Avant-garde hip-hop artist Mack Swans releases October program, explores inspirations and processes

SHREVEPORT, Louisiana (KSLA) – Mack Swans explains his process for creating new music and his alter egos for each project, exploring themes of science, ideology and theology.

Hip hop artist Mack Swans talks to Brittney Hazelton of ArkLaTex Artistry about his upcoming shows, inspirations, and his process of creating new music.

Mack Swans has announced its schedule for Dr. Maxamillion’s Takeover: Age of Isominacs show in October, including major events such as the Red River Revel and Zombie Walk, plus a secret surprise performance in mid-October.

Mack Swans

Mack Swans is a hip hop artist from New Orleans, Louisiana, now living and working in Shreveport. From the beginning, at the age of 15, when he released his first EP. His music stands out from the usual hip hop music trends as he combines performance with delivery. Each of his projects is different and follows a character/alter ego with unique performances.

He describes his music as a mix of ideology and film genres. Heavily influenced by science, cinema and horror films, Swans says he spends more time watching films than making music.

“I’m a huge cinema buff, I’m a huge film buff. I just love watching films. I probably watch more films than I make music. Just because I get so much inspiration from them, but I also get inspired by actual science and different ideologies and theologies. I love all of that, I just love mixing it into music. Whether it’s lyrics that are inspired by that or just sonically, I want to use different sounds for different genres,” explains Swans.

His work is avant-garde, experimental and different from other hip hop music.

“I started out very experimentally with music. I started making beats on my phone in garage band, recording and stuff. I played around with different sounds for years until I finally found my own. Now I just play around with it,” says Swans.

What topics does it cover?

He raps about existentialism, various scientific topics and religions.

“At a certain point, I’ve been into religions for a long time. Just like different religions. Christianity, I mean, I grew up in a Christian home so I know more than enough about it, but also Islam, different branches of Christianity, just all kinds of things. I like to rap about science, mainly about space,” explains Swans.

“I feel like hip-hop and music in general has created a barrier when it comes to songwriting topics. At least for the majority, the main themes of songs are love or real life topics or just traditional songwriting topics. I wanted to take a different approach and rap about real life, but in a different way, from a different perspective,” Swans says of wanting to break away from the norm. “I enjoy teaching in a cool way. I teach and learn at the same time, but not in a didactic way.”

How does he proceed?

His approach varies depending on the type of project he wants to undertake.

“One of my first mixtapes was called Swanson and it was going to be based on how my summer of 2020 went and reflect my childhood. It was just all mixed together so people could get to know my upbringing and at the same time what was going on in my life,” explains Swans. “I was very inspired by different documentaries and different biographies, that kind of film. Then later on I wanted to make a very psychedelic album. The inspiration for that came from different music videos or different psychedelic albums that I just like to listen to. So it’s different with every project.”

His last album, “Age of Insomniacs,” was heavily influenced by horror films, making it perfect for a performance during the upcoming spooky season and Zombie Walk.

“I spent months watching a lot of horror movies and science videos and locking myself in the studio,” says Swans.

He focuses on a genre and studies it intensively, delves into the subject through visual media, and then creates an album that focuses specifically on that genre with his own twist.

“I’m more of a project artist. Sometimes I do singles, but when I release music it’s usually a body of work. I think I’ve probably released 20 projects since I started making music,” says Swans.

His alter egos

In his most recent projects, starting in 2019, Swans created an alter ego for each project he put out. Starting with Ahead of the Future, who is simply Mack Swans, just a regular rapper. Then Swanson from his album Swanson. After that, he played the role of brother Swanton, a name based on his upbringing in a very Afrocentric household.

“After that, Brother Swanton released an album and an EP called Swanton Bomb,” Swans explains. “Swanton’s Bomb is basically a metaphor for the Big Bang. So Swanton’s Bomb is literally his creation of a universe, and the universe is the Age of the Insomniacs.”

Age of Insomniacs gave rise to Dr. Maxamillion. Swans describes the character as a mad music scientist who is an alien in our universe and was created to embody the first sound in his universe.

“I guess that’s the movie buff in me. I love writing, I love stories,” Swans says. “I prefer movies to TV series because I love endings and conclusions. That’s kind of affected the way I release projects. The first half, the first three projects I put out are daytime sagas, and once Swanton’s bomb goes off, they’re nighttime sagas, and now we’re exploring themes like the universe and different cooler things like that, and horror as well.”

During the Zombie Walk, Swanson has a special zombie version of Dr. Maxamillion that he will feature in his performance, and he even thinks about different lore and ways to incorporate the zombie version of his alter ego.

Follow Mack Swans by visiting his Instagram at, on Spotify at or his LinkTree at https://linktr.ee/mackswans.

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