is getting ready for the next thing that I’m gonna do, which I don’t necessarily know or can’t speak about it yet, but definitely have an album on the way and definitely have a lot more projects and videos that I’m currently working on. So super excited for that.
KTC: That’ll be really fun to see what’s next for you. Has anybody given unique feedback on this EP that encouraged you or helped you formulate what’s next?
M: Honestly, yes. This was my first EP or even project in general that I have dropped since, I might be wrong, but 2020 or 2021, one of the two, so it’s been a few years. I was a little nervous to drop it just based on it’s been a while. I’m curious to see what the reception will be. I know that they’re great songs in my head, but hopefully they can reach others. The feedback that I got was honestly overwhelmingly positive. I never really expect anything, whether negative or positive. Obviously, I hope for it, but to see that I had probably at least like 10 people, 10 to 15 people reach out and say specific songs that were helping them through a tough time, specifically one of my best friends, actually, which meant the most. He’s going through a tough time and a tough breakup. He hit me up and was talking about the whole project in total, especially “Whatever She Wants” how that song was helping him through a really tough breakup. Knowing the situation that he’s in as well, that really warmed my heart that I can actually impact people. Some of the people that were hitting me up, I’ve never even had a conversation with. I don’t even know these people. My goal whenever I drop anything is to at least touch one person. If one person hears it today and it helps them or they can resonate with it or whatever it’s gonna be and I’m sure it’s exactly the same way with writing. One person that enjoys an article is like, I’m over the moon if you enjoy one song. The feedback has been amazing.
KTC: That’s the key word! Especially to know you helped someone you care about so much. You can’t put a price on that.
M: One hundred percent. At the end of the day, and I’ve always said this, I really make music because of my lack of communication. I’m not the biggest talker or venter or anything like that. I feel like when I’m making music, that’s my opportunity to vent and say all the things that I would want to say to even a therapist. So it’s just a great outlet and to help others through my outlet is just, it’s unmatched. It really is.
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