It’s almost instinctive to create art for display. A painter steps into the mind of a stranger in a gallery to guide the next stroke on the canvas. A rapper hears how their words will move a crowd before he records the next take. It’s like there’s a silent audience in the room with the artist, informing the creative process.
But what happens in an age where the audience doesn’t care to listen? Who does the artist create for? Alternative rapper and producer Black Salt faced this dilemma at an early stage of his creative journey.
He is 22 years old, raised in Nashua, New Hampshire, and has been based in Denver for the last five years. He built a large TikTok following during quarantine almost by accident, off comedy videos and skits he filmed in his bedroom out of boredom. When he started posting his music instead, his true passion, the number at the top of his page ceased to mean anything.
“The vast majority of the people that had originally followed me only followed me off of one video or another,” he said, “and didn’t particularly care about me as a person.”
What he found in the quiet became his approach to art. If nobody is obligated to care, then the only real reason to make anything is that you want it to exist.
He came here for CU Denver’s audio production program and left midway through his junior year. “I learned a lot of the basics and now I can make my own music the way that I wanted to,” he said.
The name “Black Salt” comes from his last name, Morton (like the salt brand), and the folklore of his hometown in New England, where black salt has a spiritual purpose. It’s plain salt mixed with incense ash, kept around to fend off bad spirits. His connection to the scenery and story of his childhood lives on in his releases: Spice Drawer. Sea Salt. And releasing this fall, Screw Salt.
Black Salt has a burning passion for music, but he draws his inspiration from film and storytelling. His favorite is Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013). “It’s about the film photography digitizer that’s working at LIFE magazine right before they went digital,” he recounts. “He spends the whole movie trying to find the final film cover for the last non-digital issue.” It’s an all too familiar story of human processes being replaced by something faster and easier. But the film focuses on the individual’s decision to fill the mundane cycles of life with personal meaning and intention. A lesson Black Salt learned when he started creating for himself.
Producing and rapping on the majority of his own songs gives him room to “tell the whole story.” He made about three quarters of his catalogue himself, in Logic, on a Focusrite and a MIDI keyboard, chopping samples and building drum kits out of one-shots he pulls off Reddit. His latest single, “Fav B**ch,” he produced, mixed and mastered alone, then paired with a video that studies femininity through portraits, murals, and sculpture. Every layer is arriving at the same level now. The lyrics, the beat, the visuals. He has been in the competitive landscape for years, and he is putting out undeniable art to cut through it.
The new album, Screw Salt, is out October 9. The title is a triple entendre. One: screw you, Salt! Two: it’s largely a 2000s R&B club record, so screw Salt, romance edition. Three: he made most of it while working at Ace Hardware, staring at screws all day. His expectations for the project are grounded and modest. “I would love to inspire people to make things like it,” he says. “I hope people listen to it.”
He plays The Black Buzzard on October 18 with Intuition & Equalibrum, Speak! and BRY444N. Nine days after the record lands.
Listen to “Screw Salt” wherever you get your music, and get tickets to the Denver show at bandwagonpresents.com.
