7 Metrix Turns Chicago Into Living Memory on 'I Heard The City Breathe'

A lot of albums claim to represent their city. Very few actually sound like they were shaped by it. On I Heard The City Breathe, Chicago artist, producer, educator, and creative strategist 7 Metrix builds something far deeper than a tribute project. This is an album rooted in memory, grief, survival, mentorship, and cultural preservation, one that treats Chicago not as a backdrop but as a living presence breathing through every song.

The project moves with the emotional rhythm of the South Side itself. There are moments of joy, exhaustion, tension, reflection, and hope constantly colliding throughout the album, giving it the feeling of a living archive rather than a traditional release. Spoken word narration ties the project together, creating transitions that feel cinematic without losing emotional intimacy. Instead of chasing viral moments or surface-level storytelling, 7 Metrix focuses on emotional honesty and lived experience.

Tracks like “City” and “Colors” carry some of the album’s heaviest emotional weight. The writing throughout the project is deeply human, exploring trauma, fractured identity, violence, fatherhood, addiction, and survival through a lens that feels personal instead of performative. On “Colors,” reflections on grief, systemic violence, and emotional numbness land with painful clarity, while “City” captures the psychological exhaustion of growing up surrounded by instability and loss. The production across both tracks feels immersive without overwhelming the message, allowing the writing and performances to stay front and center.

At the same time, I Heard The City Breathe never becomes emotionally one-dimensional. Songs like “Dreams,” “Shining,” and “As I Write” introduce moments of hope, faith, ambition, and generational healing, balancing the heavier themes with humanity and resilience. The album understands that documenting Black life honestly also means documenting joy, aspiration, humor, family, and growth alongside pain.

What makes the project especially meaningful is the collaborative structure behind it. Created as part of a larger multimedia initiative that includes a short film and gallery exhibition, the album also features contributions from ISPro Academy students alongside established Chicago musicians, producers, and engineers. That intergenerational collaboration gives the project an added sense of purpose beyond music itself. It feels community-built in the truest sense.

At its core, I Heard The City Breathe feels less interested in entertainment than preservation. 7 Metrix documents Chicago with empathy, emotional depth, and cultural care, capturing stories too often reduced to headlines or stereotypes. The result is a project that feels deeply rooted, emotionally mature, and culturally necessary.

I Heard The City Breathe feels less like a traditional album and more like a cultural archive. At what point did you realize this project needed to become bigger than just music? I realized it needed to become bigger than music when the stories started to feel like they were carrying more weight than just songs. As the project developed, I started thinking about the people, places, memories, and emotions connected to Chicago that often don’t get told with care. It became less about creating an album and more about preserving a feeling — the breath of the city, the voices of the people, and the lived experiences that shape us. Once ISPro Academy students became part of the process, the project expanded even more. It became a way to teach, mentor, and create a real-life example of how music can document culture, history, and community. I wanted to give black Chicago a voice to see and speak to itself. At that point, I knew I Heard The City Breathe was not just a release. It was a tapestry of testimonies born from a love for Chicago.

A major theme throughout the album is documenting Black life in Chicago with humanity instead of stereotypes. Was there a specific misconception about the South Side that you felt driven to challenge through this project? One misconception I wanted to challenge is that the South Side is only defined by violence, struggle, or trauma. Those things exist, but they are not the full story. There is so much love, creativity, intelligence, resilience, family, faith, and beauty that comes from the South Side. I wanted the project to show Black life in Chicago with depth and humanity. For me, it was important to create something that didn’t ignore pain but also didn’t reduce us to it. The South Side has produced artists, thinkers, leaders, entrepreneurs, teachers, musicians, and visionaries. I did not want to create a project that attached to the listener as an audible trauma bond. I wanted us as humans to shine in the multiple shades of our existence. I Heard The City Breathe is my way of saying that our stories deserve to be told with honesty, complexity, and dignity. The project balances grief, survival, fatherhood, faith, and hope without feeling emotionally fragmented. How did your own personal experiences shape the emotional direction of the album? A lot of the emotional direction came from my own process of reflection. I was thinking about loss, growth, responsibility, fatherhood, and what it means to keep going when life forces you to evolve. This project gave me space to be honest about the emotional weight I had been carrying while also finding beauty in it.

Fatherhood, especially, shaped the way I approached the album. I lost my father when I was two, so growing up, I never knew what it was like to have that fatherly presence. Through the work of my mother, I began to work and have a passion for youth, just like my mom and dad did. In this process, I became a mentor and father( in some ways) to a lot of young adults. Oftentimes, I had to deal with the emotions of giving the youth a version of love that I never saw. It made me think about legacy, what we pass down, and what stories our children inherit from us. Faith and hope became important because I didn’t want the project to sit only in grief. My faith in Christ has always been my backbone. It has been the one constant thing that has allowed me to embrace these different facets of human existence. My faith has also pushed me to believe in the love and beautiful bonds that surround us every day. I also felt a responsibility to my students, Blessing, Christian, Carson, and Skyler, not to pass on grief/struggle. I wanted it to move through grief into healing, purpose, and renewal. That balance reflects real life to me — we are often praying, worshipping, surviving, grieving, loving, creating, and hoping all at the same time.

You involved students from ISPro Academy directly in the creative process. What did collaborating across generations teach you about mentorship, storytelling, and the future of Chicago’s creative culture? Working with the students reminded me that mentorship is not just about teaching technical skills. It is also about creating access, building confidence, and giving young people the chance to see themselves as human beings worthy to be heard. They are creatives, professionals, musicians, storytellers, etc. The students brought fresh energy, ideas, and perspective into the project, and that made the work stronger. Collaborating across generations showed me that Chicago’s creative future is already here. Young artists just need the resources, spaces, and guidance to develop. It also reinforced that we need them as much as they need us. We as a people are whole when our relationships across the ages are whole. We don’t always have to agree with each other, but we should be able to find home within each other's presence. Through ISPro Academy, we were able to give students real experience in music production, recording, collaboration, and creative decision-making. Through the contacts of Unchained Genius, we were able to produce the project all over the city, from 2112 Chicago, to Industrious at the Willis Tower, the Chicago Hip Hop Heritage Museum, and Creation Sound Studios. It taught me that when we invite young people into meaningful work, they don’t just learn from us — they also help us see the future more clearly.